Germinal - Emile Zola [247]
Everything went perfectly. Mme Hennebeau behaved charmingly towards Cécile, and she gave Négrel a smile when the notary from Montsou gallantly proposed a toast to the future happiness of the couple. M. Hennebeau, too, was most affable. His cheerful air was noted by the guests, and it was rumoured that, being once more in favour with the Board, he was soon to be appointed Officer in the Legion of Honour, in recognition of his firm action in dealing with the strike. They tried not to talk about the recent events, but there was an element of triumph in the general rejoicing, and the dinner turned into something of an official celebration of victory. They had been delivered at last, and they could begin once more to eat and sleep in peace! Discreet allusion was made to the dead, whose blood still lay fresh in the mud of Le Voreux: they had had to be taught a lesson, and everybody said how sorry they were, with the Grégoires adding that it was now everyone’s duty to visit the villages and to try and bind the wounds. The Grégoires were their old placid, benevolent selves again: they made excuses for their good miners and already they could picture them down the pits providing a fine example of their traditional willingness to knuckle under. The grandees of Montsou, now that they had stopped feeling so nervous, all agreed that the question of pay needed to be looked at carefully. Victory was complete when, during the main course, M. Hennebeau read out a letter from the bishop announcing that Father Ranvier was to be transferred to another parish. The assembled bourgeois of the district thereupon exchanged heated comment on the subject of this priest who considered that the soldiers had been murderers. Finally, with the appearance of dessert, the notary valiantly presented his free-thinking views.
Deneulin was there with his two daughters. Amid all this merriment he tried to conceal his sadness at his own ruin. That very morning he had signed the papers conveying his concession at Vandame into the ownership of the Montsou Mining Company. Cornered and wounded, he had given in to the Board’s demands, finally relinquishing this prize that they had had their eyes on for so long and barely extracting enough money to pay his creditors. When they had made him a last-minute offer to stay on at the level of divisional engineer, he had accepted it as a stroke of good fortune, resigned to being a mere employee whose job was to oversee the pit that had swallowed up his fortune. This action sounded the death-knell for the small, private company and presaged the imminent disappearance of individual mine-owners, who were being gobbled up one by one by the insatiable ogre of capital and drowned in the rising tide of corporations. The costs of the strike had thus fallen on his shoulders alone, and for him it was as though everyone was drinking to his misfortune as they toasted M. Hennebeau’s new honour. His only slight consolation was the wonderfully brave face being put on by Lucie and Jeanne, who both looked charming in their patched-up dresses, pretty young single girls laughing in the teeth of disaster and thoroughly disdainful of bank accounts.
When they moved into the drawing-room for coffee, M. Grégoire took his cousin aside and congratulated him on the courage of his decision.
‘You see? Your one mistake was to risk the million you got from your share in Montsou by investing it in Vandame. You went to all that effort, and now it’s disappeared along with all your devilish hard work, whereas my share hasn’t moved from its drawer, and it still supports me nicely and allows me a life of leisure, just as it will support my grandchildren and my grandchildren’s children.’
II
On Sunday Étienne fled from the village at nightfall. An extremely clear sky, dotted with stars, cast a blue, crepuscular