Emile Zola Germinal (Oxford) PART II

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PART II 

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CHAPTER I 

The Gregoires’ property, La Piolaine, was situated two kilo¬ 

metres to the east of Montsou, on the Joiselle road. It was a 

large square house of no particular style, built at the beginning 

of the eighteenth century. Of the vast lands which had origi¬ 

nally depended on it, there were little more than thirty hectares 

left, enclosed by a wall and easy to maintain. People spoke 

admiringly of their orchard and their vegetable garden, which 

produced the finest fruit and vegetables in the neighbourhood. 

In fact there was no formal park, only a small wood. The 

avenue of ancient lime trees, which formed an arcade of 

greenery 300 metres long, running from the boundary of the 

estate to the main steps, was one of the sights to see on this 

bald plain, where there were very few large trees anywhere 

between Marchiennes and Beaugnies. 

That morning, the Gregoires had risen at eight o’clock. 

Usually they did not stir until an hour later, sleeping on 

soundly, with total conviction; but that night’s storm had 

upset them. And while her husband had gone out forthwith to 

see whether the wind had done any damage, Madame Gregoire 

had just come down to the kitchen in her slippers and her 

flannel dressing-gown. She was a short, stout woman, but 

although she was already fifty-eight, her face was still plump 

beneath her glossy white hair, and bore a wide-eyed, innocent, 

doll-like expression. 

‘Melanie,’ she said to the cook, ‘why don’t you make the 

brioche* this morning, since the dough is ready,^ Miss Cecile 

won’t be getting up for another half-hour yet, and she could 

have some with her chocolate ... wouldn’t that be a lovely 

surprise.?’ 

The cook, a thin, old woman who had been in service there 

for thirty years, started to laugh. 

‘That’s true, it would be a marvellous surprise ... I’ve lit 

the stove and the oven must be hot by now; and anyway 

Honorine will lend a hand.’ 

Honorine was a girl of about twenty, who had been taken in 

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by the household when she was a little child and brought up 

almost as one of the family^ and now worked as a chambermaid. 

Apart from these two women there were no other servants, 

except for the coachman, Francis, who also acted as handyman 

and labourer. A gardener and his wife looked after the fruit 

and vegetables, the flowers, and the little farmyard. And as 

this was a patriarchal regime, a cosy family affair, the small 

community lived in harmony. 

Madame Gregoire, who had dreamed up the surprise of the 

brioche while she was lying in bed, stayed in the kitchen to 

watch the dough being put in the oven. The kitchen was huge, 

and one could see that it was the most important room in the 

house from its extreme cleanliness, and from its copious arsenal 

of pots and pans, and utensils. There was the good smell of 

fine food. The cupboards and shelves were overflowing with 

provisions. 

‘And youMl make sure it’s nice and golden, won’t you.?’ 

added Madame Gregoire as she went off into the dining-room. 

Although the whole house was centrally heated by the main 

boiler, there was a coal fire to cheer up this room. Not that 

there was any luxury: just the large table, the chairs, and a 

mahogany sideboard; only two deep armchairs betrayed a love 

of comfort, and prolonged post-prandial relaxation. They never 

used the drawing-room; the family stayed in the dining-room 

together. 

Just then Monsieur Gregoire came in, dressed in a heavy 

fustian jacket, and, despite his sixty years, he too had a pink 

complexion, with kind, honest, open features, crowned by a 

mass of curly white hair. He had seen the coachman and the 

gardener: there was no major damage, only a fallen chimney¬ 

pot. Every morning he liked to take a look round La Piolaine, 

which was not big enough to create significant problems, but 

gave him ail the pleasures of property ownership. 

‘Where’s Cecile.?’ he asked. ‘Isn’t she going to get out of bed 

at all, today?’ 

‘I’m as surprised as you are,’ his wife replied. ‘I thought I 

heard her stir.’ 

The places were laid, with their three bowls on the white 

table-cloth. They sent Honorine to see what Miss Cecile was 

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11 

up to. But she came straight back down again, suppressing her 

laughter, lowering her voice as if she were still talking in the 

bedroom upstairs. 

‘Oh, if Sir and Madam could only see Miss Cecile! ... 

She’s as fast asleep as an angel in heaven ... You can’t 

imagine it, it’s a pleasure to see.’ 

Father and Mother exchanged a tender look. He smiled and 

said: 

‘Shall we go and look.?’ 

‘Poor little dear!’ she murmured. ‘I’m coming.’ 

And up they went together. Her bedroom was the only 

luxuriously furnished room in the house. The walls were 

covered in blue silk, there was white lacquered furniture with 

blue borders, a childish fancy that her parents had gratified. 

Softly framed by the white bed-linen, in the half-light which 

slipped between the slightly parted curtains, their daughter lay 

sleeping with her cheek resting on her bare arm. She was too 

healthy, robust, and well developed for her eighteen years to 

be called pretty; but she had a fine firm body with milk-white 

skin, chestnut hair, and a stubborn little nose rather lost amid 

her round cheeks. The covers had slipped down, but she 

breathed so lightly that her full young bosom hardly moved. 

‘That wretched wind must have kept the poor creature 

awake,’ her mother said quietly. 

Father made a sign to his wife to stop talking. They both 

bent in pious adoration over the unadorned, virginal body of 

the daughter they had awaited so long, who had arrived so late 

in their lives, after they had lost ail hope. In their eyes she was 

perfection itself, not too plump, never well-fed enough. She 

slept on, unaware of their presence beside her, of their faces 

next to hers. But then a slight tremor ruffled her limpid 

features. Afraid that they might wake her, they crept away on 

tiptoe. 

‘Shhl’ said Monsieur Gregoire when they reached the door. 

‘If she hasn’t slept, we must leave her to sleep on.’ 

‘As long as she likes, the poor darling,’ added Madame 

Gregoire. ‘We can wait.’ 

They went downstairs and settled into the armchairs in the 

dining-room; while the two maids, laughing at Miss Cecile’s 

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long lie-in, good-humouredly kept the chocolate wanning on 

the stove. Father had picked up a newspaper; Mother had 

started knitting a thick woollen counterpane. The house was 

snug and warm, and not a sound came to disturb the silence. 

The Gregoires’ fortune, around 40,000 francs a year in 

investment income, was derived entirely from their shares in 

the Montsou mines. They enjoyed telling how this had come 

to pass, way back at the time of the birth of the Company. 

Towards the start of the eighteenth century, a feverish coal- 

rush had broken out all the way from Lille to Valenciennes. 

The success of those who had bought concessions, and who 

would later come together to form the d^Anzin Company, had 

gone to people’s heads. In every village, people bored into the 

ground; companies were founded, and concessions were traded 

overnight. But, among the more stubborn entrepreneurs of the 

time, it was the Baron Desrumaux who had earned a reputation 

for the most heroic foresight. For forty years he had struggled 

relentlessly: failing in his first searches, working for long 

months to dig out new trenches only to be forced to abandon 

them in the end, his shafts blocked by rock falls and his 

workmen drowned by sudden flooding, thousands of francs 

dug in and buried; then the harassment by bureaucrats, the 

panic of the shareholders, the struggle with the hereditary 

landowners who were determined not to recognize the conces¬ 

sions leased by the Crown if they were not first consulted and 

cut in. He finally founded a company, called Desrumaux, 

Fauquenois, and Co., to work the Montsou concession, and 

the pits were just starting to show a slim profit when two 

neighbouring concessions, one at Cougny, which belonged to 

Count Cougny, and one at Joiselle, which belonged to the 

Cornille and Jenard Company, had almost driven him under 

with their ferocious competition. Fortunately, on 25 August 

1760, a pact was signed between the three concessions which 

merged them into one. The Montsou Mining Company was 

created, in the form still existing today. As part of the agree¬ 

ment, the whole property had been divided up into twenty- 

four parts of one sou each, aligned on the gold standard of the 

period, each of which was subdivided into twelve deniers, 

making 288 deniers in all; and, since a denier was equivalent to 

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79 

10,000 francs, the capital was worth a sum of nearly three 

million francs. Desrumaux had triumphed on his death-bed, 

for he had received six sous and three deniers in the share-out. 

