Complete Works of Emile Zola (850 page)

“I thought of having the place cleared,” added M. Hennebeau. “But the misfortune is that I’m alone here, and, besides, I do not know where to send my servant to bring me four men and a corporal to clear away this mob.”

Rose, who had remained there, ventured to murmur anew:

“Oh, sir! they are not bad-hearted!”

The manager shook his head, while the tumult increased outside, and they could hear the dull crash of the stones against the house.

“I don’t wish to be hard on them, I can even excuse them; one must be as foolish as they are to believe that we are anxious to injure them. But it is my duty to prevent disturbance. To think that there are police all along the roads, as I am told, and that I have not been able to see a single man since the morning!”

He interrupted himself, and drew back before Madame Grégoire, saying:

“Let me beg you, madame, do not stay here, come into the drawing-room.”

But the cook, coming up from below in exasperation, kept them in the hall a few minutes longer. She declared that she could no longer accept any responsibility for the dinner, for she was expecting from the Marchiennes pastrycook some
vol-au-vent
crusts which she had ordered for four o’clock. The pastrycook had evidently turned aside on the road for fear of these bandits. Perhaps they had even pillaged his hampers. She saw the
vol-au-vent
blockaded behind a bush, besieged, going to swell the bellies of the three thousand wretches who were asking for bread. In any case, monsieur was warned; she would rather pitch her dinner into the fire if it was to be spoilt because of the revolt.

“Patience, patience,” said M. Hennebeau. “All is not lost, the pastrycook may come.”

And as he turned toward Madame Grégoire, opening the drawing-room door himself, he was much surprised to observe, seated on the hall bench, a man whom he had not distinguished before in the deepening shade.

“What! you, Maigrat! what is it, then?”

Maigrat arose; his fat, pale face was changed by terror. He no longer possessed his usual calm stolidity; he humbly explained that he had slipped into the manager’s house to ask for aid and protection should the brigands attack his shop.

“You see that I am threatened myself, and that I have no one,” replied M. Hennebeau. “You would have done better to stay at home and guard your property.”

“Oh! I have put up iron bars and left my wife there.” The manager showed impatience, and did not conceal his contempt. A fine guard, that poor creature worn out by blows!

“Well, I can do nothing; you must try to defend yourself. I advise you to go back at once, for there they are again demanding bread. Listen!”

In fact, the tumult began again, and Maigrat thought he heard his own name in the midst of the cries. To go back was no longer possible, they would have torn him to pieces. Besides, the idea of his ruin overcame him. He pressed his face to the glass panel of the door, perspiring and trembling in anticipation of disaster, while the Grégoires decided to go into the drawing-room.

M. Hennebeau quietly endeavoured to do the honours of his house. But in vain he begged his guests to sit down; the close, barricaded room, lighted by two lamps in the daytime, was filled with terror at each new clamour from without. Amid the stuffy hangings the fury of the mob rolled more disturbingly, with vague and terrible menace. They talked, however, constantly brought back to this inconceivable revolt. He was astonished at having foreseen nothing; and his information was so defective that he specially talked against Rasseneur, whose detestable influence, he said, he was able to recognize. Besides, the gendarmes would come; it was impossible that he should be thus abandoned. As to the Grégoires, they only thought about their daughter, the poor darling who was so quickly frightened! Perhaps, in face of the peril, the carriage had returned to Marchiennes. They waited on for another quarter of an hour, worn out by the noise in the street, and by the sound of the stones from time to time striking the closed shutters which rang out like gongs. The situation was no longer bearable. M. Hennebeau spoke of going out to chase away the brawlers by himself, and to meet the carriage, when Hippolyte appeared, exclaiming:

“Sir! sir, here is madame! They are killing madame!” The carriage had not been able to pass through the threatening groups in the Réquillart lane. Négrel had carried out his idea, walking the hundred metres which separated them from the house, and knocking at the little door which led to the garden, near the common. The gardener would hear them, for there was always someone there to open. And, at first, things had gone perfectly;

