Complete Works of Emile Zola (1602 page)

Then Luc, wishing to see it all thoroughly, walked through this hall, the longest of all, where the largest things were fashioned. The Martin furnace enabled large quantities of steel in fusion to be worked at once; while two electric travelling cranes, twenty-six feet in height, carried everywhere, with perfect smoothness, immense masses of iron weighing several tons.

Luc also went into the lathe-house. This was an immense closed shed, kept in better order than the others, and on its sides were arranged two rows of the most admirable tools, as delicate as they were powerful. And there were planing-machines for fashioning plates for armor-clad vessels, which planed the metal as easily as a carpenter would plane a plank. Then there were the lathes, with complicated and delicate machinery, as pretty as jewelry and as amusing as toys. As it was night, only a few of these were at work, each one lighted by an electric lamp, and making but little noise, only a little rattle in the silence. There, too, he found more shells, and a mortar that had been cut off at both ends when it came out of the mould.

They were about to make small shells of one hundred and thirty pounds each. The ingot moulds, shaped like bottles, were standing in two rows. Then when the helpers had raked the scoriæ from the crucibles by means of an iron rod, which came out smoking, with little purple dribbles, the master-smelter seized the crucibles in the jaws of his great tongs, emptied two of them into each mould, and the metal, which ran first like a jet of white lava, cooled to pink, with small blue sparks as delicate as flowers. One might have thought that liqueurs were being decanted, liqueurs sparkling like gold, and all was done without noise, with quick and certain motions, with simple beauty in the glare and heat of the fire, which made the whole hall seem a mighty brazier.

Luc, who was not accustomed to the heat, felt stifled and could stay no longer. When he stood within four or five yards of the furnaces his face seemed to be scorched, a boiling sweat burst out upon his body. The shells had interested him, he looked at them as they cooled, and asked himself who were the men that they were destined to kill. Then he went into the next building and found himself in the hall of steam-hammers. There a cannon had been fixed upon a lathe to form the proper calibre for others. It was revolving with prodigious swiftness, and chips of steel were flying about under the sharp blade that itself was motionless; the chips looked like bits of silver. Nothing more would be needed than to bore the interior of this gun, to temper it, and to finish it, and where were the men it would kill when it should be fired? Luc, as he gazed on this heroic result of human labor, saw fire subdued and made serviceable to man — man who was king and conqueror among all the forces of nature — could not help seeing before him a vision of massacre, and all the red folly of a battle-field. He walked away and soon came to another lathe, upon which another cannon was revolving just like the one he had previously seen; but this one was already polished on the outside until it shone like new money. It was in charge of a young man hardly more than a child, who was leaning attentively over the machinery, just as a watchmaker does over that of a watch. It revolved incessantly, with a slight noise, while the tool in the interior was boring it with such precision that the deviation was not the tenth part of a millimetre. And when this cannon should have been tempered — that is, should have been dropped from the top of the tower into a bath of petroleum, to what field of disaster would it be taken to kill men? what harvest of human lives would it reap? — forged out of that steel which men and brothers ought only to use to make ploughs and rails.

Luc pushed open a door and went outside into the fresh air for a moment. The night was damp and warm; he drew a long breath, glad of a light wind that was blowing. He looked up, but could not see a star through the thick clouds. But the globes of the lamps here and there in the yards supplied the place of moonshine, and he saw tall chimneys through white clouds of steam, sullying the sky with coal-smoke, that sky which seemed to be everywhere cut up by threads, as it were, of some great spider’s web — electric wires for various purposes. And just there was the power-house, with the machines that produced electricity — two machines of great beauty, working in a new building. There was also a brick-yard for making bricks and refractory crucibles of fire-proof clay, a carpenter-shop for making models and packing-boxes, and many shops for selling articles of steel and iron. And Luc, after losing his way in what seemed like a little town, was glad to find, upon some open lots, dark, quiet spots where he could recover himself. He rallied at once, and went back to the infernal regions, where he saw that he was close to the crucible-room.

