Part 39

Thereupon, Négrel stirred up the dust of the archives, and when he had discovered the old plans of the two pits, he studied them, he determined the points where the search should be directed. Little by little, this chase inflamed him; he too was seized with a fever of devotion, despite his ironic carelessness of men and things. First difficulties were met with in descending at Réquillart: the mouth of the shaft had to be cleared, the sorb-tree cut down, the sloes and hawthorns levelled; and then the ladders had to be repaired. Then the groping began. The engineer, who had gone down with ten workers, had them strike with the iron of their tools against certain parts of the seam which he pointed out to them; and, in a great silence, each one pressed an ear to the coal, listening to hear if distant blows did not answer. But they traversed in vain all the practicable galleries; no echo came. The embarrassment had increased: at what place should the seam be cut? toward whom should they go, since no one seemed to be there? Yet they persisted, they searched, in the irritation of a growing anxiety.

From the first day, La Maheude arrived in the morning at Réquillart. She sat down before the shaft, on a beam, and did not move from it until evening. When a man came out, she rose, questioned him with her eyes: nothing? no, nothing! and she sat down again, waited still, without a word, her face hard and closed. Jeanlin, too, seeing that his den was being invaded, had prowled about, with the frightened air of a beast of prey whose burrow is about to betray its plunder: he was thinking of the little soldier, lying under the rocks, with the fear that they might go and disturb that good sleep; but this side of the mine was invaded by the waters, and besides the excavations were being directed farther to the left, in the west gallery. At first, Philomène had also come, to accompany Zacharie, who was part of the search crew; then, it had bored her, to catch cold without necessity or result: she stayed at the settlement, she dragged through her days as a soft, indifferent woman, occupied in coughing from morning to night. On the contrary, Zacharie no longer lived, would have eaten the earth to find his sister again. He cried out at night, he saw her, he heard her, all wasted with hunger, her throat broken from calling for help. Twice he had wanted to dig without orders, saying that it was there, that he felt it well. The engineer no longer let him go down, and he did not move away from that shaft from which he was driven, he could not even sit and wait near his mother, agitated by a need to act, turning without rest.

It was the third day. Négrel, in despair, had resolved to abandon everything that evening. At noon, after the meal, when he returned with his men, to attempt a last effort, he was surprised to see Zacharie come out of the pit, very red, gesticulating, crying:

"She's there! she answered me! Come, do come!"

He had slipped down by the ladders, despite the guard, and he swore that they had struck, over there, in the first way of the Guillaume seam.

"But we have already passed twice where you say," Négrel remarked incredulously. "Well, we shall soon see."

La Maheude had risen; and they had to prevent her from descending. She waited standing, at the edge of the shaft, her gaze in the darkness of that hole.

Below, Négrel struck three blows himself, widely spaced; then, he applied his ear to the coal, recommending the greatest silence to the workers. No sound reached him, he shook his head: evidently, the poor boy had dreamed. Furious, Zacharie struck in his turn; and he heard again, his eyes shone, a trembling of joy shook his limbs. Then, the other workers began the experiment again, one after another: all grew animated, perceived very well the distant answer. It was a astonishment for the engineer, he pressed his ear again, he ended by catching a noise of aerial lightness, a rhythmical rolling barely distinct, the known cadence of the miners' call, which they beat against the coal, in danger. Coal transmits sounds with a limpidity of crystal, very far. A deputy who was there, estimated at no less than fifty metres the block whose thickness separated them from their comrades. But it seemed that one could already stretch out a hand to them, a joy burst forth. Négrel had to begin at once the approach works.

When Zacharie, above, saw La Maheude again, the two embraced.

"You mustn't get your hopes up," had the cruelty to say La Pierronne, who had come that day for a walk, out of curiosity. "If Catherine wasn't there, it would grieve you too much afterwards."

It was true, Catherine perhaps was elsewhere.

"Leave me alone, huh!" cried Zacharie furiously. "She's there, I know it!"

La Maheude had sat down again, mute, her face immobile. And she began to wait again.