Madame Hennebeau and the young ladies were already knocking when some women, who had been warned, rushed into the lane. Then everything was spoilt. The door was not opened, and Négrel in vain sought to burst it open with his shoulder. The rush of women increased, and fearing they would be carried away, he adopted the desperate method of pushing his aunt and the girls before him, in order to reach the front steps, by passing through the besiegers. But this manoeuvre led to a hustling. They were not left free, a shouting band followed them, while the crowd floated up to right and to left, without understanding, simply astonished at these dressed-up ladies lost in the midst of the battle. At this moment the confusion was so great that it led to one of those curious mistakes which can never be explained. Lucie and Jeanne reached the steps, and slipped in through the door, which the housemaid opened; Madame Hennebeau had succeeded in following them, and behind them Négrel at last came in, and then bolted the door, feeling sure that he had seen Cécile go in first. She was no longer there, having disappeared on the way, so carried away by fear, that she had turned her back to the house, and had moved of her own accord into the thick of danger.

At once the cry arose:

“Hurrah for the people! Death to the bourgeois! To death with them!”

A few of those in the distance, beneath the veil which hid her face, mistook her for Madame Hennebeau; others said she was a friend of the manager’s wife, the young wife of a neighbouring manufacturer who was execrated by his men. And besides it mattered little, it was her silk dress, her fur mantle, even the white feather in her hat, which exasperated them. She smelled of perfume, she wore a watch, she had the delicate skin of a lazy woman who had never touched coal.

“Stop!” shouted Mother Brulé, “we’ll put it on your arse, that lace!”

“The lazy sluts steal it from us,” said the Levaque. “They stick fur on to their skins while we are dying of cold. Just strip her naked, to show her how to live!”

At once Mouquette rushed forward.

“Yes, yes! whip her!”

And the women, in this savage rivalry, struggled and stretched out their rags, as though each were trying to get a morsel of this rich girl. No doubt her backside was not better made than any one else’s. More than one of them were rotten beneath their gewgaws. This injustice had lasted quite long enough; they should be forced to dress themselves like workwomen, these harlots who dared to spend fifty sous on the washing of a single petticoat.

In the midst of these furies Cécile was shaking with paralysed legs, stammering over and over again the same phrase:

“Ladies! please! please! Ladies, please don’t hurt me!” But she suddenly uttered a shrill cry; cold hands had seized her by the neck. The rush had brought her near old Bonnemort, who had taken hold of her. He seemed drunk from hunger, stupefied by his long misery, suddenly arousing himself from the resignation of half a century, under the influence of no one knew what malicious impulse. After having in the course of his life saved a dozen mates from death, risking his bones in fire-damps and landslips, he was yielding to things which he would not have been able to express, compelled to do thus, fascinated by this young girl’s white neck. And as on this day he had lost his tongue, he clenched his fingers, with his air of an old infirm animal ruminating over his recollections.

“No! no!” yelled the women. “Uncover her arse! out with her arse!”

In the villa, as soon as they had realized the mishap, Négrel and M. Hennebeau bravely reopened the door to run to Cécile’s help. But the crowd was now pressing against the garden railings, and it was not easy to go out. A struggle took place here, while the Grégoires in terror stood on the steps.

“Let her be then, old man! It’s the Piolaine young lady,” cried Maheude to the grandfather, recognizing Cécile, whose veil had been torn off by one of the women.

On his side, Étienne, overwhelmed at this retaliation on a child, was trying to force the band to let go their prey. An inspiration came to him; he brandished the axe, which he had snatched from Levaque’s hands.

“To Maigrat’s house, by God! there’s bread in there! Down to the earth with Maigrat’s damned shed!”

And at random he gave the first blow of the axe against the shop door. Some comrades had followed him — Levaque, Maheu, and a few others. But the women were furious, and Cécile had fallen from Bonnemort’s fingers into Mother Brulé’s hands. Lydie and Bébert, led by Jeanlin, had slipped on all fours between her petticoats to see the lady’s bottom. Already the women were pulling her about; her clothes were beginning to split, when a man on horseback appeared, pushing on his animal, and using his riding-whip on those who would not stand back quick enough.

“Ah! rascals! You are going to flog our daughters, are you?”

