Germinal Part 4

And his sidelong look at Etienne completed his thought.

The latter was tempted to reply by a blow. Then he asked himself what would be the use since he was going away. This decided him absolutely.

"It's not possible to do it right the first day," said Maheu, to restore peace; "he'll do better to-morrow."

They were all none the less soured, and disturbed by the need to quarrel. As they pa.s.sed to the lamp cabin to give up their lamps, Levaque began to abuse the lamp-man, whom he accused of not properly cleaning his lamp. They only slackened down a little in the shed where the fire was still burning. It had even been too heavily piled up, for the stove was red and the vast room, without a window, seemed to be in flames, to such a degree did the reflection make b.l.o.o.d.y the walls. And there were grunts of joy, all the backs were roasted at a distance till they smoked like soup. When their flanks were burning they cooked their bellies. Mouquette had tranquilly let down her breeches to dry her chemise. Some lads were making fun of her; they burst out laughing because she suddenly showed them her posterior, a gesture which in her was the extreme expression of contempt.

"I'm off," said Chaval, who had shut up his tools in his box.

No one moved. Only Mouquette hastened, and went out behind him on the pretext that they were both going back to Montsou. But the others went on joking; they knew that he would have no more to do with her.

Catherine, however, who seemed preoccupied, was speaking in a low voice to her father. The latter was surprised; then he agreed with a nod; and calling Etienne to give him back his bundle: "Listen," he said: "you haven't a sou; you will have time to starve before the fortnight's out. Shall I try and get you credit somewhere?"

The young man stood for a moment confused. He had been just about to claim his thirty sous and go. But shame restrained him before the young girl. She looked at him fixedly; perhaps she would think he was s.h.i.+rking the work.

"You know I can promise you nothing," Maheu went on. "They can but refuse us."

Then Etienne consented. They would refuse. Besides, it would bind him to nothing, he could still go away after having eaten something. Then he was dissatisfied at not having refused, seeing Catherine's joy, a pretty laugh, a look of friends.h.i.+p, happy at having been useful to him. What was the good of it all?

When they had put on their sabots and shut their boxes, the Maheus left the shed, following their comrades, who were leaving one by one after they had warmed themselves. Etienne went behind. Levaque and his urchin joined the band. But as they crossed the screening place a scene of violence stopped them.

It was in a vast shed, with beams blackened by the powder, and large shutters, through which blew a constant current of air. The coal trains arrived straight from the receiving-room, and were then overturned by the tipping-cradles on to hoppers, long iron slides; and to right and to left of these the screeners, mounted on steps and armed with shovels and rakes, separated the stone and swept together the clean coal, which afterwards fell through funnels into the railway wagons beneath the shed.

Philomene Levaque was there, thin and pale, with the sheep-like face of a girl who spat blood. With head protected by a fragment of blue wool, and hands and arms black to the elbows, she was screening beneath an old witch, the mother of Pierronne, the Brule, as she was called, with terrible owl's eyes, and a mouth drawn in like a miser's purse. They were abusing each other, the young one accusing the elder of raking her stones so that she could not get a basketful in ten minutes. They were paid by the basket, and these quarrels were constantly arising. Hair was flying, and hands were making black marks on red faces.

"Give it her b.l.o.o.d.y well!" cried Zacharie, from above, to his mistress.

All the screeners laughed. But the Brule turned snappishly on the young man.

"Now, then, dirty beast! You'd better to own the two kids you have filled her with. Fancy that, a slip of eighteen, who can't stand straight!"

Maheu had to prevent his son from descending to see, as he said, the colour of this carca.s.s's skin.

A foreman came up and the rakes again began to move the coal. One could only see, all along the hoppers, the round backs of women squabbling incessantly over the stones.

Outside, the wind had suddenly quieted; a moist cold was falling from a grey sky. The colliers thrust out their shoulders, folded their arms, and set forth irregularly, with a rolling gait which made their large bones stand out beneath their thin garments. In the daylight they looked like a band of Negroes thrown into the mud. Some of them had not finished their briquets; and the remains of the bread carried between the s.h.i.+rt and the jacket made them humpbacked.

"Hallo! there's Bouteloup." said Zacharie, grinning.

Levaque without stopping exchanged two sentences with his lodger, a big dark fellow of thirty-five with a placid, honest air: "Is the soup ready, Louis?"

"I believe it is."

"Then the wife is good-humoured to-day."

"Yes, I believe she is."

