Part 29

And, in this exacerbation of his torment, tears swelled the eyes of M. Hennebeau, burst in burning drops down his cheeks. Twilight was drowning the road, when stones began to riddle the facade of the hotel. Without anger now against these starving wretches, enraged only by the smarting wound of his heart, he continued to stammer amid his tears:

--The fools! the fools!

But the cry of the belly prevailed, a howl blew in storm, sweeping all away.

--Bread! bread! bread!

VI

Étienne, sobered by Catherine's slaps, had remained at the head of the comrades. But, while he was hurling them upon Montsou, with a hoarse voice, he heard another voice within him, a voice of reason that wondered, that asked why all this. He had willed none of these things; how could it be that, setting out for Jean-Bart with the aim of acting coldly and preventing a disaster, he should end the day, from violence to violence, by besieging the director's hotel?

Yet it was indeed he who had just cried: halt! Only, at first he had had but the idea of protecting the Company's Yards, where it was said they were going to wreck everything. And now that stones were already grazing the facade of the hotel, he was seeking, without finding it, upon what legitimate prey he ought to launch the band, in order to avoid greater misfortunes. As he thus remained alone, impotent in the middle of the road, someone called him, a man standing on the threshold of the Tison tavern, whose keeper had hastened to shut the shutters, leaving only the door free.

--Yes, it is I... Listen, then.

It was Rasseneur. Some thirty men and women, almost all from the Two Hundred and Forty settlement, who had stayed at home in the morning and come in the evening for news, had invaded the tavern at the approach of the strikers. Zacharie occupied a table with his wife Philomène. Farther off, Pierron and the Pierronne, turning their backs, hid their faces. Besides, no one was drinking; they had simply taken shelter.

Étienne recognized Rasseneur, and was drawing away, when the latter added:

--My sight bothers you, doesn't it?... I warned you, the troubles are beginning. Now, you may call for bread; it is lead they will give you.

Then he came back, he answered:

--What bothers me is the cowards who, arms crossed, watch us risk our skins.

--So your idea is to loot across the way? asked Rasseneur.

--My idea is to stay to the end with the friends, even if we all have to die together.

In despair, Étienne went back into the crowd, ready to die. On the road, three children were flinging stones, and he gave them a great kick, crying, to stop the comrades, that it was no use breaking windows.

Bébert and Lydie, who had just rejoined Jeanlin, were learning from the latter to handle his sling. Each flung a pebble, playing at who would do the most damage. Lydie, by a clumsy throw, had cracked a woman's head, in the crush; and the two boys were holding their sides. Behind them, Bonnemort and Mouque, seated on a bench, watched them. Bonnemort's swollen legs carried him so badly that he had had great difficulty in dragging himself there, no one knowing what curiosity drove him, for he wore his earthy face of the days when no word could be got from him.

No one, moreover, obeyed Étienne any longer. The stones, despite his orders, continued to hail, and he wondered, he was dismayed before these brutes unmuzzled by him, so slow to be moved, terrible afterward, of a ferocious tenacity in anger. All the old Flemish blood was there, heavy and placid, taking months to warm up, then throwing itself into abominable savageries, hearing nothing, until the beast was drunk with atrocities. In his Midi, crowds flared up faster, only they got less done. He had to fight Levaque to wrest his axe from him; he was at the point of not knowing how to contain the Maheus, who were hurling stones with both hands. And the women above all frightened him, la Levaque, la Mouquette and the others, agitated by a murderous fury, teeth and nails out, barking like bitches, under the excitations of la Brûlé, who towered over them with her lean stature.