It was Deneulin who had come to the rendezvous for dinner. He quickly jumped on to the road, took Cécile by the waist, and, with the other hand manipulating his horse with remarkable skill and strength, he used it as a living wedge to split the crowd, which drew back before the onset. At the railing the battle continued. He passed through, however, with some bruises. This unforeseen assistance delivered Négrel and M. Hennebeau, who were in great danger amid the oaths and blows. And while the young man at last led in the fainting Cécile, Deneulin protected the manager with his tall body, and at the top of the steps received a stone which nearly put his shoulder out.

“That’s it,” he cried; “break my bones now you’ve broken my engines!”

He promptly pushed the door to, and a volley of flints fell against it.

“What madmen!” he exclaimed. “Two seconds more, and they would have broken my skull like an empty gourd. There is nothing to say to them; what could you do? They know nothing, you can only knock them down.”

In the drawing-room, the Grégoires were weeping as they watched Cécile recover. She was not hurt, there was not even a scratch to be seen, only her veil was lost. But their fright increased when they saw before them their cook, Mélanie, who described how the mob had demolished Piolaine. Mad with fear she had run to warn her masters. She had come in when the door was ajar at the moment of the fray, without any one noticing her; and in her endless narrative the single stone with which Jeanlin had broken one window-pane became a regular cannonade which had crushed through the walls. Then M. Grégoire’s ideas were altogether upset: they were murdering his daughter, they were razing his house to the ground; it was, then, true that these miners could bear him ill will, because he lived like a worthy man on their labour?

The housemaid, who had brought in a towel and some eau-de-Cologne, repeated:

“All the same it’s queer, they’re not bad-hearted.”

Madame Hennebeau, seated and very pale, had not recovered from the shock to her feelings; and she was only able to find a smile when Négrel was complimented. Cécile’s parents especially thanked the young man, and the marriage might now be regarded as settled. M. Hennebeau looked on in silence, turning from his wife to this lover whom in the morning he had been swearing to kill, then to this young girl by whom he would, no doubt, soon be freed from him. There was no haste, only the fear remained with him of seeing his wife fall lower, perhaps to some lackey.

“And you, my little darlings,” asked Deneulin of his daughters; “have they broken any of your bones?”

Lucie and Jeanne had been much afraid, but they were pleased to have seen it all. They were now laughing.

“By George!” the father went on, “we’ve had a fine day! If you want a dowry, you would do well to earn it yourselves, and you may also expect to have to support me.”

He was joking, but his voice trembled. His eyes swelled with tears as his two daughters threw themselves into his arms.

M. Hennebeau had heard this confession of ruin. A quick thought lit up his face. Vandame would now belong to Montsou; this was the hoped-for compensation, the stroke of fortune which would bring him back to favour with the gentlemen on the directorate. At every crisis of his existence, he took refuge in the strict execution of the orders he had received; in the military discipline in which he lived he found his small share of happiness.

But they grew calm; the drawing-room fell back into a weary peacefulness, with the quiet light of its two lamps, and the warm stuffiness of the hangings. What, then, was going on outside? The brawlers were silent, and stones no longer struck the house; one only heard deep, full blows, those blows of the hatchet which one hears in distant woods. They wished to find out, and went back into the hall to venture a glance through the glass panel of the door. Even the ladies went upstairs to post themselves behind the blinds on the first floor.

“Do you see that scoundrel, Rasseneur, over there on the threshold of the public-house?” said M. Hennebeau to Deneulin. “I had guessed as much; he must be in it.”

It was not Rasseneur, however, it was Étienne, who was dealing blows from his axe at Maigrat’s shop. And he went on calling to the men; did not the goods in there belong to the colliers? Had they not the right to take back their property from this thief who had exploited them so long, who was starving them at a hint from the Company? Gradually they all left the manager’s house, and ran up to pillage the neighbouring shop. The cry, “Bread! bread! bread!” broke out anew. They would find bread behind that door. The rage of hunger carried them away, as if they suddenly felt that they could wait no longer without expiring on the road. Such furious thrusts were made at the door that at every stroke of the axe Étienne feared to wound someone.