As soon as the story had spread through Montsou, a new flood of people arrived. One saw nothing, and yet they remained there, it was necessary to keep the curious at a distance. Below, they worked day and night. For fear of meeting an obstacle, the engineer had had opened, in the seam, three descending galleries, which converged toward the point where the imprisoned miners were supposed to be. Only one hewer could cut the coal, on the narrow face of the drift; he was relieved every two hours; and the coal, with which baskets were loaded, was passed from hand to hand by a chain of men, which lengthened as the hole deepened. The work, at first, went very fast: they made six metres in a day.

Zacharie had obtained to be among the elite workers put to the cutting. It was an honor post that they disputed. And he grew angry, when they wanted to relieve him, after his two hours of regulation corvée. He stole the turn of his comrades, he refused to let go of the pick. His gallery soon was ahead of the others, he fought there against the coal with so fierce an onset, that one heard rise from the drift the roaring breath of his chest, like the rumbling of some interior forge. When he came out of it, muddy and black, drunk with fatigue, he fell to the ground, they had to wrap him in a blanket. Then, still staggering, he plunged back in, and the struggle recommenced, the great dull blows, the stifled plaints, a victorious raging of slaughter. The worst was that the coal became hard, he broke his tool twice, exasperated at no longer advancing so fast. He also suffered from the heat, a heat which increased with each metre of advance, insupportable at the bottom of that thin breach, where the air could not circulate. A hand ventilator did indeed work, but the airing was badly established, they withdrew three times hewers who had fainted, strangled by asphyxia.

Négrel lived below, with his workers. They sent his meals down to him, he sometimes slept two hours, on a bundle of straw, rolled in a coat. What sustained the courage was the supplication of the wretches, there below, the call more and more distinct that they beat for them to hasten to arrive. At present, it rang very clear, with a musical sonority, as struck upon the blades of a harmonica. One guided oneself by it, one marched to that crystalline noise, as one marches to the cannon in battles. Each time a hewer was relieved, Négrel went down, struck, then pressed his ear; and, each time, up to now, the answer had come, rapid and urgent. No doubt remained to him, they advanced in the good direction; but what a fatal slowness! Never would one arrive soon enough. In two days, at first, they had indeed cut thirteen metres; only, the third day, they had fallen to five; then, the fourth, to three. The coal tightened, hardened to such a point, that, now, they bored two metres, with difficulty. The ninth day, after superhuman efforts, the advance was of thirty-two metres, and one calculated that there was still some twenty before them. For the prisoners, it was the twelfth day which was beginning, twelve times twenty-four hours without bread, without fire, in those glacial shadows! This abominable idea moistened the eyelids, stiffened the arms at the task. It seemed impossible that Christians should live longer, the distant blows had been weakening since the day before, one trembled each instant to hear them stop.

Regularly, La Maheude came always to sit at the mouth of the shaft. She brought, in her arms, Estelle who could not remain alone from morning to evening. Hour by hour, she thus followed the work, shared the hopes and the discouragements. It was, in the groups which stationed themselves, and as far as Montsou, a febrile waiting, endless commentaries. All the hearts of the country beat there below, under the earth.

The ninth day, at the dinner hour, Zacharie did not answer, when he was called for the relief. He was like a madman, he persisted with oaths. Négrel, who had come out an instant, could not make him obey; and there was even there only a deputy, with three miners. Doubtless, Zacharie, badly lighted, furious at that wavering gleam which retarded his work, committed the imprudence of opening his lamp. One had however given strict orders, for escapes of firedamp had declared themselves, the gas stayed in enormous mass, in those narrow corridors, deprived of airing. Suddenly, a thunderclap exploded, a whirlwind of fire came out of the drift, like from the mouth of a cannon loaded with grapeshot. All flamed, the air caught fire like powder, from one end to the other of the galleries. That torrent of flame carried away the deputy and the three workers, remounted the shaft, spurted into broad daylight in an eruption, which spat rocks and fragments of timber. The curious fled, La Maheude rose, pressing against her throat the frightened Estelle.