But there was a sudden stop; the surprise of a minute produced a little of the calm that Étienne's supplications could not obtain. It was simply the Grégoires deciding to take leave of the notary, to go across to the director's. And they seemed so peaceful, they had so well the air of believing in a pure joke on the part of their good miners, whose resignation had fed them for a century, that the latter, astonished, had indeed ceased throwing stones, for fear of hitting this old gentleman and this old lady fallen from the sky. They let them enter the garden, mount the steps, ring at the barricaded door, which they were not in haste to open. Just then, the chambermaid, Rose, was coming back from her outing, laughing at the furious workers, all of whom she knew, for she was from Montsou. And it was she who, beating with her fists on the door, finally forced Hippolyte to open it a crack. It was time; the Grégoires were disappearing, when the hail of stones began again. Recovered from her astonishment, the crowd clamored louder:

--Death to the bourgeois! long live the social!

Rose continued to laugh, in the vestibule of the hotel, as if amused by the adventure, repeating to the terrified servant:

--They are not wicked, I know them.

M. Grégoire methodically hung up his hat. Then, when he had helped Madame Grégoire off with her heavy cloth mantle, he said in his turn:

--No doubt, they have no malice at bottom. When they have cried enough, they will go to supper with more appetite.

At this moment, M. Hennebeau was coming down from the second floor. He had seen the scene, and he came to receive his guests, with his habitual air, cold and polite. Only the pallor of his face told of the tears that had shaken him. The man was subdued; there remained in him only the correct administrator, resolved to do his duty.

--You know, he said, that the ladies are not home yet.

For the first time, an uneasiness moved the Grégoires. Cécile not home! how would she get in, if the miners' joke went on?

--I thought of having the house cleared, added M. Hennebeau. The misfortune is that I am alone here, and that I do not know, besides, where to send my servant, to bring me back four men and a corporal, who would clean out that rabble.

Rose, who had stayed there, dared to murmur again:

--Oh! Monsieur, they are not wicked.

The director shook his head, while the tumult grew outside and one heard the dull crushing of stones against the facade.

--I bear them no ill will, I even excuse them; one must be as stupid as they are to believe that we are bent on their misfortune. Only, I answer for the peace... To think that there are gendarmes on the roads, so I am told, and that since this morning I have not been able to get a single one!

He broke off, he stepped aside before Madame Grégoire, saying:

--I beg you, madame, do not stay there; come into the salon.

But the cook, who was coming up from the basement, exasperated, detained them in the vestibule a few minutes more. She declared that she would no longer accept responsibility for the dinner, for she was expecting, from the pastry cook of Marchiennes, some vol-au-vent crusts, which she had ordered for four o'clock. Evidently the pastry cook had lost his way, seized with fear of those bandits. Perhaps even his baskets had been plundered. She saw the vol-au-vent blocked behind a bush, besieged, swelling the bellies of the three thousand wretches who asked for bread. In any case, Monsieur was warned; she preferred to fling her dinner into the fire, if she spoiled it, because of the revolution.

--A little patience, said M. Hennebeau. Nothing is lost; the pastry cook may come.

And, as he turned back toward Madame Grégoire, opening the salon door himself, he was very surprised to perceive, seated on the bench in the vestibule, a man he had not distinguished until then, in the growing shadow.

--Why! it is you, Maigrat, what is the matter?

Maigrat had risen, and his face appeared, fat and pale, decomposed by fright. He no longer had his bearing of a calm stout man; he explained humbly that he had slipped into the director's, to claim help and protection, if the brigands attacked his shop.

--You see that I am threatened myself and that I have no one, answered M. Hennebeau. You would have done better to stay at home, guarding your goods.

--Oh! I put the iron bars, then I left my wife.

The director lost patience, without hiding his contempt. A fine guard, that puny creature, wasted by beatings!

--Well, I can do nothing; try to defend yourself. And I advise you to go home at once, for there they are calling for bread again... Listen...

Indeed, the tumult was rising again, and Maigrat thought he heard his name, amid the cries. To go home was no longer possible; they would have cut him to pieces. On the other hand, the idea of his ruin upset him. He pressed his face to the glazed panel of the door, sweating, trembling, watching for the disaster; while the Grégoires decided to pass into the salon.

