that had characterized the earlier days of their marriage. At first Mme Hennebeau seemed to derive comfort from the immense tranquillity of the place, finding peace in the featureless monotony of its vast plain; and she buried herself away, as one whose life is over, affecting to be dead to all affection, and so detached from the world that she no longer cared about putting on weight. Then, amid this listless indifference, one last bout of fever declared itself, an urge to go on living, which she assuaged by spending six months rearranging and refurbishing the manager’s small residence to suit her taste. She said it was hideous and filled it with tapestries and ornaments and all manner of expensive art, news of which spread as far as Lille. Now the whole region exasperated her, with its stupid fields stretching away as far as the eye could see, and the interminable black roads with never a tree, and this crawling mass of ghastly people who disgusted and alarmed her. And so began the laments of exile, as she accused her husband of having sacrificed her happiness for a salary of forty thousand francs, a pittance on which it was barely possible to run a household. Ought he not to have done as others did, demand a partnership, or acquire shares in the company, anything, but at least make something of himself? She warmed to her theme with the cruelty of the heiress who has brought her own fortune to the marriage. He always remained civil, hiding his feelings behind the mask of the cool administrator while all the time eaten up with desire for this creature – and a desire of that violent kind which develops later in life and continues to grow with the years. He had never possessed her as a lover, and he was continually haunted by the thought of having her for himself, just once, the way another man would have had her. Each morning he would dream that by evening he would have won her; but then, when she looked at him with her cold eyes and he could feel how her whole body rejected him, he would avoid even the merest touch of her hand. His was a sickness without cure, disguised by his stiff manner, the sickness of a tender nature in secret agony at failing to find happiness in marriage. After six months, when the refurbishment was complete and no longer required her attention, Mme Hennebeau reverted to a state of languorous boredom, the self-proclaimed victim of an exile that would kill her but of which she would be glad to die.
At this precise moment Paul Négrel turned up in Montsou. His mother, the widow of a Provençal captain, lived on a meagre income in Avignon and had gone without in order to get him into the École Polytechnique.4 He had graduated with a low rank, and M. Hennebeau, his uncle, had recently told him to resign and offered him a job as engineer at Le Voreux. Since then he had been treated as one of the family; he had his own room, and he ate and lived there, which enabled him to send his mother half his salary of three thousand francs. In order to disguise this largesse, M. Hennebeau talked about how difficult life was for a young man who had to set up house in one of the little wooden houses reserved for the mine’s engineers. Mme Hennebeau had immediately adopted the role of kindly aunt, calling him by his first name and making sure he had everything he wanted. During the first few months especially she was full of motherly advice about the merest trifle. But she was still a woman, and she began to share more intimate confidences with him. She found the boy amusing, so youthful and pragmatic, with an intelligence unfettered by scruple and a penchant for professing philosophical theories about love; and she liked the urgency of his pessimism, which seemed to make his thin face and pointed nose look more angular still. One evening, naturally, he ended up in her arms; and she seemed to yield out of kindness, telling him that she was dead to love and simply wanted to be his friend. And indeed she was not possessive: she teased him about the putters he claimed to find repellent, and almost sulked when he had no young