Germinal | Page 6

But Bonnemort was for a
moment so suffocated by a new and violent spasm that he could not get
his breath. Then, when he had expectorated and wiped the black froth
from his lips, he replied in the rising wind: "Eh? all that belongs to?

Nobody knows. To people." And with his hand he pointed in the
darkness to a vague spot, an unknown and remote place, inhabited by
those people for whom the Maheus had been hammering at the seam
for more than a century. His voice assumed a tone of religious awe; it
was as if he were speaking of an inaccessible tabernacle containing a
sated and crouching god to whom they had given all their flesh and
whom they had never seen. "At all events, if one can get enough bread
to eat," repeated Étienne, for the third time, without any apparent
transition. "Indeed, yes; if we could always get bread, it would be too
good." The horse had started; the carman, in his turn, disappeared, with
the trailing step of an invalid. Near the tipping-cradle the workman had
not stirred, gathered up in a ball, burying his chin between his knees,
with his great dim eyes fixed on emptiness. When he had picked up his
bundle, Étienne still remained at the same spot. He felt the gusts
freezing his back, while his chest was burning before the large fire.
Perhaps, all the same, it would be as well to inquire at the pit, the old
man might not know. Then he resigned himself; he would accept any
work. Where should he go, and what was to become of him in this
country famished for lack of work? Must he leave his carcass behind a
wall, like a strayed dog? But one doubt troubled him, a fear of the
Voreux in the middle of this flat plain, drowned in so thick a night. At
every gust the wind seemed to rise as if it blew from an
ever-broadening horizon. No dawn whitened the dead sky. The blast
furnaces alone flamed, and the coke ovens, making the darkness redder
without illuminating the unknown. And the Voreux, at the bottom of its
hole, with its posture as of an evil beast, continued to crunch, breathing
with a heavier and slower respiration, troubled by its painful digestion
of human flesh. Chapter 2 IN the middle of the fields of wheat and
beetroot, the Deux-Cent-Quarante settlement slept beneath the black
night. One could vaguely distinguish four immense blocks of small
houses, back to back, barracks or hospital blocks, geometric and
parallel, separated by three large avenues which were divided into
gardens of equal size. And over the desert plain one heard only the
moan of squalls through the broken trellises of the enclosures. In the
Maheus' house, No. 16 in the second block, nothing was stirring. The
single room that occupied the first floor was drowned in a thick
darkness which seemed to overwhelm with its weight the sleep of the

beings whom one felt to be there in a mass, with open mouths,
overcome by weariness. In spite of the keen cold outside, there was a
living heat in the heavy air, that hot stuffiness of even the best kept
bedrooms, the smell of human cattle. Four o'clock had struck from the
clock in the room on the ground floor, but nothing yet stirred; one
heard the piping of slender respirations, accompanied by two series of
sonorous snores. And suddenly Catherine got up. In her weariness she
had, as usual, counted the four strokes through the floor without the
strength to arouse herself completely. Then, throwing her legs from
under the bedclothes, she felt about, at last struck a match and lighted
the candle. But she remained seated, her head so heavy that it fell back
between her shoulders, seeking to return to the bolster. Now the candle
lighted up the room, a square room with two windows, and filled with
three beds. There could be seen a cupboard, a table, and two old walnut
chairs, whose smoky tone made hard, dark patches against the walls,
which were painted a light yellow. And nothing else, only clothes hung
to nails, a jug placed on the floor, and a red pan which served as a basin.
In the bed on the left, Zacharie, the eldest, a youth of one-and-twenty,
was asleep with his brother Jeanlin, who had completed his eleventh
year; in the right-hand bed two urchins, Lénore and Henri, the first six
years old, the second four, slept in each other's arms, while Catherine
shared the third bed with her sister Alzire, so small for her nine years
that Catherine would not have felt her near her if it were not for the
little invalid's humpback, which pressed into her side. The