In those days, the Baron was the owner of La Piolaine, 

which brought with it 300 hectares of land, and he took into 

service an estates manager named Honore Gregoire, a young 

man from Picardy, the great-grandfather of Leon Gregoire, 

Cecile’s father. When the Montsou pact was signed, Honore, 

who had nearly 50,000 francs of savings hidden under his 

mattress, succumbed faint-heartedly to his master’s unshake- 

able faith. He took out 10,000 pounds in shining crowns,* and 

bought a denier’s share, terrified that he might be stealing his 

children’s inheritance. And it is true that his son Eugene 

received very slim dividends; and as he had espoused the 

bourgeois life, but had foolishly squandered the remaining 

40,000 francs of the parental inheritance in a catastrophic 

business venture, he lived in rather straitened circumstances. 

But the returns from his denier gradually accumulated. It first 

started to add up to a fortune for Felicien, who was able to act 

out the dream which his grandfather, the former estates man¬ 

ager, had instilled in him from the cradle: the purchase of 

what was left of La Piolaine, for a mere pittance, after it had 

been confiscated by the State under the revolutionary regime,* 

Yet the next few years were unpromising, with the various 

disasters that beset the Revolution, and then the violent over¬ 

throw of Napoleon.* So that it was only Leon Gregoire who 

benefited from the staggering growth in the profits generated 

by the cautious and half-hearted investment of his great-grand¬ 

father. His 10,000 hard-won francs had increased and multi¬ 

plied with the prosperity of the Company. By 1820 they had 

achieved a 100 per cent return, 10,000 francs. By 1844, this 

had increased to 20,000; by 1850, 40,000. And finally, two 

years ago, the dividend had attained the staggering sum of 

50,000 francs: the value of a denier share, quoted at a million 

francs on the Lyons stock exchange, had multiplied a hundred¬ 

fold during the course of the century. 

Monsieur Gregoire, who had been advised to sell when the 

million had been reached, had refused, with his smiling, 

paternal air. Six months later there was a sudden industrial 

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slump, and the denier fell to 600,000 francs. But he kept 

smiling, and felt no remorse, for the Gregoires had always had 

a stubborn faith in their mine. Their shares would rise again, 

as indestructible as God himself. Mingled in with this religious 

faith was a profound gratitude for a valuable investment which 

had kept the family in comfort and idleness for a century. It 

was like a household god, the object of a self-indulgent cult, 

the patron saint of their hearth and home, cradling them in 

their big, soft beds and fattening them at their sumptuous 

table. From father to son it had lasted: why risk offending 

destiny by showing loss of faith.^ And at the heart of their 

worship was a superstitious terror that the million of their 

denier might suddenly dissolve if they withdrew it and placed 

it in a drawer. They felt it was safer to keep it buried 

underground, where a whole population of miners, starving 

generation after starving generation, could dig up a little for 

them every day, according to their needs. 

Moreover, the house was blessed with happiness. While he 

was still very young. Monsieur Gregoire had married the 

daughter of the pharmacist at Marchiennes, a plain and penni¬ 

less young woman whom he adored, and who had amply 

repaid him in domestic bliss. She had thrown herself into her 

household tasks and marital devotion, imagining no wishes but 

her husband’s; they were never separated by contradictory 

tastes, and shared an identical goal of perfect contentment; and 

thus they had lived for forty years, exchanging the daily tokens 

of mutual concern and affection. Their existence was smoothly 

self-regulating, for their 40,000-franc income as well as their 

savings were all effortlessly consumed in the interests of Cecile, 

whose belated birth had momentarily upset their budget. Even 

today they satisfied her every whim: a second horse, two new 

carriages, the latest Parisian fashions. But this only gave them 

a further source of enjoyment, since nothing could be too fine 

for their daughter, while they themselves found any personal 

display so distasteful that they still dressed in the styles of 

their youth. For themselves, they found any unprofitable 

expenditure ridiculous. 

Suddenly, the door opened, and a loud voice shouted: 

‘I say, whatever next, you’ve started breakfast without me!’ 

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It was Cecile, who had just climbed out of bed, her eyes still 

bleary with sleep. She had merely pinned up her hair and 

slipped into a white woollen dressing-gown. 

‘Of course not,’ her mother said, ‘you can see that we were 

waiting for you ... can’t you? The wind must have kept you 

awake, my poor darling!’ 

Her daughter looked at her in astonishment. 

‘Was it windy? .. . How should I know. I’ve been fast 

asleep all night.’ 

This seemed a great joke to everyone, and all three started 

to laugh; and the maids who were bringing in their breakfast 

burst out laughing too, the whole household happily amused at 

the realization that Miss Cecile had slept for twelve hours at a 

stretch. The arrival of the brioche made their pleasure visibly 

complete. 

‘Good heavens, has it just come out of the oven?’ asked 

Cecile. ‘What a trick to play on me! ... How super to have 

warm brioche to dip in our hot chocolate!’ 

Then at last they sat down to table, with the chocolate 

steaming in their bowls, and their conversation lingered on the 

topic of the brioche. Melanie and Honorine stayed on to 

supply details of the cooking, watching them tuck in with 

sticky lips, saying what a pleasure it was to bake a cake when 

their master and his family looked so happy to eat it. 

But then the dogs started barking noisily, as if to welcome 

the arrival of the piano teacher, who came from Marchiennes 

on Mondays and Thursdays. There was also a literature 

teacher. The girl’s whole education had thus taken place at La 

Piolaine, in a state of happy ignorance, for she threw her book 

out of the window as soon as she found a problem too tedious, 

‘It’s Monsieur Deneulin,’ said Honorine when she returned. 

Deneulin, a cousin of Monsieur Gregoire, walked in casually 

behind her, talking loudly and gesticulating briskly, rather like 

some retired cavalry officer. Although he was over fifty, his 

close-cropped hair and thick moustache were jet black, 

‘Yes, it’s me, hallo ... Please don’t get up!’ 

He sat down immediately amid the volley of familiar greet¬ 

ings, and then waited for them to get back to their chocolate. 

‘Has something happened?’ asked Monsieur Gregoire. 

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‘No, nothing at all,’ replied Deneulin, perhaps a shade too 

quickly. ‘I just set out for a ride to stretch my legs, and as I 

was passing by your door I thought Pd look in to pass the time 

of day.’ 

Cecile asked after his daughters Jeanne and Lucie. He 

replied that they were fine, the former busy with her painting 

and the latter, the elder, practising singing at the piano morning 

and night. Yet there was a slight quaver to his voice, a hidden 

disturbance beneath the outbursts of cheerfulness. 

Monsieur Gregoire asked again: 

‘And is everything all right at the pit.?’ 

‘God! Pm having trouble with this rotten slump, like all my 

friends .. . Ah! We’re paying for the years of prosperity! We 

built too many factories and railway lines, tied up too much 

capital in planning a massive increase in production. And now 

the money is frozen, we don’t have enough liquid cash to run 

the whole damn thing ... Luckily things haven’t gone too far, 

though, Pll get out of it somehow.’ 