Other miners bound for the earth-cutting came up, new bands which one by one were engulfed in the pit. It was the three o'clock descent, more men for the pit to devour, the gangs who would replace the sets of the pike. men at the bottom of the pa.s.sages. The mine never rested; day and night human insects were digging out the rock six hundred metres below the beetroot fields.

However, the youngsters went ahead. Jeanlin confided to Bebert a complicated plan for getting four sous' worth of tobacco on credit, while Lydie followed respectfully at a distance. Catherine came with Zacharie and Etienne. None of them spoke. And it was only in front of the Avantage Inn that Maheu and Levaque rejoined them.

"Here we are," said the former to Etienne; "will you come in?"

They separated. Catherine had stood a moment motionless, gazing once more at the young man with her large eyes full of greenish limpidity like spring water, the crystal deepened the more by her black face. She smiled and disappeared with the others on the road that led up to the settlement.

The inn was situated between the village and the mine, at the crossing of two roads. It was a two-storied brick house, whitewashed from top to bottom, enlivened around the windows by a broad pale-blue border. On a square sign-board nailed above the door, one read in yellow letters: A l'Avantage, licensed to Ra.s.seneur. Behind stretched a skittle-ground enclosed by a hedge. The Company, who had done everything to buy up the property placed within its vast territory, was in despair over this inn in the open fields, at the very entrance of the Voreux.

"Go in," said Maheu to Etienne.

The little parlour was quite bare with its white walls, its three tables and its dozen chairs, its deal counter about the size of a kitchen dresser. There were a dozen gla.s.ses at most, three bottles of liqueur, a decanter, a small zinc tank with a pewter tap to hold the beer; and nothing else--not a figure, not a little table, not a game. In the metal fireplace, which was bright and polished, a coal fire was burning quietly. On the flags a thin layer of white sand drank up the constant moisture of this water-soaked land.

"A gla.s.s," ordered Maheu of a big fair girl, a neighbour's daughter who sometimes took charge of the place. "Is Ra.s.seneur in?"

The girl turned the tap, replying that the master would soon return. In a long, slow gulp, the miner emptied half his gla.s.s to sweep away the dust which filled his throat. He offered nothing to his companion. One other customer, a damp and besmeared miner, was seated before the table, drinking his beer in silence, with an air of deep meditation. A third entered, was served in response to a gesture, paid and went away without uttering a word.

But a stout man of thirty-eight, with a round shaven face and a good-natured smile, now appeared. It was Ra.s.seneur, a former pikeman whom the Company had dismissed three years ago, after a strike. A very good workman, he could speak well, put himself at the head of every opposition, and had at last become the chief of the discontented. His wife already held a licence, like many miners' wives; and when he was thrown on to the street he became an innkeeper himself; having found the money, he placed his inn in front of the Voreux as a provocation to the Company. Now his house had prospered; it had become a centre, and he was enriched by the animosity he had gradually fostered in the hearts of his old comrades.

"This is a lad I hired this morning," said Maheu at once. "Have you got one of your two rooms free, and will you give him credit for a fortnight?"

Ra.s.seneur's broad face suddenly expressed great suspicion. He examined Etienne with a glance, and replied, without giving himself the trouble to express any regret: "My two rooms are taken. Can't do it."

The young man expected this refusal; but it hurt him nevertheless, and he was surprised at the sudden grief he experienced in going. No matter; he would go when he had received his thirty sous. The miner who was drinking at a table had left. Others, one by one, continued to come in to clear their throats, then went on their road with the same slouching gait. It was a simple swilling without joy or pa.s.sion, the silent satisfaction of a need.

"Then, there's no news?" Ra.s.seneur asked in a peculiar tone of Maheu, who was finis.h.i.+ng his beer in small gulps.

The latter turned his head, and saw that only Etienne was near.

"There's been more squabbling. Yes, about the timbering." He told the story. The innkeeper's face reddened, swelling with emotion, which flamed in his skin and eyes. At last he broke out: "Well, well! if they decide to lower the price they are done for."

Etienne constrained him. However he went on, throwing sidelong glances in his direction. And there were reticences, and implications; he was talking of the manager, M. Hennebeau, of his wife, of his nephew, the little Negrel, without naming them, repeating that this could not go on, that things were bound to smash up one of these fine days. The misery was too great; and he spoke of the workshops that were closing, the workers who were going away. During the last month he had given more than six pounds of bread a day. He had heard the day before, that M. Deneulin, the owner of a neighbouring pit, could scarcely keep going. He had also received a letter from Lille full of disturbing details.

