At that moment the distant sound of a bell made him start. He recognized it as the signal he had ordered to be given when the postman arrived. He stood up and exclaimed aloud, as in his pain a stream of foul language poured unbidden from his lips:
‘They can go to hell! They can go to fucking hell with their telegrams and their letters!’
He was now filled with rage and felt as though he had need of a cesspit into which he could have trodden all this filth under the heel of his boot. The woman was a slut, and he searched for other crude words with which to defile her image. Suddenly remembering the marriage that she was seeking, so sweetly and calmly, to engineer between Cécile and Paul, he quite lost patience. Wasn’t there even any passion, any jealousy, in this perennial lust of hers? It had become no more than a depraved form of play, the mere habit of having a man, a pastime engaged in with the regularity of pudding at the end of a meal. He laid all the blame on her and in the process almost exonerated the young man to whom she had thus attached herself in this reawakening of her appetites, like someone reaching out to plunder the first unripe fruit encountered on a country walk. Whom would she consume next, how much lower would she stoop, when she could no longer call on obliging nephews sufficiently pragmatic to accept this household regime of free board, free lodging and a free wife?
There was a timid scratching at the door, and the sound of Hippolyte’s voice could be heard as he ventured to whisper through the keyhole:
‘Monsieur, the post…And Monsieur Dansaert has come back, he says people are killing each other…’
‘I’m coming, God damn it!’
What was he going to do to them? Throw them out of the house the moment they returned from Marchiennes, as though they were smelly animals he no longer wanted under his roof? Grab a large stick and scream at them to take their filthy coupling elsewhere? It was their mingled breath and their pleasured sighs that had made the air so heavy in this warm, clammy room; the pungent odour that had taken his breath away was the scent of musk from his wife’s skin, this bodily need for very strong perfume being yet another of her perverse tastes; and for him it was the warm smell of fornication, of real flesh-and-blood adultery, which rose from the scattered chamberpots and the unemptied basins, from the unmade bed and the untidy furniture, from every inch of this room that reeked of vice. In his impotent fury he threw himself on the bed and pounded it with his fists, savaging it, pummelling the places where he could identify the imprint of their bodies, and driven wilder still when the discarded blankets and the crumpled sheets remained soft and unresponsive beneath his fists, as though they too were exhausted after a night of passion.
But suddenly he thought he heard Hippolyte coming back upstairs again. Ashamed of himself, he stopped. He remained motionless for a moment, panting and mopping his forehead as he waited for his pulse to slow. Having stood to look at himself in the mirror, he gazed at his face, its features so distorted that he no longer recognized it. He observed them slowly resume an air of calm and then, by a supreme act of will, he went downstairs.
Below, five messengers were standing waiting, in addition to M. Dansaert. Each brought increasingly worrying news about the strikers’ march through the pits; and the overman gave him a long account of the events at Mirou, which had been saved by the stout action of old Quandieu. He listened, nodded, but took nothing in; his thoughts were still on the bedroom upstairs. Eventually he bid them good day, saying that he would take the appropriate measures. When he was alone again, seated at his desk, he seemed to doze off, with his head buried in his hands and his eyes covered. His post was lying there, and he roused himself to look for the expected letter of reply from the Board. But the words swam before his eyes. At length, however, he grasped that these gentlemen were hoping for violent incidents: not that they were instructing him to aggravate the situation, of course, but they did imply that disturbances would hasten the end of the strike by provoking firm action to contain them. With that he ceased to hesitate and sent telegrams off in all directions, to the Prefect in Lille, to the garrison at Douai, to the gendarmerie at Marchiennes. It was a great relief, and now all he had to do was lie low, indeed he let it be thought that he was suffering from an attack of gout. And throughout the afternoon he hid himself away in his study, refusing to see anyone and content merely to read the telegrams and letters that continued to arrive by the dozen. In this manner he followed the mob at a distance as they proceeded from Madeleine to Crèvecœur, from Crèvecœur to La Victoire, and from La Victoire to Gaston-Marie. At the same time he received news of the disarray of the gendarmes and the dragoons as they were misled by false information and kept finding themselves heading in the opposite direction from the pits that were being attacked. But they could all kill each other and destroy what they pleased, for he had put his head back in his hands, his fingers over his eyes, and now lost himself in the great silence of the empty house, hearing only the occasional clatter of a saucepan as the cook busied herself mightily for the dinner party ahead.