Quietly, M. Hennebeau affected to do the honors of his house. But he prayed in vain for his guests to sit; the closed room, barricaded, lit by two lamps before nightfall, filled with dread at each new clamor from without. In the stifling of the hangings, the anger of the crowd rumbled, more troubling, with a vague and terrible threat. They talked, however, constantly brought back to this inconceivable revolt. He wondered at having foreseen nothing; and his police was so badly done, that he flew above all against Rasseneur, whose detestable influence he said he recognized. Besides, the gendarmes would come; it was impossible they should abandon him thus. As for the Grégoires, they thought only of their daughter: the poor darling who was so easily frightened! perhaps, before the danger, the carriage had turned back to Marchiennes. For a quarter of an hour more, the waiting lasted, unnerved by the uproar of the road, by the noise of stones now and then tapping on the closed shutters, which rang like drums. This situation was no longer tolerable; M. Hennebeau spoke of going out, of chasing the bawlers away alone and going to meet the carriage, when Hippolyte appeared crying:

--Monsieur! Monsieur! here is Madame, they are killing Madame!

The carriage having been unable to pass the lane of Réquillart, amid the threatening groups, Négrel had followed his idea: to go on foot the hundred meters separating them from the hotel, then knock at the small door opening on the garden, near the outbuildings: the gardener would hear them, there would surely be someone there to open. And, at first, things had gone perfectly; already Madame Hennebeau and the young ladies were knocking, when women, warned, threw themselves into the lane. Then all went wrong. The door was not opened; Négrel had tried in vain to force it with his shoulder. The flood of women grew; he feared being overrun; he took the desperate course of pushing his aunt and the young girls before him, to gain the steps, through the besiegers. But this maneuver brought about a scrimmage: they were not let go; a howling band was hunting them, while the crowd flowed back from right and left, not yet understanding, only astonished at these ladies in dress, lost in the battle. At that minute, the confusion became such that there occurred one of those panics which remain inexplicable. Lucie and Jeanne, arrived at the steps, had slipped through the door the chambermaid was opening a crack; Madame Hennebeau had succeeded in following them; and, behind them, Négrel at last entered, bolted the door, persuaded he had seen Cécile pass first. She was no longer there, disappeared on the way, carried by such fear that she had turned her back on the house, and thrown herself of her own accord into full danger.

At once the cry rose:

--Long live the social! death to the bourgeois! death!

Some, from afar, under the veil hiding her face, took her for Madame Hennebeau. Others named a friend of the directress, the young wife of a neighboring manufacturer, detested by his workers. And, besides, it mattered little; it was her silk dress, her fur mantle, down to the white plume of her hat, that exasperated. She smelled of perfume; she had a watch; she had the fine skin of an idle woman who never touched coal.

--Wait! cried la Brûlé, we'll stick some lace on your arse!

--It's from us these sluts steal that, resumed la Levaque. They glue hair on their skin, while we are dying of cold... Strip her stark naked, to teach her to live!

Thereupon la Mouquette sprang forward.

--Yes, yes, she must be whipped.

And the women, in this savage rivalry, were stifling, thrusting out their rags, each wanting a piece of this rich man's daughter. No doubt her backside was no better made than another's. More than one of them was rotten, too, under her finery. Long enough had injustice lasted; they would force them all to dress like workwomen, these strumpets who dared spend fifty sous on the washing of a petticoat!

Amid these furies, Cécile shivered, her legs paralyzed, stammering the same phrase twenty times:

--Ladies, I beg you, ladies, do not hurt me.

But she gave a raucous cry: cold hands had just taken her by the neck. It was old Bonnemort, near whom the flood had pushed her, and who was seizing her. He seemed drunk with hunger, stupefied by his long misery, suddenly come out of his half-century of resignation, without it being possible to know under what surge of rancor. After having, in his life, saved a dozen comrades from death, risking his bones in the firedamp and the falls, he yielded to things he could not have told, to a need to do that, to the fascination of that white young-girl neck. And, as that day he had lost his tongue, he tightened his fingers, with his air of an old infirm beast, busy ruminating memories.