Like his cousin he had inherited a denier share in Montsou. 

But as an engineer and a businessman, he was driven by the 

urge to make a fast fortune, and he had hastened to seihas soon 

as the denier had reached the million level. For some months 

he had been hatching a plan. His wife had received from one 

of her uncles the small concession of Vandame, where there 

were only two active pits, Jean-Bart and Gaston-Marie, and 

these were in such a state of neglect, and their equipment so 

defective, that their production hardly covered their running 

costs. Now his dream was to refurbish Jean-Bart, replace the 

old machinery and widen the shaft in order to go deeper, 

saving Gaston-Marie entirely for pumping and ventilation. 

That way, he argued, they would strike gold by the shovelful. 

His project was shrewd enough. The only problem was that he 

had sunk his million in it and the damned industrial crisis had 

broken out just when the big profits were lining up to prove 

him right. In addition to which he was not a good administra¬ 

tor; he was erratically generous with his workmen, and had let 

everyone cheat him since his wife had died. He had also given 

his daughters free rein, with the elder talking of taking to the 

stage and the younger already rejected by the Salon* for three 

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83 

of her landscapes, although both girls were equally merry in the 

face of disaster, which stimulated their housekeeperly qualities. 

‘You see, Leon,’ he continued, with a catch in his voice, 

‘you were wrong not to sell up at the same time as me. Now 

everything’s falling apart, and you can’t do a thing .., and yet 

if you had let me use your money, you can’t imagine what we 

would have done to our own little mine, at Vandame!’ 

Monsieur Gregoire was draining his chocolate in leisurely 

fashion. He replied calmly: 

‘Not on your life! . . . You know that I refuse to speculate. I 

live in perfect peace, and I would be crazy to plague myself 

with business worries. And as for Montsou, it could go even 

lower, and we’d still have enough to live on. You shouldn’t be 

so greedy, for heaven’s sake! And mark my words, you’re the 

one who’s going to be biting his nails one day, when Montsou 

comes back up again, and Cecile’s children’s children will still 

be living in clover off the proceeds,’ 

Deneulin listened to him with an embarrassed smile. 

‘So,’ he murmured, ‘if I asked you to put a hundred 

thousand francs into my business, you would refuse.^’ 

But, when he saw the worried expressions on the Gregoires’ 

faces, he regretted having said so much so soon, and he put off 

his thought of a loan until later, keeping it as a last resort. 

‘Oh, it hasn’t come to that yet! I was only joking ... 

Heavens! You may be right: the money which other people 

earn for you is the money which pays you best.’ 

They changed the subject of the conversation. Cecile got 

back to her cousins, whose tastes she found shocking but 

fascinating. Madame Gregoire promised to take her to see the 

two darlings, as soon as the fine weather arrived. Yet Monsieur 

Gregoire seemed absent, and didn’t keep up with the conversa¬ 

tion. He added aloud: 

‘If I was in your shoes I wouldn’t hold out any longer. I’d 

make a deal with Montsou ... They’re keen enough, and you 

would get your money back.’ 

He was referring to the long-standing feud between the 

Montsou and Vandame concessions. Despite the relative insig¬ 

nificance of the latter, its powerful neighbour was furious at 

having to endure the presence of this alien patch, which was 

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only a square league in area, ensconced in the midst of its 

sixty-seven-village territory; and having vainly attempted to 

stifle it, Montsou plotted to buy it up on the cheap when it 

was on its death-bed. There was no let-up in the war; each 

Company drove its tunnels to within 200 metres of the other’s, 

in a duel to the death, although the directors and the engineers 

maintained diplomatic relations with their counterparts. 

Deneulin’s eyes blazed. 

‘Not on your life!’ he cried in his turn. ‘As long as there’s 

breath in my body, Montsou shan’t have Vandame ... I had 

dinner with Hennebeau last Thursday, and I could see what 

he was angling for. Even last autumn when the top brass came 

down to see the Board, they were making all sorts of come- 

hither signals ... Oh yes, I know all those dukes and mar¬ 

quesses and generals and ministers! They’re no more than 

bandits hiding out in the woods getting ready to rob you of 

your shirt!’ 

He was unstoppable now. Besides, even Monsieur Gregoire 

didn’t defend the Montsou Board, whose six trustees had been 

established by the 1760 pact. They ruled the Company like 

tyrants, and when any one of their number died, the five 

survivors selected the new member from among the richest 

and most powerful shareholders. The opinion of the owner of 

La Piolaine, a man of moderation, was that these gentlemen 

sometimes lacked discretion in their unbridled lust for money. 

Melanie had come back to clear the table. Outside, the dogs 

had started to bark again, and Honorine was on her way to the 

door when Cecile, who was stifling with heat and full of food, 

left the table. 

‘No, don’t bother, that must be for my lesson.’ 

Deneulin too had got up. He watched the girl leave, and 

then he asked with a smile: 

‘Well then, how about this marriage with young Negrel.^’ 

‘Nothing’s been decided,’ said Madame Gregoire. ‘It’s just a 

thought... We need to sleep on it,’ 

‘Of course,’ he continued, with a suggestive laugh, ‘I’m sure 

that the nephew and the aunt ... What amazes me is that 

Madame Hennebeau should welcome Cecile with open arms.’ 

But Monsieur Gregoire became indignant. Such a distin- 

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85 

guished lady, and fourteen years older than the young man! It 

was appalling, he didn’t think one should joke about things 

like that. Deneulin, still laughing, shook hands and said 

goodbye. 

‘It still wasn’t her,’ said Cectle, as she came back. ‘It’s that 

woman with the two children, you know Mummy, the miner’s 

wife that we met. .. Should we let them in?’ 

They hesitated. Were they very dirty? No, not really, and 

they could leave their clogs on the doorstep. Father and 

Mother had already stretched out in their deep armchairs to 

relax. Their reluctance to move decided them. 

‘Let them in, Honorine.’ 

And in came La Maheude and her children. They were 

frozen and famished, and were stricken with panic to find 

themselves standing in such a room, which was so warm, with 

its lovely smell of brioche. 

CHAPTER II 

In the bedroom, some grey slivers of daylight had gradually 

started to filter through the slats of the closed shutters, and 

fanned out over the ceiling; the close air became muggier, as 

they all continued their night’s sleep: Lenore and Henri lying 

in each other’s arms, Alzire with her head thrown back on her 

hump; while old Bonnemort, taking up the whole of Zacharie’s 

and Jeanlin’s bed, was snoring with his mouth open. Not a 

whisper came from the recess on the landing, where La 

Maheude had fallen asleep again while suckling Estelle, with 

her breast hanging out on one side, and her little girl sprawling 

over her stomach, sated with milk and as drowsy as her 

mother, almost buried in the soft flesh of her breasts. 

Downstairs the cuckoo clock struck six o’clock. The sound 

of doors slamming echoed down the streets of the village, 

followed by the clattering of clogs on the cobbled pavement: 

the sorting girls were off to the pit. Then silence fell again, 

until seven o’clock, when the shutters sprang open, and yawns 

and coughs started echoing through the walls. A coffee-grinder 

86 Germinal 

squeaked away for some time without anyone in the bedroom 

waking. 

But suddenly an outbreak of slaps and screams in the 

distance made Alzire jump up with a start. She realized what 

the time was, and ran in her bare feet to shake her mother. 

‘Mum! Mum! it’s late. Remember you’ve got to go out ... 

Look out! you’ll squash Estelle.’ 

And she retrieved the baby, who was almost suffocating 

under the great mass of her mother’s breasts. 