It was five o’clock and dusk was already filling the room when a loud noise made M. Hennebeau jump, and he sat there dazed and motionless, his elbows on his papers. He thought that the wretched pair must have returned. But the commotion grew louder, and a terrible shout went up just as he approached the window:
‘We want bread! We want bread!’
It was the strikers invading Montsou, just as the gendarmes, thinking they were headed for Le Voreux, were racing off in the opposite direction to occupy it.
At that very moment, some two kilometres beyond the first houses in Montsou and just before the crossroads where the road to Vandame met the main highway, Mme Hennebeau and the two young ladies had been watching the mob file past. Their day out in Marchiennes had been a jolly one: they had had a pleasant lunch at the house of the manager of Les Forges, followed by an interesting tour of the workshops and a visit to a neighbouring glass factory, which had taken care of the afternoon; and then, as they were making their way home through the clear twilight of this bright winter’s day, Cécile had noticed a small farmstead at the side of the road and taken a fancy to a cup of milk. The women had all stepped down from the carriage, and Négrel had gallantly dismounted to accompany them. Meanwhile the farmer’s wife, flustered at being visited by gentry, rushed about and declared that she must put a cloth on the table before she could serve them. But Lucie and Jeanne wanted to see the cow being milked, and so they had all gone to the cowshed with their cups; it was almost like going on a picnic, and they laughed with delight as their feet sank into the straw.
Mme Hennebeau was rather warily sipping her milk with the air of an indulgent mother when she became alarmed by a strange roaring noise outside.
‘What’s that?’
The barn stood right at the edge of the road and had large double doors, for it also served for storing hay. Already the girls had poked their heads out and, on looking left, were astonished to see a screaming horde of people pouring out of the Vandame road like a black river.
‘Oh God!’ muttered Négrel, who had also gone out to look. ‘Don’t say our troublesome miners are turning nasty.’
‘It must be the folk from the mines,’ said the farmer’s wife. ‘They’ve been past twice already. It seems things aren’t too good at the minute, and they mean to show who’s boss.’
She spoke each word cautiously, watching for the reaction on their faces; and when she saw how alarmed everyone was and how deeply anxious the encounter had made them, she hastily concluded:
‘Ruffians, the lot of them. Ruffians.’
Négrel, seeing that it was too late to get back to the carriage and drive into Montsou, ordered the coachman to hurry and bring it into the farmyard, where they hid it still harnessed behind a shed. He took his own horse, which a young lad had been holding, and tethered it inside the shed. When he returned, he found his aunt and the young ladies quite distraught and ready to accept the suggestion from the farmer’s wife that they take refuge in her hous
e. But Négrel thought that they would be safer where they were, since no one would ever think to come looking for them among the hay. The barn doors did not shut properly, however, and there were also such large gaps in its rotten wood that the road was perfectly visible.
‘Come now, we must have courage. We shall sell our lives dearly!’
This joke made everyone even more afraid. The noise was growing louder, but there was still nothing to be seen; and out on the empty road it was as though a great gust of wind was blowing, like the sudden squalls that precede great storms.
‘No, no, I don’t want to look,’ said Cécile, as she went to hide in the hay.
Mme Hennebeau, who now looked very pale, was angry that people should spoil her fun like this, and she stood well back, her gaze averted with an air of distaste; while Lucie and Jeanne, though they were trembling, each had one eye glued to a chink in the door, anxious not to miss the show.
The rumble of thunder drew nearer, the ground shook, and Jeanlin appeared first, racing along in front and busily blowing his horn.
‘Scent-bottles at the ready, ladies. The sweaty masses are nigh!’ whispered Négrel, who, despite his republican leanings, liked to mock the common man when he was in the company of the ladies.
