Germinal - Emile Zola [172]
‘So that’s agreed, then,’ Mme Hennebeau said once more. ‘You’ll come and fetch these young ladies this evening, and you’ll stay and have dinner with us…Madame Grégoire has promised to collect Cécile also.’
‘You may count on me,’ replied Deneulin.
The carriage set off towards Vandame. Jeanne and Lucie had leaned out of the carriage to wave a cheerful goodbye to their father standing by the roadside, while the gallant Négrel trotted along behind the whirring wheels.
They drove through the forest and at Vandame took the road to Marchiennes. As they were approaching Le Tartaret, Jeanne asked Mme Hennebeau if she knew of La Côte Verte, and she admitted that, despite having lived there for five years, she had never been this way before. So they made a detour. Situated at the edge of the wood, Le Tartaret was a stretch of barren, volcanic moorland, beneath which a coal-seam had been burning permanently for centuries past. The origins of the place were lost in the mists of time, and the local miners told a story about how the fire of heaven had fallen upon this underground Sodom where putters defiled themselves in all manner of abomination; and it had struck so suddenly that they had not even had time to return to the surface and continued to roast in its hell-fires to this very day. The rock had burned to a dark red and was covered in a leprous bloom of potash. Sulphur grew along the fissures like yellow flowers. After dark those brave enough to put an eye to these cracks in the earth swore that they could see flames and the souls of the damned frying in the hot coals beneath. Gleams of light flickered along the ground, and hot vapours rose continually, like a foul and poisonous stench from the devil’s kitchen. And in the middle of this accursed moor of Le Tartaret, La Côte Verte rose as though miraculously blessed by an eternal spring, with grass that was forever green, beech trees that were continually producing new leaves, and fields that yielded as many as three crops a year. It was a natural hothouse, warmed by the combustion taking place in the deep strata beneath. Snow never settled there. And on this December day its enormous bouquet of greenery rose beside the bare trees of the forest, and the frost had not even blackened the edges of the leaves.
Soon the carriage sped off across the plain. Négrel made fun of the legend and explained how a fire like that at the bottom of a mine was generally caused by coal-dust fermenting. Once it got out of control, it burned for ever; and he quoted the example of a pit in Belgium which they had flooded by diverting a river into its shaft. But then he stopped talking, for they had begun to meet group after group of miners coming the other way. The miners went past in silence, casting hard sideways glances at all this luxury that was forcing them off the road. Their number kept increasing, and on the little bridge over La Scarpe the horses had to slow to a walk. What was bringing all these people out on to the roads? The young ladies were becoming anxious, and Négrel could sense trouble brewing in the countryside. And so it was with some relief that they finally arrived at Marchiennes. In the sunlight, which seemed to dim their fires, the batteries of coke-ovens and the tall chimneys of the blast-furnaces stood belching forth clouds of smoke,