‘For heaven’s sake!’ stammered La Maheude, rubbing her 

eyes, ‘you get so whacked you could sleep all day ... You 

dress Lenore and Henri and I’ll take them with me; so you 

look after Estelle, I don’t want to drag her along in case she 

catches cold in this lousy weather.’ 

She washed hurriedly, putting on her cleanest skirt, an old 

blue one, and a grey woollen jacket, which she had mended 

with two patches the night before. 

‘And then there’s the soup, for heaven’s sake!’ she muttered 

again. 

While her mother went crashing downstairs, Alzire went 

back to her room with Estelle, who had started to scream 

again. But she was used to the baby’s tantrums, and although 

she was only eight she called on the tender wiles of a woman to 

soothe and distract her. She laid her gently down in her bed, 

which was still warm, and lulled her back to sleep by giving 

her a finger to suck. And only just in time, for another storm 

broke; which meant that she had to get straight out of bed 

again to go and make peace between Lenore and Henri, who 

had just woken up. The only time that these two children were 

ever in agreement, and put their arms lovingly round each 

other’s necks, was when they were asleep. As soon as she 

awoke, the girl, who was six, fell upon the boy, who was two 

years younger, and pummelled him with blows that he was 

unable to return. They both had the same oversized, balloon¬ 

like head, with tangled, yellowish hair. Alzire had to grab her 

sister by the legs, and threaten to tan the skin off her backside. 

Then they kept squabbling while she was trying to get them 

washed, and she had to fight to get each garment on them. 

They kept the shutters closed, so as not to disturb old Bonne- 

Part II 87 

mort’s sleep. He kept snoring away, despite the dreadful 

hullabaloo created by the children. 

‘It’s ready! Have you finished up there?’ shouted La Ma- 

heude. 

She had opened the shutters, stoked the fire, and put on 

more coal. She had hoped that the old man wouldn’t have 

wolfed down all the soup, but she found the pan cleaned out, 

so she cooked a handful of vermicelli, which she had been 

keeping in reserve for the last three days. They would have to 

eat it on its own, without any butter; there wouldn’t be any of 

yesterday’s pat left; yet she was surprised to see that Catherine, 

who had prepared the sandwiches, had miraculously managed 

to save them a lump as large as a walnut. Only this time the 

cupboard really was bare: nothing, not a crust, no left-overs, 

not a bone to gnaw. What was to become of them, if Maigrat 

was determined to cut off their credit, and if the bourgeois at 

La Piolaine wouldn’t give her a hundred sous? When the men 

and the girl came back from the pit, they’d have to eat again; 

for nobody had yet discovered how to live without eating, 

unfortunately. 

‘Come on down, you loti’ she shouted, losing her temper. ‘I 

ought to be gone by now,’ 

When Alzire and the children had come down, she shared 

the vermicelli out on to three small plates. She wasn’t hungry 

herself, she said. Although Catherine had already boiled up 

yesterday’s coffee-grounds, she added more water and downed 

two large mugs of coffee so weak it looked like dishwater. It 

would keep her going all the same. 

‘Listen,’ she said to Alzire again, ‘you must let grandfather 

sleep, and make really sure that Estelle doesn’t hurt herself, 

and if she wakes up and screams too much, look, here’s a sugar 

lump, you melt it and then give her spoonfuls to drink ... I 

know you’ll be a good girl and not eat it yourself.’ 

‘But what about school, Mum?’ 

‘School can wait., . There’s too much to do today.’ 

‘And what about the soup, do you want me to make it, if 

you’re going to be late?’ 

‘What soup? Oh yes, the soup . .. No, better wait till I get 

back.’ 

88 

Germinal 

Alzire had the quick intelligence of an invalid child, and 

knew perfectly well how to make the soup. But she must have 

guessed the problem, for she didn’t insist. Now the whole 

village had woken up; groups of children were marching off to 

school, dragging their feet in their noisy galoshes. Eight o’clock 

struck, and the hum of chatter from the Levaques’ house on 

the left grew louder. The women’s day had started, as they 

manned the coffee-pots, with their hands on their hips and 

their tongues wagging tirelessly, thrashing like water-wheels. A 

withered face, with thick lips and a flattened nose, pressed up 

against one of the window panes, and called out to them: 

‘Have you heard the latest.^’ 

‘No, later!’ replied La Maheude. ‘I’ve got to go out.’ 

And fearing that she might succumb to the offer of a glass 

of hot coffee, she bundled Lenore and Henri quickly out of the 

house and walked away with them. Upstairs, old Bonnemort 

was still snoring, with a steady rhythm that gently rocked the 

whole household. 

Outside La Maheude was surprised to find that the wind 

had died down. There had been a sudden thaw; the sky looked 

the same colour as the earth, the walls were oozing with 

greenish moisture, and the roads clogged with mud, a mud 

that only the coal country knew, as black as liquid soot, thick 

and sticky enough to suck your clogs under. The next moment 

she had to smack Lenore, because the little girl was playing at 

picking up the mud on the end of her galoshes as if they were 

shovels. She left the village, walked past the slag-heap, and set 

off in the direction of the canal, taking short cuts down rough 

pathways leading over the waste land, in between rows of 

mouldy fences. Then she went past a series of sheds, then 

some long factory buildings, with their tall chimneys spewing 

out soot, polluting the ravaged countryside of this industrial 

suburb. Behind a clump of poplars, the old Requillart pit 

displayed its dilapidated headgear, with only its great, hollow 

frame still standing. And then La Maheude turned to the 

right, and found herself on the main road. 

‘Stop it, yoii dirty little pig!’ she shouted. ‘I’ll teach you to 

make mud pies.’ 

Now it was Henri who had picked up a handful of mud and 

Part II 

89 

was kneading it. Both children were smacked even-handedly, 

and they fell into line, squinting down at the tracks that they 

carved through the middle of the heaps of mud. They were 

soon exhausted by the effort of unsticking their soles after 

every step that they took, and they just skidded forward. 

Over towards Marchiennes the road ran straight ahead like a 

ribbon dipped in tar, unreeling its two leagues of cobbles 

between the reddish fields. But in the other direction it wound 

its way down through Montsou, which was built on the side of 

one of the gentle slopes of the plateau. These roads were 

springing up all over the Nord^ Department, shooting out like 

arrows from one manufacturing town to another, with only the 

slightest of curves and the smoothest of gradients, and they 

were turning the whole county into one single, industrial city. 

The small brick houses, which were brightly painted to make 

up for the dismal climate, some yellow, some blue, others 

black (the latter doubtless aspiring to reach their predestined 

state of blackness without undue delay), lined both sides of the 

road, following its curves right down to the bottom of the hill. 

One or two large detached two-storey houses, where the 

factory managers lived, interrupted the serried ranks of these 

mean terraces. There was even a church built of brick, looking 

like some new kind of blast-^fumace, with its square belfry 

already discoloured by the flying coal-dust. And yet, amid all 

the sugar-refineries, cable-works, and flour-mills, what stood 

out most were the dance halls, pubs, and beershops, which 

were so thick on the ground that they accounted for more than 

500 out of every 1,000 buildings. 

As she approached the Company’s yards, a vast series of 

warehouses and workshops, La Maheude decided to hold 

Henri’s and Lenore’s hands, to keep one child on either side of 

her. Beyond the yards, she saw the villa where the manager, 

Monsieur Hennebeau, lived, a kind of vast chalet set back 

from the road behind iron gates and a garden, planted with 

some rather neglected and spindly trees. And at that very 

moment a carriage had stopped at the door, delivering a 

gentleman with decorations and a lady in a fur coat, who must 

be Parisian visitors who had just turned up at the Marchiennes 

railway station; for Madame Hennebeau, who could just be 

90 Germinal 

seen in the half-light of the hallway, let out a little cry of 

surprise and delight. 