"You know," he whispered, "it comes from that person you saw here one evening."

But he was interrupted. His wife entered in her turn, a tall woman, lean and keen, with a long nose and violet cheeks. She was a much more radical politician than her husband.

"Pluchart's letter," she said. "Ah! if that fellow was master things would soon go better."

Etienne had been listening for a moment; he understood and became excited over these ideas of misery and revenge. This name, suddenly uttered, caused him to start. He said aloud, as if in spite of himself: "I know him--Pluchart."

They looked at him. He had to add: "Yes, I am an engine-man: he was my foreman at Lille. A capable man. I have often talked with him."

Ra.s.seneur examined him afresh; and there was a rapid change on his face, a sudden sympathy. At last he said to his wife: "It's Maheu who brings me this gentleman, one of his putters, to see if there is a room for him upstairs, and if we can give him credit for a fortnight."

Then the matter was settled in four words. There was a room; the lodger had left that morning. And the innkeeper, who was very excited, talked more freely, repeating that he only asked possibilities from the masters, without demanding, like so many others, things that were too hard to get. His wife shrugged her shoulders and demanded justice, absolutely.

"Good evening," interrupted Maheu. "All that won't prevent men from going down, and as long as they go there will be people working themselves to death. Look how fresh you are, these three years that you've been out of it."

"Yes, I'm very much better," declared Ra.s.seneur, complacently.

Etienne went as far as the door, thanking the miner, who was leaving; but the latter nodded his head without adding a word, and the young man watched him painfully climb up the road to the settlement. Madame Ra.s.seneur, occupied with serving customers, asked him to wait a minute, when she would show him his room, where he could clean himself. Should he remain? He again felt hesitation, a discomfort which made him regret the freedom of the open road, the hunger beneath the sun, endured with the joy of being one's own master. It seemed to him that he had lived years from his arrival on the pit-bank, in the midst of squalls, to those hours pa.s.sed under the earth on his belly in the black pa.s.sages. And he shrank from beginning again; it was unjust and too hard. His man's pride revolted at the idea of becoming a crushed and blinded beast.

While Etienne was thus debating with himself, his eyes, wandering over the immense plain, gradually began to see it clearly. He was surprised; he had not imagined the horizon was like this, when old Bonnemort had pointed it out to him in the darkness. Before him he plainly saw the Voreux in a fold of the earth, with its wood and brick buildings, the tarred screening shed, the slate-covered steeple, the engine-room and the tall, pale red chimney, all ma.s.sed together with that evil air. But around these buildings the s.p.a.ce extended, and he had not imagined it so large, changed into an inky sea by the ascending waves of coal soot, bristling with high trestles which carried the rails of the foot-bridges, enc.u.mbered in one corner with the timber supply, which looked like the harvest of a mown forest. Towards the right the pit-bank hid the view, colossal as a barricade of giants, already covered with gra.s.s in its older part, consumed at the other end by an interior fire which had been burning for a year with a thick smoke, leaving at the surface in the midst of the pale grey of the slates and sandstones long trails of bleeding rust. Then the fields unrolled, the endless fields of wheat and beetroot, naked at this season of the year, marshes with scanty vegetation, cut by a few stunted willows, distant meadows separated by slender rows of poplars. Very far away little pale patches indicated towns, Marchiennes to the north, Montsou to the south; while the forest of Vandame to the east boardered the horizon with the violet line of its leafless trees. And beneath the livid sky, in the faint daylight of this winter afternoon, it seemed as if all the blackness of the Voreux, and all its flying coal dust, had fallen upon the plain, powdering the trees, sanding the roads, sowing the earth.

Etienne looked, and what especially surprised him was a ca.n.a.l, the ca.n.a.lized stream of the Scarpe, which he had not seen in the night. From the Voreux to Marchiennes this ca.n.a.l ran straight, like a dull silver ribbon two leagues long, an avenue lined by large trees, raised above the low earth, threading into s.p.a.ce with the perspective of its green banks, its pale water into which glided the vermilion of the boats. Near one pit there was a wharf with moored vessels which were laden directly from the trains at the foot-bridges. Afterwards the ca.n.a.l made a curve, sloping by the marshes; and the whole soul of that smooth plain appeared to lie in this geometrical stream, which traversed it like a great road, carting coal and iron.