When Négrel and the workers returned, a terrible anger shook them. They struck the earth with the heel, like a stepmother killing at random her children, in the imbecile caprices of her cruelty. One devoted oneself, one went to the rescue of comrades, and it was necessary still to leave men there! After three great hours of efforts and dangers, when one finally penetrated into the galleries, the removal of the victims was lugubrious. Neither the deputy nor the workers were dead, but frightful wounds covered them, exhaled an odour of grilled flesh; they had drunk the fire, the burns descended even into their throats; and they pushed a continuous hurling, begging to be finished. Of the three miners, one was the man who, during the strike, had burst the pump of Gaston-Marie with a last blow of the pick; the two others kept scars on the hands, the fingers flayed, cut, from having launched bricks at the soldiers. The crowd, all pale and trembling, uncovered itself when they passed.

Standing, La Maheude waited. The body of Zacharie appeared at last. The clothes had burned, the body was only a black charcoal, calcined, unrecognizable. Crushed in the explosion, the head no longer existed. And, when they had deposited those frightful remains on a stretcher, La Maheude followed them with a mechanical step, the eyelids burning, without a tear. She held in her arms the sleeping Estelle, she went away tragic, the hair whipped by the wind. At the settlement, Philomène remained stupid, the eyes changed into fountains, at once relieved. But already the mother had returned with the same step to Réquillart: she had accompanied her son, she came back to wait for her daughter.

Three days yet passed. One had resumed the rescue works, amid unheard-of difficulties. The approach galleries had happily not caved in, following the firedamp blow; only, the air there burned, so heavy and so vitiated, that it had been necessary to install other ventilators. Every twenty minutes, the hewers relieved each other. One advanced, two metres barely separated them from their comrades. But, at present, they worked with a cold heart, striking hard uniquely by vengeance; for the noises had ceased, the call no longer rang its little clear cadence. One was at the twelfth day of the works, at the fifteenth of the catastrophe; and, since the morning, a silence of death had made itself.

The new accident redoubled the curiosity of Montsou, the bourgeois organized excursions, with such eagerness, that the Grégoire decided to follow the world. They arranged a party, it was agreed that they would go to the Voreux in their carriage, while Madame Hennebeau would bring Lucie and Jeanne in hers. Deneulin would show them his worksite, then they would return by Réquillart, where they would learn from Négrel at what exact point the galleries were, and if he still hoped. Finally, they would dine together in the evening.

When, toward three o'clock, the Grégoire and their daughter Cécile descended before the caved-in pit, they found there Madame Hennebeau, arrived first, in a navy-blue toilet, shielding herself, under a parasol, from the pale February sun. The sky, very pure, had a springtime warmth. Just then, M. Hennebeau was there, with Deneulin; and she listened with a distracted ear to the explanations that the latter gave her on the efforts one had had to make to dam the canal. Jeanne, who always carried an album, had begun to sketch, enthused by the horror of the subject; while Lucie, seated next to her on a fragment of wagon, pushed also cries of delight, finding it "splendid". The dyke, unfinished, let pass numerous leaks, whose foaming floods rolled, fell in cascade into the enormous hole of the engulfed pit. Yet, this crater emptied itself, the water drunk by the lands lowered, discovered the frightful mess of the bottom. Under the tender azure of the beautiful day, it was a cloaca, the ruins of a city abyssed and melted into mud.

"And one disturbs oneself to see that!" cried M. Grégoire, disillusioned.

Cécile, all rosy with health, happy to breathe the so pure air, amused herself, joked, while Madame Hennebeau made a grimace of repugnance, murmuring:

"The fact is that it has nothing pretty about it."

The two engineers began to laugh. They tried to interest the visitors, in walking them everywhere, in explaining to them the play of the pumps and the manoeuvre of the ram which drove the piles. But these ladies became uneasy. They shivered, when they learned that the pumps would function for years, six, seven years perhaps, before the shaft was rebuilt and one had exhausted all the water of the pit. No, they preferred to think of something else, those upheavals were good only to give ugly dreams.