‘Walk properly, you lazy kids!’ scolded La Maheude, drag¬ 

ging her two children away from their games in the mud. 

She had reached Maigrat’s, which made her feel very nerv¬ 

ous. Maigrat lived right next door to the manager, in a little 

house separated from the villa by only a wall; and here he kept 

his general stores, in a long building which opened directly on 

to the street, but had no shop window. He stocked everything 

you could need, groceries, cooked meat, fruit, bread, beer, pots 

and pans. Maigrat was a former supervisor from Le Voreux, 

who had started by setting up a little snack bar; then, thanks to 

his former bosses’ protection, his business had grown steadily 

until it had wiped out all the small shopkeepers in Montsou. 

He was able to make bulk purchases and offer a variety of 

goods in one place, for the considerable clientele of the mining 

villages allowed him to sell cheaper and allow more credit. 

Moreover, he remained in the lap of the Company, since it had 

built his little house and his shop for him. 

‘It’s me again, Monsieur Maigrat,’ said La Maheude 

humbly, when she saw him standing in front of his door. 

He looked at her without answering. He was a fat, cold, 

formal man, who prided himself on never changing his mind. 

‘Look, please don’t send me away like you did yesterday. 

We can’t wait till Saturday for something to eat ... I know we 

still owe you sixty francs from two years ago.’ 

She continued her plea in short, painful sentences. It was an 

old debt, contracted during the last strike. Time and again 

they had promised to settle the debt, but they really hadn’t 

been able to, they hadn’t managed to spare even two francs a 

fortnight to give him. And to make matters worse, she’d had a 

stroke of bad luck just two days ago, when she’d had to pay 

twenty francs to the cobbler, who was threatening to send in 

the bailiffs. And that was why they were completely broke. 

Otherwise they could have held out till Saturday, like their 

workmates. 

But Maigrat stood there with his arms firmly crossed over 

his imposing stomach, shaking his head in rejection of every 

plea. 

Part II 

91 

‘Only two loaves of bread, Monsieur Maigrat, It's not 

much. I'm not asking for coffee ... Just two three-pound 

loaves a day.’ 

‘No!’ he shouted at last, at the top of his voice. 

His wife had come out, a sickly creature who spent all her 

days doing the books, without even daring to look up. She 

scuttled back again, frightened at the sight of this wretched 

woman turning her urgently pleading gaze on her. People said 

she vacated the marital bed when the tram girls came shopping, 

for it was a well-known fact that when a miner wanted his 

credit extended, he had only to send round his wife or his 

daughter, no matter whether they were pretty or plain, as long 

as they were compliant. 

As La Maheude kept looking beseechingly at Maigrat, she 

felt embarrassed to see by the gleam in his pale, narrow eyes 

that he was mentally stripping her naked. That infuriated her, 

though she wouldn't have thought it so bad when she was 

young, before she had had seven children. So she left, dragging 

Lenore and Henri roughly away from the gutter, where they 

were picking up nutshells. 

‘It’ll bring you bad luck, Monsieur Maigrat, don't you 

forget it!' 

Now her last resort was the bourgeois at La Piolaine. If they 

didn't cough up a hundred sous, she might as well lie down 

and die and her whole family with her. She took the left fork 

towards Joiselle. The Board was over there, at the comer of 

the road, a genuine red brick palace, where the bigwigs from 

Paris, and the princes and generals and government figures, 

came every autumn to hold their grand dinners. And while she 

walked she was already thinking how to spend her hundred 

sous: first some bread, then a bit of coffee, plus a quarter of a 

pound of butter, and a bushel of potatoes for soup in the 

morning and ratatouille in the evening; finally perhaps a bit of 

brawn, to make sure Father had his ration of meat. 

The vicar of Montsou, Father Joire, went by, holding up 

the hem of his cassock, mincing along like a well-fed cat afraid 

of getting his coat dirty. He was a mild man, who made a show 

of never getting involved in anything, in order to offend 

neither workers nor bosses. 

92 

Germinal 

‘Good mornings vicar,’ 

He walked right past her, smiling at the children, leaving 

her standing in the middle of the road. She had no religious 

feelings, but she had suddenly imagined that this priest might 

do something for her. 

And she started off on her trek again, through the black, 

sticky mud. There were still two kilometres to go, and the 

children were no longer enjoying themselves. They started 

dragging behind, showing signs of distress. On both sides of 

the road they passed the same patches of waste land bounded 

by mouldy fences, the same factory buildings, stained with 

soot and bristling with tall chimneys. Beyond them, the country¬ 

side unfurled its vast open fields, like an ocean of brown clods, 

without a single tree for a mast, over as far as the hazy violet 

line of the forest of Vandame. 

‘Carry me. Mum.’ 

She carried them, each in turn. There were puddles all over 

the road, and she tucked up her skirts, to avoid arriving too 

dirty. Three times she nearly fell over, the damned cobbles 

were so slippery. And, when they finally arrived at the steps to 

the house, two enormous dogs rushed at them, barking so loud 

that the children screamed with fright. The coachman had to 

take his whip to them. 

‘Take your clogs off, and come in,’ Honorine repeated. 

In the dining-room, the mother and her children stood 

motionless, dazed by the sudden heat and very embarrassed by 

the looks they got from the old gentleman and the old lady, 

reclining in their armchairs. 

‘My dear,’ said the lady, ‘you know what’s expected.’ 

The Gregoires entrusted Cecile with their good works. It 

was part of their notion of a proper education. You had to be 

charitable, and they themselves said that their house was 

God’s refuge for the needy. However, they prided themselves 

on the fact that they were thinking Samaritans, constantly 

worried that they might make a mistake and encourage some 

immoral tendency. So they never gave money, never ever! 

neither ten sous nor even two sous, for you know what the 

poor are like, as soon as they have two sous to rub together, 

they squander them on drink. Their alms, therefore, were 

Part H 

93 

always donations in kind, especially in warm clothes, which 

they gave out to needy children in winter-time. 

‘Oh, the poor little darlings!’ cried Cecile. ‘Aren’t they pale 

from the nasty cold weather.^^ ... Honorine, go and get the 

parcel from the wardrobe.’ 

The maids, too, looked at these wretches with the pity and 

the pang of concern of girls who never had to wonder where 

their next meal was coming from. While the chambermaid 

went upstairs, the cook forgot her duties, and put the remains 

of the brioche down on the table, and stood there with her 

arms dangling. 

‘It just happens that I’ve still got two woollen dresses and 

some scarves ... You’ll see, they’ll be nice and warm, the poor 

little darlings.’ 

At that La Maheude found her tongue again, and stammered: 

‘Thank you. Miss ... You are all very kind .. 

Her eyes had filled with tears, she thought the hundred sous 

were within arm’s reach, and she was only worried about the 

best way of asking for them if they didn’t make the first move. 

There was no sign of the chambermaid, and there was a 

moment of embarrassed silence. Clinging to their mother’s 

skirts, the children gazed at the brioche in wide-eyed wonder. 

‘Have you just those two children,?’ asked Madame Gregoire, 

to break the silence. 

‘Oh, no. Ma’am, I’ve got seven.’ 

Monsieur Gregoire, who had gone back to reading the 

paper, gave a start of indignation. 

‘Seven children, but whatever for, for heaven’s sake?’ 