--No! no! the women howled, arse in the air! arse in the air!

In the hotel, as soon as the adventure was noticed, Négrel and M. Hennebeau had reopened the door, bravely, to run to Cécile's aid. But the crowd was now throwing itself against the garden gate, and it was no longer easy to get out. A struggle was engaging there, while the Grégoires, terrified, appeared on the steps.

--Leave her, old man! it's the young lady from the Piolaine! cried la Maheude to the grandfather, recognizing Cécile, whose veil a woman had torn.

For his part, Étienne, upset by these reprisals against a child, strove to make the band let go. He had an inspiration; he brandished the axe he had wrested from Levaque's fists.

--To Maigrat's, for God's sake!... There's bread in there. Let's smash Maigrat's shop to the ground!

And, with a swing, he gave a first blow of the axe on the shop door. Comrades had followed him, Levaque, Maheu and some others. But the women were ferocious. Cécile had fallen from Bonnemort's fingers into la Brûlé's hands. On all fours, Lydie and Bébert, led by Jeanlin, were slipping between the skirts, to see the lady's behind. Already they were pulling at her; her clothes were cracking, when a man on horseback appeared, pushing his beast, whipping those who did not step aside quickly enough.

--Ah! scoundrels, you are at whipping our daughters now!

It was Deneulin arriving at the rendezvous, for dinner. Quickly he leapt to the road, took Cécile by the waist; and, with the other hand, maneuvering the horse with extraordinary skill and strength, he used it as a living wedge, split the crowd, which recoiled before the kicks. At the gate the battle continued. Yet he passed, crushed limbs. This unforeseen help delivered Négrel and M. Hennebeau, in great danger, amid oaths and blows. And, while the young man at last re-entered with the fainting Cécile, Deneulin, who was covering the director with his great body, at the top of the steps, received a stone, whose shock nearly dislocated his shoulder.

--That's it, he cried, break my bones, after breaking my machines!

He quickly pushed the door. A volley of pebbles fell on the wood.

--What madmen! he went on. Two seconds more, and they would have burst my skull like an empty gourd... There's nothing to say to them; what would you have? They no longer know; there's only to knock them down.

In the salon, the Grégoires wept, seeing Cécile come to. She had no hurt, not even a scratch: only her veil was lost. But their dismay increased, when they recognized before them their cook, Mélanie, who was telling how the band had demolished the Piolaine. Mad with fear, she had run to warn her masters. She had entered, too, by the half-open door, at the moment of the brawl, without anyone noticing; and, in her endless tale, the single stone of Jeanlin that had broken one pane became a regular cannonade, whose walls remained cracked. Then M. Grégoire's ideas were overturned: they were slaughtering his daughter, razing his house; was it true, then, that these miners could bear him ill will, because he lived as a good man on their toil?

The chambermaid, who had brought a towel and eau de Cologne, repeated:

--All the same, it's funny, they are not wicked.

Madame Hennebeau, seated, very pale, did not recover from the shock of her emotion; and she found only a smile, when Négrel was congratulated. The parents of Cécile thanked above all the young man; it was now a concluded marriage. M. Hennebeau looked on in silence, passing from his wife to this lover whom he had sworn to kill in the morning, then to this young girl who would soon rid him of her, no doubt. He had no haste; one fear alone remained to him, that of seeing his wife sink lower, to some lackey perhaps.

--And you, my little darlings, asked Deneulin of his daughters, did they break nothing of yours?

Lucie and Jeanne had been much afraid, but they were glad to have seen that. They were laughing now.

--Good Lord! the father went on, there's a fine day!... If you want a dowry, you'll do well to earn it yourselves; and expect still to be forced to feed me.

He joked, his voice trembling. His eyes swelled, when his two daughters threw themselves into his arms.

M. Hennebeau had listened to this avowal of ruin. A vivid thought lit his face. Indeed, Vandame was to be at Montsou; it was the hoped-for compensation, the stroke of fortune that would put him back in favor, near those gentlemen of the Board. At each disaster of his existence, he took refuge in the strict execution of orders received; he made of the military discipline in which he lived his reduced share of happiness.