Etienne's glance went up from the ca.n.a.l to the settlement built on the height, of which he could only distinguish the red tiles. Then his eyes rested again at the bottom of the clay slope, towards the Voreux, on two enormous ma.s.ses of bricks made and burnt on the spot. A branch of the Company's railroad pa.s.sed behind a paling, for the use of the pit. They must be sending down the last miners to the earth-cutting. Only one shrill note came from a truck pushed by men. One felt no longer the unknown darkness, the inexplicable thunder, the flaming of mysterious stars. Afar, the blast furnaces and the c.o.ke kilns had paled with the dawn. There only remained, unceasingly, the escapement of the pump, always breathing with the same thick, long breath, the ogre's breath of which he could now see the grey steam, and which nothing could satiate.

Then Etienne suddenly made up his mind. Perhaps he seemed to see again Catherine's clear eyes, up there, at the entrance to the settlement. Perhaps, rather, it was the wind of revolt which came from the Voreux. He did not know, but he wished to go down again to the mine, to suffer and to fight. And he thought fiercely of those people Bonnemort had talked of, the crouching and sated G.o.d, to whom ten thousand starving men gave their flesh without knowing it.

Part 2

Chapter 1.

THE Gregoires' property, Piolaine, was situated two kilometres to the east of Montsou, on the Joiselle road. The house was a large square building, without style, dating from the beginning of the last century. Of all the land that once belonged to it there only remained some thirty hectares, enclosed by walls, and easy to keep up. The orchard and kitchen garden especially were everywhere spoken of, being famous for the finest fruit and vegetables in the country. For the rest, there was no park, only a small wood. The avenue of old limes, a vault of foliage three hundred metres long, reaching from the gate to the porch, was one of the curiosities of this bare plain, on which one could count the large trees between Marchiennes and Beaugnies.

On that morning the Gregoires got up at eight o'clock. Usually they never stirred until an hour later, being heavy sleepers; but last night's tempest had disturbed them. And while her husband had gone at once to see if the wind had made any havoc, Madame Gregoire went down to the kitchen in her slippers and flannel dressing-gown. She was short and stout, about fifty-eight years of age, and retained a broad, surprised, dollish face beneath the dazzling whiteness of her hair.

"Melanie," she said to the cook, "suppose you were to make the brioche this morning, since the dough is ready. Mademoiselle will not get up for half an hour yet, and she can eat it with her chocolate. Eh? It will be a surprise."

The cook, a lean old woman who had served them for thirty years, laughed. "That's true! it will be a famous surprise. My stove is alight, and the oven must be hot; and then Honorine can help me a bit."

Honorine, a girl of some twenty years, who had been taken in as a child and brought up in the house, now acted as housemaid. Besides these two women, the only other servant was the coachman, Francis, who undertook the heavy work. A gardener and his wife were occupied with the vegetables, the fruit, the flowers, and the poultry-yard. And as service here was patriarchal, this little world lived together, like one large family, on very good terms.

Madame Gregoire, who had planned this surprise of the brioche in bed, waited to see the dough put in the oven. The kitchen was very large, and one guessed it was the most important room in the house by its extreme cleanliness and by the a.r.s.enal of saucepans, utensils, and pots which filled it. It gave an impression of good feeding. Provisions abounded, hanging from hooks or in cupboards.

"And let it be well glazed, won't you?" Madame Gregoire said as she pa.s.sed into the dining-room.

In spite of the hot-air stove which warmed the whole house, a coal fire enlivened this room. In other respects it exhibited no luxury; a large table, chairs, a mahogany sideboard; only two deep easy-chairs betrayed a love of comfort, long happy hours of digestion. They never went into the drawing-room, they remained here in a family circle.

Just then M. Gregoire came back dressed in a thick fustian jacket; he also was ruddy for his sixty years, with large, good-natured, honest features beneath the snow of his curly hair. He had seen the coachman and the gardener; there had been no damage of importance, nothing but a fallen chimney-pot. Every morning he liked to give a glance round Piolaine, which was not large enough to cause him anxiety, and from which he derived all the happiness of owners.h.i.+p.

"And Cecile?" he asked, "isn't she up yet then?"

"I can't make it out," replied his wife. "I thought I heard her moving."

The table was set; there were three cups on the white cloth. They sent Honorine to see what had become of mademoiselle. But she came back immediately, restraining her laughter, stifling her voice, as if she were still upstairs in the bedroom.

"Oh! if monsieur and madame could see mademoiselle! She sleeps; oh! she sleeps like an angel. One can't imagine it! It's a pleasure to look at her."

