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By Root 1631 0

revealing patches of bare flesh, the nakedness of female bodies weary of giving birth to tomorrow’s starving children. Some carried a baby in their arms, which they would wave about in the air as though it were an emblem of grief and vengeance. Others, young and full-breasted, like warriors going off to war, were brandishing sticks; and the old frights were screaming so loudly that the sinews in their scraggy necks seemed as though they might snap. Then the men came spilling out on to the road, two thousand of them in a solid raging mass, pit-boys, hewers and banksmen moving along as one, and so tightly bunched together that their faded trousers and ragged jerseys all merged into a single mud-brown blur. Their eyes were blazing, and their mouths were no more than black empty holes as they sang ‘La Marseillaise’,1 the words of which were audible only as an indistinct bellowing accompanied by the sound of clogs clattering over the hard ground. Above the men’s heads, carried upright amid the bristling array of crowbars, an axe went past; and against the clear sky this single axe, as though it were the mob’s banner, stood out sharply like the blade of the guillotine.

‘What terrible faces!’ Mme Hennebeau stammered.

‘I’m damned if I recognize a single one of them!’ Négrel said under his breath. ‘Where on earth have all these blackguards come from?’

It was indeed true that anger and starvation had combined, after the past two months of suffering, and this wild stampede from pit to pit, to turn the placid features of the Montsou miners into the ravenous jaws of wild beasts. At that moment the sun was setting, and its last rays of dark-crimson light were turning the plain blood red. The road seemed to flow with blood as the men and women raced past, and they too appeared to drip with blood, like butchers in the midst of slaughter.

‘What a wonderful sight!’ said Lucie and Jeanne softly, as the artist in each of them was moved by the horrible beauty of the scene.

They were frightened all the same, and they retreated towards Mme Hennebeau, who was leaning against a trough for support. She was gripped with cold fear at the thought that they might be killed if anyone so much as caught a glimpse of them between the planks of these rickety doors. Négrel, too, felt the colour drain from his face, this man who was usually so brave but who was now seized by a terror which he was powerless to overcome, a terror laced with the threat of the unknown. In the hay Cécile remained perfectly still. As for the others, though they tried to look away, they could not help watching.

And what they saw was a vision in red, a vision of the revolution that would come and sweep them all away, without fail, one murderous night before the century was out. Yes, one night the masses would slip their leash and seethe through the highways and byways just like this, unchecked; bourgeois blood would flow, their severed heads would be paraded for all to see, their coffers would be emptied, and their gold scattered far and wide. The women would howl, and the men would have the jaws of wolves, gaping wide and ready to bite. Yes, it would be just like this, the same tatters and rags, the same thunderous clatter of clogs, the same terrible rabble with its foul breath and dirt-stained skin, overrunning the place like a barbarian horde and sweeping the old order away. There would be conflagration, and in every town and city not one stone would be left standing upon another; and when the great feasting and the orgies were done, and when the poor had emptied the rich man’s cellars and flayed his womenfolk alive, they would all go back to living in the woods like savages. There would be nothing left, not a penny of their fortunes would remain, not a single deed of property nor bill of contract, until such day perhaps as a new order might come to take the place of the old. Yes, this was what was passing along the road at this very minute, like a force of nature, and they felt it hit them in the face like a violent blast of wind.

A loud cry went up, drowning out ‘La Marseillaise