"Let us leave," said Madame Hennebeau, directing herself toward her carriage.

Jeanne and Lucie cried out. How, so soon! And the drawing which was not finished! They wanted to stay, their father would bring them to dinner, in the evening. M. Hennebeau took alone place with his wife in the calash, for he too desired to question Négrel.

"Well! go ahead," said M. Grégoire. "We follow you, we have a little visit of five minutes to make, there, in the settlement... Go, go, we shall be at Réquillart at the same time as you."

He remounted behind Madame Grégoire and Cécile; and, while the other carriage sped along the canal, theirs slowly climbed the slope.

It was a charitable thought, which was to complete the excursion. The death of Zacharie had filled them with pity for that tragic family of the Maheu, of which all the country spoke. They did not pity the father, that brigand, that killer of soldiers whom one had had to shoot like a wolf. Only, the mother touched them, that poor woman who had just lost her son, after having lost her husband, and whose daughter was perhaps no more than a corpse, under the earth; not counting that one still spoke of a crippled grandfather, of a lame child following an avalanche, of a little girl dead of hunger, during the strike. Also, although this family had partly deserved its misfortunes, by its detestable spirit, they had resolved to affirm the breadth of their charity, their desire of forgetting and of conciliation, in carrying to it themselves an alms. Two packets, carefully wrapped, were found under a bench of the carriage.

An old woman indicated to the coachman the house of the Maheu, number 16 of the second block. But, when the Grégoire were descended, with the packets, they knocked in vain, they ended by beating with the fist on the door, without obtaining more answer: the house resounded lugubriously, like a dwelling emptied by mourning, glacial and black, abandoned for a long time.

"There is no one," said Cécile disappointed. "How annoying! what are we going to do with all that?"

Suddenly, the door next door opened, and La Levaque appeared.

"Oh! monsieur and madame, a thousand pardons! excuse me, mademoiselle!... It is the neighbour you want. She is not there, she is at Réquillart..."

In a flow of words, she told them the story, repeated to them that one must well help each other, that she kept at her house Lénore and Henri, to permit the mother to go wait, over there. Her glances had fallen on the packets, she came to speak of her poor daughter become widow, to display her own misery, with eyes shining with covetousness. Then, with a hesitant air, she murmured:

"I have the key. If monsieur and madame absolutely insist... The grandfather is there."

The Grégoire, stupefied, looked at her. How! the grandfather was there! but no one answered. He was sleeping then? And, when La Levaque had decided to open the door, what they saw stopped them on the threshold.

Bonnemort was there, alone, the eyes wide and fixed, nailed on a chair, before the cold hearth. Around him, the room seemed larger, without the cuckoo clock, without the varnished pine furnishings, which animated it formerly; and there remained, in the greenish crudity of the walls, only the portraits of the Emperor and the Empress, whose pink lips smiled with an official benevolence. The old man did not move, did not blink under the blow of light from the door, the imbecile air, as if he had not even seen all this world enter. At his feet, was found his plate filled with ashes, such as one puts for cats, for their filth.

"Pay no attention, if he is hardly polite," said La Levaque obligingly. "It seems he broke something in the brain. It's a fortnight he tells no more of it."

But a shock agitated Bonnemort, a deep scraping which seemed to him to rise from the belly; and he spat in the plate, a thick black spit. The ashes were soaked, a mud of coal, all the coal of the mine that he drew from his throat. Already, he had resumed his immobility. He no longer moved, from time to time, except to spit.

Troubled, the heart lifted with disgust, the Grégoire nevertheless tried to pronounce some friendly and encouraging words.

"Well! my brave man," said the father, "you are then caught cold?"

The old man, the eyes to the wall, did not turn the head. And the silence fell again, heavily.

"One should make you a little tisane," added the mother.

He kept his mute stiffness.

"Say then, papa," murmured Cécile, "we had indeed been told that he was crippled; only, we no longer thought of it afterwards..."