But his jibe was lost amid the tempest of the shouting, gesticulating mob. The women had now come into view, almost a thousand of them, with their straggling hair that had come loose during all the rushing about, and with their ragged clothes 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’:
‘We want bread! We want bread!’
Lucie and Jeanne clung to Mme Hennebeau, who had nearly passed out, while Négrel stood in front of them as though to protect them with his body. Was this the night when the old order would finally crumble? What they saw next rendered them quite speechless. The main body of the mob was moving away, leaving only some stragglers, when La Mouquette emerged on to the road. She had been taking her time, watching out for any bourgeois at a window or a garden gate; and when she spotted one, being unable to spit in their face, she would treat them to what was for her the supreme expression of her contempt. Now, having presumably just seen one, she suddenly lifted her skirts and showed them her buttocks, proffering her enormous naked bottom in the dying rays of the sun. And there was nothing at all obscene about this bottom nor anything comic in its uncompromising display.
Everyone vanished, and the mob flowed on towards Montsou, following each bend in the road and passing between the squat, gaily-coloured houses. The carriage was brought out of the yard, but the coachman refused to take responsibility for conveying Madame and the young ladies safely home as long as the strikers were blocking the road. The worst of it was that there was no other way back.
‘But we simply must get home. Dinner will be waiting for us,’ said Mme Hennebeau, quite beside herself and maddened by fear. ‘On top of everything these beastly workers have chosen the very day that I am entertaining guests. Really! And then they expect to be treated better!’
Lucie and Jeanne were busy trying to drag Cécile from the hay but she kept refusing to move, believing that the wild savages were still going past and insisting that she had no desire to watch. But eventually they all resumed their seats in the carriage, and it now occurred to Négrel, who had remounted, that they could go round by the back lanes of Réquillart.
‘Go carefully,’ he told the coachman, ‘the road is atrocious. If there are gangs preventing you rejoining the main highway afterwards, then stop behind the old pit. We’ll walk home from there – we can use the side-gate – and then you can go and find somewhere to put the carriage and horses, an inn with a coach-shed perhaps.’
Off they set. In the distance the mob was now streaming through Montsou. Having twice seen gendarmes and dragoons go by, the local inhabitants were in a terrible panic. Appalling stories were going the rounds, and there was talk of handwritten posters telling the bourgeois that they were about to get a knife in their bellies; nobody had seen them, but this did not stop anyone from quoting them verbatim. At the notary’s house the panic was at its height, for he had just received an anonymous letter through the post warning him that a barrel of gunpowder had been hidden in his cellar ready to blow him up if he did not immediatel
y declare himself on the side of the people.
The Grégoires, whose visit had been prolonged by the arrival of this letter, were just in the middle of discussing it and deciding that it must be a practical joke when the arrival of the invading mob finally reduced the household to a state of blind terror. They themselves, however, remained smiling. Lifting a corner of the curtain they looked outside, but they refused to concede that there was any danger, certain as they were that everything would end amicably. Five o’clock struck, there was still time for them to wait for the coast to clear before proceeding across the road to have dinner at the Hennebeaus’, where Cécile would no doubt already be waiting for them following her safe return. But nobody else in Montsou seemed to share their confidence: people were running about madly, doors and windows were being slammed shut. On the opposite side of the road they caught sight of Maigrat busy barricading his shop with a great array of iron bars, and he was so pale and shaken that his slip of a wife had to tighten the nuts herself.
The mob had come to a halt outside the manager’s house, and the cry went up once more:
‘We want bread! We want bread!’
M. Hennebeau was standing at the window when Hippolyte came in to close the shutters, in case any windows were broken by stones. He closed all the others on the ground floor to the same end and then went up to the first floor, from where a squeaking of handles could be heard and the sound of shutters being banged to one by one. Unfortunately the bay window in the basement kitchen could not be similarly protected, which was a cause for some concern given the glowing red coals burning beneath the saucepans and the spit.