The father and mother exchanged tender looks. He said, smiling: "Will you come and see?"

"The poor little darling!" she murmured. "I'll come." And they went up together. The room was the only luxurious one in the house. It was draped in blue silk, and the furniture was lacquered white, with blue tracery--a spoilt child's whim, which her parents had gratified. In the vague whiteness of the bed, beneath the half-light which came through a curtain that was drawn back, the young girl was sleeping with her cheek resting on her naked arm. She was not pretty, too healthy, in too vigorous condition, fully developed at eighteen; but she had superb flesh, the freshness of milk, with her chestnut hair, her round face, and little wilful nose lost between her cheeks. The coverlet had slipped down, and she was breathing so softly that her respiration did not even lift her already well-developed bosom.

"That horrible wind must have prevented her from closing her eyes," said the mother softly.

The father imposed silence with a gesture. Both of them leant down and gazed with adoration on this girl, in her virgin nakedness, whom they had desired so long, and who had come so late, when they had no longer hoped for her. They found her perfect, not at all too fat, and could never feed her sufficiently. And she went on sleeping, without feeling them near her, with their faces against hers. However, a slight movement disturbed her motionless face. They feared that they would wake her, and went out on tiptoe.

"Hus.h.!.+" said M. Gregoire, at the door. "If she has not slept we must leave her sleeping."

"As long as she likes, the darling!" agreed Madame Gregoire. "We will wait."

They went down and seated themselves in the easy-chairs in the dining-room; while the servants, laughing at mademoiselle's sound sleep, kept the chocolate on the stove without grumbling. He took up a newspaper; she knitted at a large woollen quilt. It was very hot, and not a sound was heard in the silent house.

The Gregoires' fortune, about forty thousand francs a year, was entirely invested in a share of the Montsou mines. They would complacently narrate its origin, which dated from the very formation of the Company.

Towards the beginning of the last century, there had been a mad search for coal between Lille and Valenciennes. The success of those who held the concession, which was afterwards to become the Anzin Company, had turned all heads. In every commune the ground was tested; and societies were formed and concessions grew up in a night. But among all the obstinate seekers of that epoch, Baron Desruinaux had certainly left the reputation for the most heroic intelligence. For forty years he had struggled without yielding, in the midst of continual obstacles: early searches unsuccessful, new pits abandoned at the end of long months of work, landslips which filled up borings, sudden inundations which drowned the workmen, hundreds of thousands of francs thrown into the earth; then the squabbles of the management, the panics of the shareholders, the struggle with the lords of the soil, who were resolved not to recognize royal concessions if no treaty was first made with themselves. He had at last founded the a.s.sociation of Desruinaux, Fauquenoix Co. to exploit the Montsou concession, and the pits began to yield a small profit when two neighbouring concessions, that of Cougny, belonging to the Comte de Cougny, and that of Joiselle, belonging to the Cornille and Jenard Company, had nearly overwhelmed him beneath the terrible a.s.sault of their compet.i.tion. Happily, on the 25th. August 1760, a treaty was made between the three concessions, uniting them into a single one. The Montsou Mining Company was created, such as it still exists to-day. In the distribution they had divided the total property, according to the standard of the money of the time, into twenty-four sous, of which each was subdivided into twelve deniers, which made two hundred and eighty-eight deniers; and as the denier was worth ten thousand francs the capital represented a sum of nearly three millions. Desruinaux, dying but triumphant, received in this division six sous' and three deniers.

In those days the baron possessed Piolaine, which had three hundred hectares belonging to it, and he had in his service as steward Honore Gregoire, a Picardy lad, the great-grandfather of Leon Gregoire, Cecile's father. When the Montsou treaty was made, Honor, who had laid up savings to the amount of some fifty thousand francs, yielded tremblingly to his master's unshakable faith. He took out ten thousand francs in fine crowns, and took a denier, though with the fear of robbing his children of that sum. His son Eugene, in fact, received very small dividends; and as he had become a bourgeois and had been foolish enough to throw away the other forty thousand francs of the paternal inheritance in a company that came to grief, he lived meanly enough. But the interest of the denier gradually increased. The fortune began with Felicien, who was able to realize a dream with which his grandfather, the old steward, had nursed his childhood--the purchase of dismembered Piolaine, which he acquired as national property for a ludicrous sum. However, bad years followed. It was necessary to await the conclusion of the revolutionary catastrophes, and afterwards Napoleon's b.l.o.o.d.y fall; and it was Leon Gregoire who profited at a stupefying rate of progress by the timid and uneasy investment of his great-grandfather. Those poor ten thousand francs grew and multiplied with the Company's prosperity. From 1820 they had brought in one hundred per cent, ten thousand francs. In 1844 they had produced twenty thousand; in 1850, forty. During two years the dividend had reached the prodigious figure of fifty thousand francs; the value of the denier, quoted at the Lille bourse at a million, had centupled in a century.