She interrupted herself, very embarrassed. After having placed on the table a pot-au-feu and two bottles of wine, she undid the second packet, she drew from it a pair of enormous shoes. It was the gift intended for the grandfather, and she held a shoe in each hand, interdicted, contemplating the swollen feet of the poor man, who would never walk more.

"Eh? they come a bit late, don't they, my brave?" resumed M. Grégoire, to cheer the situation. "That does nothing, that always serves."

Bonnemort did not hear, did not answer, with his frightful face, of a coldness and a hardness of stone.

Then, Cécile, furtively, placed the shoes against the wall. But she had put precautions in vain, the nails sounded; and those enormous shoes remained embarrassing in the room.

"Go, he will not say thank you!" cried La Levaque, who had thrown on the shoes a glance of profound envy. "As well give a pair of spectacles to a duck, saving your respect."

She continued, she worked to draw the Grégoire to her house, counting on moving them to pity. Finally, she imagined a pretext, she vaunted them Henri and Lénore, who were very nice, very sweet; and so intelligent, answering like angels to the questions one posed them! Those would say all that monsieur and madame desired to know.

"Come you a moment, girl?" asked the father, happy to go out.

"Yes, I follow you," she answered.

Cécile remained alone with Bonnemort. What retained her there, trembling and fascinated, was that she believed to recognize this old man: where had she then met that square face, livid, tattooed with coal? and suddenly she recalled, she saw again a flood of hurling people which surrounded her, she felt cold hands which squeezed her at the neck. It was him, she found again the man, she looked at the hands placed on the knees, hands of a crouched workman whose whole force is in the wrists, solid still despite age. Little by little, Bonnemort had seemed to awaken, and he perceived her, and he examined her too, with his gaping air. A flame mounted to his cheeks, a nervous shock pulled his mouth, whence flowed a thin thread of black saliva. Attracted, both remained one before the other, she flourishing, fat and fresh from the long laziness and the replete wellbeing of her race, he swollen with water, of a lamentable ugliness of foundered beast, destroyed from father to son by hundred years of work and of hunger.

At the end of ten minutes, when the Grégoire, surprised not to see Cécile, re-entered the Maheu house, they pushed a terrible cry. On the ground, their daughter lay, the face blue, strangled. At her neck, the fingers had left the red imprint of a giant's grip. Bonnemort, staggering on his dead legs, had fallen near her, without being able to rise. He had his crooked hands still, he looked at the world with his imbecile air, the eyes wide open. And, in his fall, he had just broken his plate, the ashes were spread, the mud of the black spits had splashed the room; while the pair of big shoes aligned itself, safe and sound, against the wall.

Never was it possible to re-establish exactly the facts. Why had Cécile approached? how had Bonnemort, nailed on his chair, been able to take her at the throat? Evidently, when he had held her, he must have persisted, squeezing always, stifling her cries, tumbling with her, until the last rattle. Not a noise, not a plain, had crossed the thin partition of the neighbouring house. One had to believe in a blow of sudden dementia, in an inexplicable temptation of murder, before that white neck of a girl. Such savagery stupefied, in the old cripple who had lived as a brave man, as an obedient brute, contrary to new ideas. What rancour, unknown to himself, slowly poisoned, was then mounted from his entrails to his skull? The horror made conclude to unconsciousness, it was the crime of an idiot.

Meanwhile, the Grégoire, on their knees, sobbed, suffocated with pain. Their adored daughter, that daughter so long desired, then filled with all their goods, whom they went to look at sleeping on tiptoe, whom they never found nourished enough, never fat enough! And it was the very collapse of their life, what good to live, now that they would live without her?

La Levaque, distraught, cried:

"Ah! the old bugger, what has he done there? If one could expect such a thing!... And La Maheude who will not return until this evening! Say, if I ran to fetch her."

Annihilated, the father and the mother did not answer.

"Eh? that would be better... I'm going."

But, before going out, La Levaque noticed the shoes. All the settlement agitated itself, a crowd already jostled. Perhaps well that one would steal them. And then, there was no longer a man at the Maheu to put them on. Softly, she carried them off. That should be just the foot of Bouteloup.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”