They were doing something else there now. Seventy crucibles had been taken out of the fire for the casting of one great piece that was to weigh 4960 pounds. In the next hall the mould and its funnel were waiting at the end of the great pit. And speedily a little procession was arranged, and the men of all the gangs joined it, two men to each crucible. They picked it up with great tongs, one on each side, and bore it off with long, swinging steps. Another and another and another, until the whole seventy followed each other in line. It looked like some kind of ballet, with Venetian lanterns, with deep orange light, that the dancers were bearing two and two with marvellous rapidity, yet so confidently, and with their movements so well regulated, that they seemed to be sporting in the midst of fire, going and coming as if they were tossing about stars in fusion. In less than three minutes the seventy crucibles were emptied into the mould, from which shot up a golden flame, a beautiful shower of sparks accompanying it.

When Luc returned to the puddling building after walking around for half an hour, he found Bonnaire just about to finish his work.

“
Monsieur, I will be with you in one moment.”

Already, from the hot bottom of the furnace, the door of which was open and showed brilliant flames, he had three times run off one-quarter of the glowing metal, one hundred and ten pounds of it at a time, and had rolled each into a ball by the help of his rabble, and the three balls, one after the other, had been carried off and placed beneath the hammer. He was now running off metal for the fourth and last time. For twenty minutes he had been standing at the mouth of this burning, fiery furnace, his breast almost cracking in the heat, working with his heavy rabble, his eyes clearly seeing how to do his work, notwithstanding the dazzling glare. He looked steadily into the middle of the brazier at the ball of fire he was rolling round with an incessant movement. He appeared to have grown taller, to have become a maker of stars, a creator of worlds, in the burning light which brought out his pink form against the dark background of the building. At last it was done. He drew out his red-hot rabble, and gave his helper the last one hundred and ten pounds to carry away.

The fireman was there with his little iron car. Armed with his tongs, the assistant puddler seized the ball; it looked like a great sponge on fire thrown out by a volcano; he picked it up with a great effort, and flung it into the iron car that the fireman quickly pushed towards the hammer. In a moment a forgeman picked up the ball with his tongs and turned towards the hammer, which all at once began to work. It was deafening; it was dazzling; the ground trembled; it was like the ringing of bells; while the forgeman, with leathern gloves and leathern apron, was lost in a shower of sparks. For a moment the strokes of the hammer were so loud that they seemed to stun the senses like an explosion of gunpowder. Calm in the midst of the roar, the forgeman turned about the sponge, fashioning it on all sides, making the heavy mass into a lump of steel which would soon pass into the hands of those who would roll it into a sheet of metal. And the hammer, obedient to the man, tapped here and tapped there without his saying a word; nor could by-standers perceive the orders he was giving by signs to the man controlling the great hammer, and who was seated on high in his box, with his hand upon the lever.

Luc, who had drawn near while Bonnaire was changing his clothes, saw that this man was little Fortuné, the brother-in-law of Fauchard; he sat perched high above ground, unable to move for hours, except the little mechanical movement of his hand, in the midst of the deafening clamor that he caused. The lever turned to the right meant the hammer was to strike, to the left it was to be lifted. That was all. That was the limit of all that the lad had to think about for long hours in his little cage. For an instant, in the bright light of the sparks, it was possible to see him, so frail, so small, with his pale face, his faded hair, his anxious eyes, those of a poor creature doomed to work like a brute beast, without interest, without any choice on his part, and who had had his moral and physical development arrested.

“If monsieur is ready to leave, I can go now,” said Bonnaire, as the shingling-hammer finally became silent.

Luc turned quickly and found himself face to face with the master-puddler, wearing a heavy woollen jacket. Under his arm was a little bundle containing his working-clothes and a few other little things that belonged to him, for he was not coming back.

“I am ready. Let us be off.”