M. Gregoire, who had been advised to sell out when this figure of a million was reached, had refused with his smiling paternal air. Six months later an industrial crisis broke out; the denier fell to six hundred thousand francs. But he still smiled; he regretted nothing, for the Gregoires had maintained an obstinate faith in their mine. It would rise again: G.o.d Himself was not so solid. Then with his religious faith was mixed profound grat.i.tude towards an investment which for a century had supported the family in doing nothing. It was like a divinity of their own, whom their egoism surrounded with a kind of wors.h.i.+p, the benefactor of the hearth, lulling them in their great bed of idleness, fattening them at their gluttonous table. From father to son it had gone on. Why risk displeasing fate by doubting it? And at the bottom of their fidelity there was a superst.i.tious terror, a fear lest the million of the denier might suddenly melt away if they were to realize it and to put it in a drawer. It seemed to them more sheltered in the earth, from which a race of miners, generations of starving people, extracted it for them, a little every day, as they needed it.

For the rest, happiness rained on this house. M. Gregoire, when very young, had married the daughter of a Marchiennes druggist, a plain, penniless girl, whom he adored, and who repaid him with happiness. She shut herself up in her household, and wors.h.i.+pped her husband, having no other will but his. No difference of tastes separated them, their desires were mingled in one idea of comfort; and they had thus lived for forty years, in affection and little mutual services. It was a well-regulated existence; the forty thousand francs were spent quietly, and the savings expended on Cecile, whose tardy birth had for a moment disturbed the budget. They still satisfied all her whims--a second horse, two more carriages, toilets sent from Paris. But they tasted in this one more joy; they thought nothing too good for their daughter, although they had such a horror of display that they had preserved the fas.h.i.+ons of their youth. Every unprofitable expense seemed foolish to them.

Suddenly the door opened, and a loud voice called out: "Hallo! What now? Having breakfast without me!"

It was Cecile, just come from her bed, her eyes heavy with sleep. She had simply put up her hair and flung on a white woollen dressing-gown.

"No, no!" said the mother; "you see we are all waiting. Eh? has the wind prevented you from sleeping, poor darling?"

The young girl looked at her in great surprise.

"Has it been windy? I didn't know anything about it. I haven't moved all night."

Then they thought this funny, and all three began to laugh; the servants who were bringing in the breakfast also broke out laughing, so amused was the household at the idea that mademoiselle had been sleeping for twelve hours right off. The sight of the brioche completed the expansion of their faces.

"What! Is it cooked, then?" said Cecile; '"that must be a surprise for me! That'll be good now, hot, with the chocolate!"

They sat down to table at last with the smoking chocolate in their cups, and for a long time talked of nothing but the brioche. Melanie and Honorine remained to give details about the cooking and watched them stuffing themselves with greasy lips, saying that it was a pleasure to make a cake when one saw the masters enjoying it so much.

But the dogs began to bark loudly; perhaps they announced the music mistress, who came from Marchiennes on Mondays and Fridays. A professor of literature also came. All the young girl's education was thus carried on at Piolaine in happy ignorance, with her childish whims, throwing the book out of the window as soon as anything wearied her.

"It is M. Deneulin," said Honorine, returning.

Behind her, Deneulin, a cousin of M. Gregoire's, appeared without ceremony; with his loud voice, his quick gestures, he had the appearance of an old cavalry officer. Although over fifty, his short hair and thick moustache were as black as ink.

"Yes! It is I. Good day! Don't disturb yourselves."

He had sat down amid the family's exclamations. They turned back at last to their chocolate.

"Have you anything to tell me?" asked M. Gregoire. "No! nothing at all," Deneulin hastened to reply. "I came out on horseback to rub off the rust a bit, and as I pa.s.sed your door I thought I would just look in."

Cecile questioned him about Jeanne and Lucie, his daughters. They were perfectly well, the first was always at her painting, while the other, the elder, was training her voice at the piano from morning till night. And there was a slight quiver in his voice, a disquiet which he concealed beneath bursts of gaiety.