Germinal - Emile Zola [201]
Rose was still standing there, and she ventured to mutter once more:
‘Oh, sir! They mean no harm.’
As M. Hennebeau shook his head, the uproar outside grew louder still, and they could hear the dull thud of stones hitting the front of the house.
‘I’ve nothing against them. Indeed I can excuse them, because you would need to be as stupid as they are to believe that our sole purpose is to do them harm. But it is my responsibility to keep the peace…To think that the roads are swarming with gendarmes – at least so everyone keeps telling me – and that I haven’t been able to get hold of a single one all day!’
He broke off and gestured to Mme Grégoire to walk ahead:
‘Please, Madame, let us not remain here. Do come into the drawing-room.’
But they were detained in the hall a few minutes longer by the cook, who had come up from the basement having quite lost her patience. She declared that she could no longer answer for the dinner: she was still waiting for the vol-au-vent cases, which she had ordered to be delivered from the pastry shop in Marchiennes at four o’clock. Obviously the pastryman must have got lost on the way, no doubt scared by these ruffians. Perhaps his baskets had even been looted. She could see it all, the hold-up behind a bush, the vol-au-vent cases surrounded on all sides and then disappearing into the bellies of these three thousand wretches screaming for bread. Whatever happened, Monsieur had better be warned, she would rather put the whole dinner on the fire if it was going to be ruined on account of this here revolution of theirs.
‘Patience, patience,’ said M. Hennebeau. ‘All is not lost. The pastryman may still come.’
As he turned round towards Mme Grégoire and opened the drawing-room door for her himself, he was very surprised to catch sight of someone he had not previously noticed sitting on the hall bench in the gathering darkness.
‘Goodness, it’s you, Maigrat. What are you doing here?’
Maigrat had risen to his feet, and his fat, pallid face could now be seen, blank with terror. Gone was the bluff demeanour of old as he meekly explained how he had slipped across to Monsieur’s house to ask for his help and protection if these criminals should attack his shop.
‘You can see perfectly well that I’m in danger myself, and I’ve got no one to help me,’ M. Hennebeau replied. ‘You’d have done better to remain where you were and guard your stock.’
‘Oh, I’ve put the iron bars up, and my wife’s looking after things.’
M. Hennebeau grew impatient and could not hide his contempt. Some guard she would be, that puny creature Maigrat’d beaten so often she was no more than skin and bones!
‘Well, there’s nothing I can do. Defend yourself as best you can. And I advise you to go back at once, because they’re still out there demanding bread…Listen to them.’
The clamour was growing louder again, and Maigrat thought he could hear his name being called amid the shouting. It simply wasn’t possible for him to go back, he’d be lynched. At the same time he was distraught at the thought of being ruined. He stood with his face glued to the glass panel in the front door, sweating and trembling, on watch as disaster loomed. The Grégoires, meanwhile, finally consented to go into the drawing-room.
M. Hennebeau calmly went through the motions of doing the honours of the house. But he was unable to get his guests to sit down, for, in this airless, barricaded room, which required two lamps even though dusk had not yet fallen, the atmosphere of terror grew with each new round of shouting outside. Muffled by the curtains the crowd’s anger became a dull roar, which made it sound all the more alarming and conveyed a sense of some terrible, indeterminate menace. There was conversation none the less, although they could not keep off the subject of this extraordinary revolt. M. Hennebeau, for his part, was surprised not to have seen it coming: and so poorly informed was he that he grew