Germinal by Émile Zola (essential books to read txt) 📕

“Gracious!” said Maheude; “Pierron, before marrying her, used to give the captain rabbits; now it costs him less to lend his wife.”

Bouteloup began to laugh enormously, and threw a fragment of sauced bread into Achille’s mouth. The two women went on relieving themselves with regard to Pierronne—a flirt, no prettier than any one else, but always occupied in looking after every freckle of her skin, in washing herself, and putting on pomade. Anyhow, it was the husband’s affair, if he liked that sort of thing. There were men so ambitious that they would wipe the masters’ behinds to hear them say thank you. And they were only interrupted by the arrival of a neighbour bringing in a little urchin of nine months, Désirée, Philoméne’s youngest; Philoméne, taking her breakfast at the screening-shed, had arranged that they should bring her little one down there, where she suckled it, seated for a moment in the coal.

“I can’t leave mine for a moment, she screams directly,” said Maheude, looking at Estelle, who was asleep in her arms.

But she did not succeed in avoiding the domestic affair which she had read in the other’s eyes.

“I say, now we ought to get that settled.”

At first the two mothers, without need for talking about it, had agreed not to conclude the marriage. If Zacharie’s mother wished to get her son’s wages as long as possible, Philoméne’s mother was enraged at the idea of abandoning her daughter’s wages. There was no hurry; the second mother had even preferred to keep the little one, as long as there was only one; but when it began to grow and eat and another one came, she found that she was losing, and furiously pushed on the marriage, like a woman who does not care to throw away her money.

“Zacharie has drawn his lot,” she went on, “and there’s nothing in the way. When shall it be?”

“Wait till the fine weather,” replied Maheude, constrainedly. “They are a nuisance, these affairs! As if they couldn’t wait to be married before going together! My word! I would strangle Catherine if I knew that she had done that.”

The other woman shrugged her shoulders.

“Let be! she’ll do like the others.”

Bouteloup, with the tranquillity of a man who is at home, searched about on the dresser for bread. Vegetables for Levaque’s soup, potatoes and leeks, lay about on a corner of the table, half-peeled, taken up and dropped a dozen times in the midst of continual gossiping. The woman was about to go on with them again when she dropped them anew and planted herself before the window.

“What’s that there? Why, there’s Madame Hennebeau with some people. They are going into Pierronne’s.”

At once both of them started again on the subject of Pierronne. Oh! whenever the Company brought any visitors to the settlement they never failed to go straight to her place, because it was clean. No doubt they never told them stories about the head captain. One can afford to be clean when one has lovers who earn three thousand francs, and are lodged and warmed, without counting presents. If it was clean above it was not clean underneath. And all the time that the visitors remained opposite, they went on chattering.

“There, they are coming out,” said the Levaque woman at last. “They are going all around. Why, look, my dear—I believe they are going into your place.”

Maheude was seized with fear. Who knows whether Alzire had sponged over the table? And her soup, also, which was not yet ready! She stammered a good-day, and ran off home without a single glance aside.

But everything was bright. Alzire, very seriously, with a cloth in front of her, had set about making the soup, seeing that her mother did not return. She had pulled up the last leeks from the garden, gathered the sorrel, and was just then cleaning the vegetables, while a large kettle on the fire was heating the water for the men’s baths when they should return. Henri and Lénore were good for once, being absorbed in tearing up an old almanac. Father Bonnemort was smoking his pipe in silence. As Maheude was getting her breath Madame Hennebeau knocked.

“You will allow me, will you not, my good woman?” Tall and fair, a little heavy in her superb maturity of forty years, she smiled with an effort of affability, without showing too prominently her fear of soiling her bronze silk dress and black velvet mantle.

“Come in, come in,” she said to her guests. “We are not disturbing any one. Now, isn’t this clean again! And this good woman has seven children! All our households are like this. I ought to explain to you that the Company rents them the house at six francs a month. A large room on the ground floor, two rooms above, a cellar, and a garden.”

The decorated gentleman and the lady in the fur cloak, arrived that morning by train from Paris, opened their eyes vaguely, exhibiting on their faces their astonishment at all these new things which took them out of their element.

“And a garden!” repeated the lady. “One could live here! It is charming!”

“We give them more coal than they can burn,” went on Madame Hennebeau. “A doctor visits them twice a week; and when they are old they receive pensions, although nothing is held back from their wages.”

“A Thebaid! a real land of milk and honey!” murmured the gentleman in delight.

Maheude had hastened to offer chairs. The ladies refused. Madame Hennebeau was already getting tired, happy for a moment to amuse herself in the weariness of her exile by playing the part of exhibiting the beasts, but immediately disgusted by the sickly odour of wretchedness, in spite of the special cleanliness of the houses into which she ventured. Besides, she was only repeating odd phrases which she had overheard, without ever troubling herself further about this race of workpeople who were labouring and suffering beside her.