But Bonnaire still lingered. In case he might have forgotten something, he gave a last glance round the little wooden shed which had served him for a dressing-room. Then he looked at his furnace, the furnace he had considered his for more than ten years. He had earned his living by it; he had there mastered thousands of pounds of steel, which he had handed over to those who were to roll it into sheets of metal. Though he was leaving of his own free will, under the idea that it was his duty, for his comrades’ sake and for his own, the withdrawal was not the less heroic.’ Concealing the emotion that was rising in his throat, he passed out first.

“Take care, monsieur,” he said, “this floor is still hot; it might bum your shoes.”

Neither of them said anything more. They crossed the two dim courts where electric lights made moonlight. They passed before the low buildings where hammers were working furiously, and as soon as they were out of the Pit black night came down upon them, the groaning of the monster was growing fainter, and the light of his flames decreased. The wind was still blowing, carrying across the heavens a mass of ragged clouds. On the other side of the bridge the bank of the Mionne looked deserted; there was not a soul there.

But Luc found Josine sitting motionless on the bench where he had left her, with her great eyes open, holding close to her slender form the head of Nanet, who was sound asleep. He wanted to go away when he had put her into the hands of Bonnaire, who would assure the poor creature a night’s lodging. But Bonnaire suddenly seemed to be embarrassed. He dreaded the scene that he knew must take place when his wife, that terrible La Toupe, should see him come in with “that beggar girl.” And even more because he had not told her that he was not going back to the Pit. He felt sure there would be a terrible quarrel when she knew that he had thrown himself out of work.

“Would you like me to go with you?” asked Luc. “I might explain things.”

“Indeed, monsieur,” said Bonnaire, very much relieved, “it might be the best thing.”

There was not a word exchanged between Bonnaire and Josine. She seemed abashed when she saw the master-puddler; and though he, like a good man as he was, felt a kind of paternal pity for her, especially as he knew what she had suffered at the hands of Ragu, he could not but blame her for her relations with that fellow. When she saw the two men coming she had gently awakened Nanet; then, encouraged by Luc, she and the child followed them, walking behind in silence. All four turned to the right and skirted the tracks of the railroad. They soon found themselves in old Beauclair, whose houses, when they came out of the shadow of the Monts Bleuses, they saw were built on the flat shore of a sort of stagnant pond, until they stretched to the handsome quarter of the city. Old Beauclair was never cleansed except by heavy rains. It was criss-crossed by narrow, tortuous streets, without air, without light, all foul by reason of filthy gutters that ran through them. It was hard to understand why a miserable population was crowded into so narrow a space when the immense plain of Roumagne spread out before them, where the winds of heaven blew as freely as they did upon the ocean. It must have been the bitter straggle between money and landed property which made men measure out so scantily to others any rights in our common mother, the soil. Only a small space would have been necessary to form a healthy home. But speculators had had their say in it, and a century or two of grinding poverty had led to this foul cluster of cheap houses, from which, however, people often were evicted, cheap as it was to live in certain dens not fit even for animals. Regardless of the risk that the land might slip from under them, these little dingy houses seemed to have grown out of the earth; they were piles of damp rubbish, nests of vermin and of fever; and how melancholy at this hour of the night seemed this collection of buildings, a place cursed by labor, squalid and filthy, like some frightful growth of the injustice of our social system!

Bonnaire, who was walking ahead, turned into an alley, which led them at last to the Rue des Trois Lunes. It was one of the narrowest streets, without sidewalks, but paved with sharp stones picked out of the Mionne. The house where Bonnaire lived on the first floor was black and crumbling. It had once been so rudely shaken that it had been necessary to prop up the front of it by four great beams, and Ragu, with Josine, had three rooms on the second floor, where the plaster was dropping off, and was only kept in place by the beams. The staircase, as steep as a ladder, began at the front door; there was no vestibule.

“Now, monsieur,” said Bonnaire, at last, to Luc, “you are going to do me the kindness to go up with me.”

Again he seemed embarrassed. Josine understood that he did not dare to take her into the presence of his wife, for fear of some furious outbreak, and that he did not like to leave her in the street with only the child. She settled the matter, with her sad, sweet air of resignation.