Germinal - Emile Zola [200]
Bébert and Lydie had just caught up with Jeanlin, who was teaching them how to use a sling. They took it in turns to aim a stone, and the game was to see who could cause the greatest amount of damage. Lydie had just bungled her go and cut a woman’s head open in the crowd, leaving the two boys clutching their sides with mirth. On a bench behind them, Bonnemort and Mouque sat watching. Bonnemort’s swollen legs made it so hard for him to get about that he had had great difficulty in dragging himself this far, and no one quite knew what it was that he had come to see, for he had that ashen look on his face which he wore on days when it was impossible to get a word out of him.
In any case nobody was heeding Étienne now. Despite his orders the stones continued to rain down, and he gazed in astonishment and growing horror at these brutes he had unmuzzled, so slow to anger and yet, once roused, so fearsome in the stubborn ferocity of their wrath. Here was old Flemish blood at work, thick, placid blood that took months to warm to a task but then sallied forth with unspeakable savagery, deaf to all entreaty until the beast had drunk its fill of terrible deeds. Down south, where he came from, crowds would flare up more quickly but they did less damage in the end. He had to fight Levaque to part him from his axe, and as to the Maheus, who were now throwing stones with both hands, he had no idea how to restrain them. It was the women especially who scared him, La Levaque, La Mouquette and the others, every one of them in the grip of a murderous frenzy, baring tooth and claw and snarling like dogs, all the while urged on by La Brûlé, who held sway over them with her tall, skinny frame.
But there was a sudden lull, as momentary surprise produced some of the calm that all Étienne’s pleading had been unable to obtain. It was only the Grégoires, who had resolved to take leave of their notary and were now proceeding across the road to the manager’s house; and they looked so peaceable, seemed so clearly to believe that this was all just some joke on the part of these worthy colliers whose submissiveness they had lived off for the past century, that the astonished miners stopped throwing stones for fear of hitting this elderly couple who had appeared from nowhere. They allowed them to enter the garden, climb the steps and ring the bell at the barricaded door, which no one hurried to open. At that moment Rose, the maid, had just returned from her day out and was laughing gaily in the face of the furious workers for, being from Montsou, she knew them all. And it was she who banged her fists on the door and managed to get Hippolyte to open it a few inches. Just in time, for, as the Grégoires disappeared inside, the stones began to rain down once more. Having recovered from its astonishment, the crowd was now clamouring louder than ever:
‘Death to the bourgeois! Long live socialism!’
Rose continued to laugh merrily in the hallway, as though she found the whole episode highly entertaining, and she kept saying to a terrified Hippolyte:
‘They mean no harm. I know them!’
M. Grégoire, in his tidy way, hung up his hat. Then, when he had helped Mme Grégoire to remove her thick woollen cape, he said in turn:
‘I’m sure that underneath it all they don’t mean any real harm. Once they’ve had a good shout, they’ll all go home with a better appetite for supper.’
At that moment M. Hennebeau was on his way down from the second floor. He had seen what happened, and he was coming to receive his guests, with his usual cool politeness. But the pallor of his face bore witness to the tears that had left him shaken. The man in him, the man of flesh and blood, had given up the struggle, leaving only the efficient administrator determined to carry out his duty.
‘You do know,’ he said, ‘that the ladies are not back yet.’
For the first time the Grégoires became concerned. Cécile not back! How could she return if the miners carried on with this silly nonsense of theirs?
‘I did think of having them moved away from the house,’ M. Hennebeau added. ‘The trouble