“What beautiful children!” murmured the lady, who thought them hideous, with their large heads beneath their bushy, straw-coloured hair.

And Maheude had to tell their ages; they also asked her questions about Estelle, out of politeness. Father Bonnemort respectfully took his pipe out of his mouth; but he was not the less a subject of uneasiness, so worn out by his forty years underground, with his stiff limbs, deformed body, and earthy face; and as a violent spasm of coughing took him he preferred to go and spit outside, with the idea that his black expectoration would make people uncomfortable.

Alzire received all the compliments. What an excellent little housekeeper, with her cloth! They congratulated the mother on having a little daughter so sensible for her age. And none spoke of the hump, though looks of uneasy compassion were constantly turned towards the poor little invalid.

“Now!” concluded Madame Hennebeau, “if they ask you about our settlements at Paris you will know what to reply. Never more noise than this, patriarchal manners, all happy and well off as you see, a place where you might come to recruit a little, on account of the good air and the tranquillity.”

“It is marvellous, marvellous!” exclaimed the gentleman, in a final outburst of enthusiasm.

They left with that enchanted air with which people leave a booth in a fair, and Maheude, who accompanied them, remained on the threshold while they went away slowly, talking very loudly. The streets were full of people, and they had to pass through several groups of women, attracted by the news of their visit, which was hawked from house to house.

Just then, Levaque, in front of her door, had stopped Pierronne, who was drawn by curiosity. Both of them affected a painful surprise. What now? Were these people going to bed at the Maheus’? But it was not so very delightful a place.

“Always without a sou, with all that they earn! Lord! when people have vices!”

“I have just heard that she went this morning to beg at Piolaine, and Maigrat, who had refused them bread, has given them something. We know how Maigrat pays himself!”

“On her? Oh, no! that would need some courage. It’s Catherine that he’s after.”

“Why, didn’t she have the cheek to say just now that she would strangle Catherine if she were to come to that? As if big Chaval for ever so long had not put her backside on the shed!”

“Hush! here they are!”

Then Levaque and Pierronne, with a peaceful air and without impolite curiosity, contented themselves with watching the visitors out of the corners of their eyes. Then by a gesture they quickly called Maheude, who was still carrying Estelle in her arms. And all three, motionless, watched the well-clad backs of Madame Hennebeau and her guests slowly disappear. When they were some thirty paces off, the gossiping recommenced with redoubled vigour.

“They carry plenty of money on their skins; worth more than themselves, perhaps.”

“Ah, sure! I don’t know the other, but the one that belongs here, I wouldn’t give four sous for her, big as she is. They do tell stories–-”

“Eh? What stories?”

“Why, she has men! First, the engineer.”

“That lean, little creature! Oh, he’s too small! She would lose him in the sheets.”

“What does that matter, if it amuses her? I don’t trust a woman who puts on such proud airs and never seems to be pleased where she is. Just look how she wags her rump, as if she felt contempt for us all. Is that nice?”

The visitors went along at the same slow pace, still talking, when a carriage stopped in the road, before the church. A gentleman of about forty-eight got out of it, dressed in a black frock-coat, and with a very dark complexion and an authoritative correct expression.

“The husband,” murmured Levaque, lowering her voice, as if he could hear her, seized by that hierarchical fear which the manager inspired in his ten thousand workpeople. “It’s true, though, that he has a cuckold’s head, that man.”

Now the whole settlement was out of doors. The curiosity of the women increased. The groups approached each other, and were melted into one crowd; while bands of urchins, with unwiped noses and gaping mouths, dawdled along the pavements. For a moment the schoolmaster’s pale head was also seen behind the school-house hedge. Among the gardens, the man who was digging stood with one foot on his spade, and with rounded eyes. And the murmur of gossiping gradually increased, with a sound of rattles, like a gust of wind among dry leaves.

It was especially before the Levaques’ door that the crowd was thickest. Two women had come forward, then ten, then twenty. Pierronne was prudently silent now that there were too many ears about. Maheude, one of the more reasonable, also contented herself with looking on; and to calm Estelle, who was awake and screaming, she had tranquilly drawn out her suckling animal’s breast, which hung swaying as if pulled down by the continual running of its milk. When M. Hennebeau had seated the ladies in the carriage, which went off in the direction of Marchiennes, there was a final explosion of clattering voices, all the women gesticulating and talking in each other’s faces in the midst of a tumult as of an ant-hill in revolution.

But three o’clock struck. The workers of the earth-cutting, Bouteloup and the others, had set out. Suddenly around the church appeared the first colliers returning from the pit with black faces and damp garments, folding their arms and expanding their backs. Then there was confusion among