‘It’s hardly wise,’ murmured the old lady. 

La Maheude made a vague gesture of apology. What did 

you expect? You didn’t think twice, they just came along, that 

was life. And then when they grew up they brought in a bit of 

money and that helped with the housekeeping. So, you see, 

they would have had enough to live on, if only the grandfather’s 

bones hadn’t seized up, and if only there were more than two 

of her boys and her eldest daughter old enough to go down the 

pit. You still had to feed the kids who did nothing all day. 

‘So,’ Madame Gregoire replied, ‘have you all been working 

at the mine for long?’ 

94 

Germinal 

La Maheude’s wan face lit up with silent laughter. 

‘Oh, dear, oh Lord, yes! ... I went down until I was 

twenty. The doctor said it would be the death of me when I 

had my second, because, so he said, it was doing my bones a 

mischief. Anyway that was when I got married and I had 

enough to do at home ... But on my husband’s side, you see, 

they’ve been going down for ever. Ever since his grandfather’s 

grandfather, well, nobody knows, right at the beginning, when 

they first started digging down there, at Requillart.’ 

Monsieur Gregoire looked dreamily at this pitiful woman 

and her children, with their waxen flesh, discoloured hair, 

rickety bones, anaemic thinness, and sad, ugly, hungry expres¬ 

sions. A new silence had come over them, nothing could be 

heard but the crackling of the gas escaping from the burning 

coal. The room exuded the moist, heavy, comfortable atmo¬ 

sphere that cradles the bourgeois family in their contented 

slumbers. 

‘Whatever can she be doing?’ cried Cecile impatiently. ‘Mela¬ 

nie, go up and tell her that the parcel is in the bottom of the 

wardrobe, on the left.’ 

Meanwhile, Monsieur Gregoire concluded aloud the results 

of his meditation on the sight of these starving creatures. 

‘This world is a difficult place, it is true; but, my good 

woman, I have to say that the workers are hardly wise ... You 

see, instead of putting money to one side like the peasants, the 

miners drink, run up debts, and in the end they can’t feed 

their families.’ 

‘You are right. Sir,’ replied La Maheude, soberly. ‘We don’t 

always follow the straight and narrow. That’s what I tell the 

layabouts, when they complain ... But I’ve been lucky, my 

husband doesn’t drink. All the same, sometimes on a Sunday 

night out he takes a drop too much; but he never goes too far. 

It’s all the nicer of him because he was a real swine of a 

drinker before we got married, excusing my language ... And 

you see it doesn’t get us anywhere now he behaves himself. 

There are some days, like today, when you could turn out 

every drawer in the house and not find a brass farthing.’* 

She was trying to turn their thoughts towards her hundred- 

sou piece, and she continued, in confidential tones, explaining 

Part 11 

95 

the fatal debt, which at first was small and safe, but soon 

started snowballing at a frightening rate. You paid up regularly 

every fortnight . .. But one day you got behind with it and it 

was all over, you could never catch up again. The hole in your 

pocket got deeper, the men got fed up with work, because it 

wouldn’t even pay off their debts. Damn it all, you were in it 

up to there until the day of your death. And besides, you had 

to understand: a collier needed a mugful to wash down the 

dust. That’s how it started and then as soon as you had any 

problems you couldn’t tear them away from the bar. Maybe 

even, although it was nobody’s fault, the workers didn’t get 

paid enough. 

‘But’, said Madame Gregoire, ‘I thought that the Company 

paid for your rent and your heating.’ 

La Maheude cast a sidelong gaze at the coal crackling in the 

grate. 

‘Oh yes, we do get some coal, pretty rotten stuff, but at least 

it burns ... As for the rent it’s only six francs a month: it 

doesn’t sound much, but it’s often dead hard to pay ... For 

instance, today, you could cut me up into little pieces, but you 

couldn’t get ten sous out of me. You can’t get something out 

of nothing.’ 

The master and his wife said nothing, relaxing in comfort, 

gradually finding it tedious and embarrassing to have this 

poverty spread before them. She was afraid that she had 

offended them, and she added, thoughtfully, as a fair and 

sensible woman: 

‘Oh, it’s not that I want to complain, you have to accept 

things as they are; especially since we could try as hard as we 

liked, we’d never change them an inch ,. . The best thing. Sir, 

Ma’am, is to try to get on with life honestly, isn’t it, in the 

place God gave you.’ 

Monsieur Gregoire approved of her sentiments entirely. 

‘With such feelings, my good woman, one rises above 

misfortune.’ 

At last Honorine and Melanie came down with the parcel. 

Cecile undid it herself and took out the two dresses. She added 

some scarves, and even stockings and mittens. It would all be a 

marvellous fit, and she hastened to get the maids to wrap up 

Germtnal 

96 

the clothes she had chosen; for her piano teacher had just 

arrived, so she pushed the mother and her children towards 

the door. 

‘We really are short of money,’ stammered La Maheude. ‘If 

we could just lay hands on a single hundred-sou piece .. 

She could hardly get the words out, for the Maheus were 

proud and were determined not to beg. Cecile looked anxiously 

at her father; but he refused point-blank, with a dutiful air. 

‘No, we don’t agree with that sort of thing. We cannot.’ 

Then their daughter, upset by the tragic expression on the 

mother’s face, wanted to shower the children with generosity. 

They were still staring at the brioche, so she cut off two slices 

to give to them. 

‘Here, this is for you.’ 

But then she took them back again, and asked the maids for 

some old newspaper. 

‘Wait, you must share it with your brothers and sisters.’ 

And under the tender gaze of her parents, she finally steered 

them out of the house. La Maheude’s poor kids, who didn’t 

have even a slice of bread to eat themselves, went away holding 

the brioche* respectfully in their cold, numb little hands. 

She dragged them back over the cobbles, looking neither at the 

empty fields, nor the black mud, nor the great, livid sky hanging 

over her head. As she was going back through Montsou, she 

marched determinedly into Maigrat’s and pleaded so fiercely that 

she finally made off with two loaves of bread, coffee, butter, and 

even her hundred-sou piece, for Maigrat also lent small sums of 

money. It wasn’t her he fancied, it was Catherine, as she realized 

when he advised her to send her daughter to collect the groceries. 

They would deal with that when the time came, if they had to. 

Catherine would belt him one if he crept up too close for comfort. 

CHAPTER III 

The clock on the little church of mining village Two Hundred 

and Forty was striking eleven. It was a brick chapel, where 

Father Joire came to say mass on Sundays. Beside it was 

Part II 

97 

another brick building, the school, where you could hear the 

repetitive chanting of the children, although the windows were 

closed because of the cold outside. Between the four large 

blocks of identical houses, the broad space that was divided up 

into little back-to-back gardens remained deserted; and these 

gardens, ravaged by winter, made a sorry sight, with their 

bare, clay soil sporadically defiled by a few late, stunted 

vegetables. People were preparing their soup, and the chimneys 

were smoking. Here and there a woman came into view 

somewhere along the terrace, opened a door, then disappeared 

inside. All along the street, the drainpipes dripped into the 

water-butts standing on the cobbled pavement, not because it 

was raining, but because of the heavy humidity in the grey air. 

And this village, built all of a piece in the middle of a vast 

plain, surrounded by its black roads as if by a mourning 

ribbon, had nothing more cheerful to show than the regular 

stripes of its red tiles, washed clean by the constant showers. 