But they were calming; the salon fell to a weary peace, with the quiet light of the two lamps and the tepid stifling of the portières. What was happening, then, outside? The bawlers were silent; stones no longer beat the facade; and one heard only great dull blows, those axe-strokes that sound in the distance of woods. They wished to know; they went back into the vestibule to risk a look through the glazed panel of the door. Even the ladies and young ladies went up to post themselves behind the blinds of the first floor.

--Do you see that blackguard Rasseneur, opposite, on the threshold of that cabaret? said M. Hennebeau to Deneulin. I had scented him; he must be in it.

Yet it was not Rasseneur; it was Étienne who was breaking in Maigrat's shop with axe-blows. And he still called the comrades: did not the goods in there belong to the colliers? had they not the right to take back their own from that thief who had exploited them so long, who starved them at a word from the Company? Little by little, all were leaving the director's hotel, running to the plunder of the neighboring shop. The cry: bread! bread! bread! rumbled anew. They would find bread, behind that door. A rage of hunger lifted them, as if, suddenly, they could wait no longer, without expiring on that road. Such thrusts threw themselves against the door, that Étienne feared wounding someone, at each swing of the axe.

Meanwhile Maigrat, who had left the hotel vestibule, had first taken refuge in the kitchen; but he heard nothing there; he dreamed of abominable outrages against his shop; and he had just come up to hide behind the pump, outside, when he distinctly made out the crackings of the door, the vociferations of plunder, where his name was mixed. So it was not a nightmare: if he did not see, he heard now, he followed the attack, his ears ringing. Each axe-blow entered him full in the heart. A hinge must have given; five minutes more, and the shop was taken. That painted itself in his skull in real, frightful images: the brigands rushing in, then the drawers forced, the sacks ripped open, all eaten, all drunk, the house itself carried off, nothing left, not even a stick to go begging through the villages. No, he would not let them finish his ruin; he preferred to leave his skin there. Since he had been there, he had glimpsed at a window of his house, on the return facade, the puny silhouette of his wife, pale and blurred behind the panes: no doubt she was watching the blows come, with her mute air of a poor beaten creature. Below, there was a shed, placed so that, from the hotel garden, one could mount it by climbing the trellis of the party wall; then, from there, it was easy to creep over the tiles, to the window. And the idea of thus getting back into his own tormented him now, in his remorse at having left it. Perhaps he would have time to barricade the shop with furniture; even he invented other heroic defenses, boiling oil, flaming petroleum, poured from above. But this love of his goods fought against his fear; he gasped with cowardice combated. Suddenly he decided, at a deeper resounding of the axe. Avarice prevailed; he and his wife would cover the sacks with their bodies, rather than abandon a loaf.

Hoots, almost at once, burst forth.

--Look! look!... The tomcat is up there! at the cat! at the cat!

The band had just caught sight of Maigrat, on the roof of the shed. In his fever, despite his heaviness, he had mounted the trellis with agility, caring nothing for the breaking wood; and now he was flattening himself along the tiles, striving to reach the window. But the slope was very steep; his belly embarrassed him; his nails were tearing off. Yet he would have dragged himself to the top, had he not begun to tremble, in fear of receiving stones; for the crowd, which he no longer saw, continued to cry, beneath him:

--At the cat! at the cat!... He must be smashed!

And, abruptly, his two hands let go at once; he rolled like a ball, jerked at the gutter, fell across the party wall, so unhappily, that he rebounded to the side of the road, where he split his skull on the corner of a milestone. The brain had spurted. He was dead. His wife, above, pale and blurred behind the panes, was still looking.

At first, it was a stupor. Étienne had stopped, the axe slipped from his fists. Maheu, Levaque, all the others, forgot the shop, eyes turned to the wall, where a thin red thread was slowly flowing. And the cries had ceased; a silence widened in the growing shadow.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”