On the way home La Maheude stopped off to buy some 

potatoes from the wife of a supervisor, who still had some of 

her own crop left over. Behind a curtain of rickety poplars, the 

only trees visible on this open ground, was an isolated group of 

buildings, comprising individual blocks of four houses, set in 

their own gardens. As the Company had reserved this new 

development for their deputies, the workers had dubbed this 

end of the village ‘Silk Stockings’; in the same vein they had 

called their own neighbourhood ‘Bailiffs’ Delight’, with a 

good-natured irony which made light of their poverty. 

‘Phew! here we are,’ said La Maheude, bundling her mud- 

spattered, worn-out children through the door before her and 

dumping her bulky packages. 

Estelle was screaming by the fireside, cradled in Alzire’s arms. 

When Alzire had run out of sugar, the only way she could think 

of to try to silence her was to pretend to suckle her. This pretence 

was often quite effective. But this time, although she had gone to 

the trouble of opening her dress and applying the baby’s mouth 

to her skinny, sickly eight-year-old breast, the child was furious 

at chewing on empty skin and getting nothing from it. 

‘Give her here,’ cried her mother, as soon as she had put 

everything down. ‘We won’t be able to hear ourselves think.’ 

98 

Germinal 

And when she had pulled from her bodice a breast as full as 

a wineskin, and the screaming brat had plugged herself in and 

suddenly fallen silent, they were at last able to talk. Otherwise 

everything was all right, the little housekeeper had kept the 

fire going, swept the floor, and tidied the room. And in the 

sudden silence, the grandfather could be heard snoring up¬ 

stairs, with the same regular rhythm that he had kept up all 

morning. 

‘What a lot of stuffl’ murmured Alzire, smiling at the 

provisions. ‘Pll make the soup, if you like, Mum.’ 

The table was piled high: there was a parcel of clothes, two 

loaves of bread, potatoes, butter, coffee, chicory, and half a 

pound of brawn. 

‘Oh, the soupP said La Maheude wearily. ‘I’d have to go 

and pick the sorrel and pull up the leeks ... No, I’ll make 

some for the men afterwards ... Put the potatoes on to boil, 

we’ll eat them with a bit of butter ... And the coffee, hey, 

don’t forget the coffee!’ 

But suddenly she remembered the brioche. She looked at 

Lenore and Henri, who were already rested and refreshed 

enough to have started fighting on the floor, and she saw that 

their hands were empty. Would you believe it, the greedy 

monkeys had already quietly finished off the brioche on the 

way home! She smacked them both, but Alzire, who was 

putting the cooking pot on the fire, tried to pacify her, 

‘Leave them alone. Mum. If it’s for my sake, you know I 

don’t like brioche very much. They must have been hungry 

from such a long walk.’ 

The clock struck twelve, and then they heard the galoshes of 

the children as they came home from school. The potatoes 

were cooked, the coffee, which was mixed with at least its own 

volume of chicory to make it go further, was bubbling tunefully 

through the filter. They had cleared one end of the table; but 

only the mother was using it, the three children were happy to 

eat off their knees; and all the while the little boy was eyeing 

the brawn with silent greed, excited by the sticky paper. 

La Maheude was drinking her coffee sip by sip, cupping the 

glass in her hands to warm them up, when old Bonnemort 

came down. Usually he got up later, and his lunch would be 

Part II 

99 

ready for him on the stove. But today he started grumbling, 

because there wasn’t any soup. Then, when his daughter-in- 

law replied that you didn’t always get what you wanted in life, 

he ate his potatoes in silence. From time to time he got up and 

went to spit politely into the cinders; then he sat huddled up 

in his chair with his head sunk on his chest, and concentrated 

on chewing his food slowly, moving it from one side of his 

mouth to the other, and staring into space. 

‘Oh, Mum, I forgot,’ said Alzire, ‘the next-door neighbour 

came round.’ 

Her mother broke in. 

‘She gets on my nerves!’ 

She bore La Levaque a lingering grudge, for she had cried 

poverty the day before so as not to lend her anything, and yet 

she knew full well that she was loaded at the time, because her 

lodger Bouteloup had just paid his fortnight’s rent. The village 

households didn’t go in for lending each other money. 

‘Oh, that reminds me,’ continued La Maheude, ‘wrap up a 

bit of coffee .., I’ll take it round to La Pierronne, I owe it her 

from the day before yesterday.’ 

And when her daughter had prepared the packet, she added 

that she would come straight back to put the men’s soup on 

to heat up. Then she went out with Estelle in her arms, leaving 

old Bonnemort slowly chewing his potatoes, while Lenore and 

Henri fought for the skins that had fallen on the floor. 

Instead of walking round by the road. La Maheude went 

straight across the gardens, to avoid being hailed by La 

Levaque; for her garden happened to back on to the Pierrons’, 

and there was a gap in the dilapidated fence between that 

allowed them to get through. The communal well for the four 

households was there. To one side, behind a clump of spindly 

lilacs, was what they called the hutch, which was a low shed, 

full of old tools, where they always kept a rabbit, to have one 

to eat on holidays. The clock struck one, which meant coffee¬ 

time, and not a soul could be seen at the doors or windows. 

There was only one man out digging his vegetable patch, 

doubtless a stoneman killing time waiting for his shift, and he 

didn’t even look up. But, as La Maheude reached the block of 

houses opposite, she was surprised to see a gentleman and two 

100 

Germinal 

ladies walking past the church. She stopped for a second, and 

recognized them: it was Madame Hennebeau, who was taking 

her guests, the decorated gentleman and the fur-coated lady, 

on a tour of the village. 

‘Oh, why ever did you bother.?’ exclaimed La Pierronne, 

when La Maheude had given her the coffee. ‘There was no 

hurry.’ 

She was twenty-eight years old, and was generally considered 

to be the village beauty. She was a brunette with a low 

forehead, big eyes, and fine lips: and she was smartly dressed 

to boot, as clean as the cat’s whiskers. She had a shapely 

bosom, since she hadn’t had any children. Her mother, old Ma 

Brule, the widow of a hewer who had died down the mine, had 

sent her daughter to work in a factory, swearing that she 

would never let her marry a coal-mining man, and now she 

lived in a permanent state of bad temper, after her daughter 

got married rather late on to Pierron, a widower if you please, 

who already had a little girl of eight. And yet the couple were 

perfectly happy, despite the tissue of tales woven around the 

husband’s complaisance and his wife’s lovers: they had no 

debts, they ate meat twice a week, and their house was so spick 

and span that you could use their saucepans for mirrors. And 

to add to their luck, because they knew the right people, the 

Company had authorized her to sell sweets and biscuits, which 

she displayed in jars on two shelves in her window. That 

meant a profit of six or seven sous a day, sometimes twelve on 

Sundays. And the only blots on all this happiness were the fact 

that old Ma Brule continued to scream fire and brimstone, 

spewing out her tireless revolutionary fury, fuelled by the urge 

to wreak vengeance on the bosses for the death of her man, 

and that little Lydie tended to collect more than her fair share 

of slaps in the course of their turbulent family life. 

‘Oh, aren’t we a big girl now!’ said La Pierronne, smiling 

and cooing at Estelle. 

‘Oh, you can’t believe the trouble they cause!’ said La 

Maheude. ‘You’re lucky you haven’t got any. At least you can 

keep your house clean.’ 

Although her own home was perfectly tidy, and she did the 

washing every Saturday, she cast jealous housewifely eyes on 

Part II 

lOI 

this beautifully light room, where there were even some pretty 

ornaments, like the gilt vases on the sideboard, the mirror, and 

the three framed prints. 

Meanwhile La Pierronne was drinking her coffee on her 

own, since her whole small family was at the pit, 

‘Do have a glass of coffee with me,’ she said. 

‘No, thanks. I’ve only just drunk my own.’ 

‘That doesn’t matter, does it.^’ 

And indeed it didn’t matter. And they both sat down and 

started slowly drinking. Their gaze slipped past the jars of 

biscuits and sweets, and lighted on the houses opposite, with 

their row of little curtained windows, whose greater or lesser 

whiteness betrayed their owners’ degree of housewifely virtue. 

The Levaques’ were very dirty, veritable dishcloths, which 

looked as if they had been used to wash up with. 

‘How can anyone live in such filth!’ murmured La 

Pierronne. 

Then La Maheude launched into an unstoppable tirade. Oh, 

if only she had a lodger like that Bouteloup, wouldn’t she have 

made the most of it for the housekeeping! When you knew 

how to manage them, lodgers were really good business, as 

long as you didn’t get into bed with them. And then the 

husband drank, beat his wife, and chased after the girls who 

sang in the pubs at Montsou. 

La Pierronne affected a profoundly disgusted look. Those 

singers gave you every disease in the book. One of them, at 

Joiselle, had infected a whole pitful of men. 

‘What surprises me is that you let your son go out with their 

daughter.’ 

‘Well, how do you think I could stop him.? . . . Their garden 

is next to ours. All summer Zacharie spent the whole time 

with Philomene under the lilacs, and they were at it all over 

the hutch—^you couldn’t draw water from the well without 

tripping over them.’ 

It was the usual story of promiscuity in the mining village, 

the boys and girls getting each other into trouble, going flat on 

their arses, as the saying went, on the low, sloping roof of the 

hutch, as soon as night fell. All the tram girls caught their first 

kids that way, except for those who took the trouble to walk all 

102 

Germinal 

the way to Requillart or to find somewhere to He down in the 

wheatfields. It didn’t really matter, they got married after¬ 

wards, only the mothers got angry when their boys started too 

soon, for a boy who got married stopped bringing his pay 

packet home to his parents. 

‘If I was you I’d try to have it over and done with,’ 

continued La Pierronne, ‘Your Zacharie’s given her a bun in 

the oven twice already, and they’ll go off and settle down 

somewhere else . .. Anyway, you’ve already lost your money 

on that one.’ 

La Maheude was furious, and clenched her fists. 

‘You listen to me: I’ll curse them if they get hitched ... 

Doesn’t Zacharie owe us any respect.^ Haven’t we spent money 

on him? Well, it’s his turn to pay us back, before he gets 

weighed down with a woman on his hands ... what would 

become of us, for heaven’s sake, if all our children went 

straight off to work for somebody else? We might as well drop 

dead straight away!’ 

But then she calmed down. 

‘I mean in general, of course, we’ll just have to see what 

happens ... Your coffee’s good and strong, isn’t it, you don’t 

do things by halves,’ 

And after another half-hour of gossiping, she slipped away, 

pleading that she hadn’t got the men’s soup ready yet. Outside 

the children were returning to school, a few women could be 

seen in their doorways, watching Madame Hennebeau, who 

was walking past one row of houses, pointing out the features 

of the village to her guests. Their visit was starting to create 

some excitement amongst the inhabitants. The tunnel worker 

stopped digging for a moment, and two disturbed hens cackled 

anxiously in their gardens. 

As La Maheude was going honie she bumped into La 

Levaque, who had gone out to catch Dr Vanderhaghen on his 

way past. He was one of the Company’s doctors, a small, 

harassed man, who gave his consultations on the run. 

‘Doctor,’ she said, ‘I can’t sleep a wink, I ache all over . .. 

we must have a talk about it, really,’ 

He was equally familiar with all his clients, and replied 

without stopping. 

Part II 

103 

‘Get along with you, my dear, you drink too much coffee, 

that's all’ 

‘But what about my husband?’ said La Maheude in her 

turn. ‘You said you would call in and see ... he’s still got 

those pains in his legs.’ 

‘Only because you’re wearing him out, get along with you!’ 

The women remained stock still, watching the retreating 

back of the doctor. 

‘Why don’t you come in,' said La Levaque, when she and 

her neighbour had both shrugged their shoulders in exaspera¬ 

tion. ‘You haven’t heard the news . .. And you must have a 

drop of coffee, won’t you, I’ve only just made it.’ 

La Maheude put up token resistance but easily succumbed. 

Go on, just a drop, so as not to offend her. And she went 

inside. 

The room was black with grime, the floor and the walls 

were spattered with grease, the sideboard and the table thick 

with muck; and a rank whiff of sluttishness caught in your 

throat. Sitting by the fireside, with both elbows on the table 

and his nose plunged in his dish, she saw Bouteloup, a heavily 

built but easy-going fellow, who looked younger than his 

thirty-five years. He was finishing off the remains of his broth. 

Little Achille, Philomene’s elder child, who was already over 

three years old, was standing beside him, watching him with 

the dumb pathos of a hungry animal The lodger, who was a 

tender man at heart, behind his wild black beard, popped a 

piece of his meat right into the child’s mouth from time to 

time. 

‘Wait for the sugar,’ said La Levaque, putting the brown 

sugar straight into the coffee-pot. 

She was six years older than him, hideous and worn out, 

with her breasts hanging down to her belly and her belly 

hanging down to her thighs. Her sagging face sprouted grey 

whiskers, and her hair was never combed. He had had her 

absent-mindedly, scrutinizing her no more than he did his 

soup, which often had hairs in it, or his bed, whose sheets did 

three months’ service at a stretch. She was part of the deal, 

and, as her husband would say, good friends mean good 

business. 

104 Germinal 

‘So, as I was saying,’ she went on, ‘they saw La Pierronne 

nosing round Silk Stockings last night. You can guess which 

gent was waiting for her behind Rasseneur’s, and they went off 

together along the canal ... eh, how about that, then, for a 

married woman!’ 

‘Heavens,’ said La Maheude. ‘Before he married her, Pierron 

used to give the deputy his rabbits, now he finds it cheaper to 

lend him his wife,’ 

Bouteloup burst out with a loud guffaw of laughter, dunked 

a bit of bread in the stew, and launched it into Achille’s 

mouth. The two women finished venting their feelings about 

La Pierronne, a flirt, no prettier than the others, but always 

examining her spots, washing herself, and putting on face 

cream. Anyway, she was her husband’s problem, if he liked his 

bread buttered that way. Some men were so ambitious they 

would wipe the boss’s bum, just to hear him say thank you. 

And they would have gone on all night if they hadn’t been 

interrupted by the arrival of a neighbour who brought in a 

nine-month-old kid, Desiree, Philomene’s youngest. The 

mother herself had her lunch at the screening shed, and 

arranged to have the little one brought over to her, so that she 

could give her the breast while she sat down on the coal for a 

moment. 

‘You know I can’t leave mine alone for a second, she starts 

screaming straight away,’ said La Maheude, looking at Estelle, 

who had fallen asleep in her arms. 

But she didn’t manage to avoid the show-down she had seen 

looming up for some time now in the whites of La Levaque’s 

eyes. 

‘Look here, isn’t it time we tried to get this thing settled.^’ 

At first both mothers had been in agreement about not 

allowing the marriage, without even needing to discuss it. If 

Zacharie’s mother wanted to keep on pocketing her son’s 

fortnightly pay packet, Philomene’s mother was equally ob¬ 

sessed by the idea of not losing her daughter’s. There was no 

hurry. La Levaque had even preferred to stay at home and 

look after the baby as long as there was only one of them; but 

now he had started to grow up and share their food, and 

another baby had turned up, she found she was losing out on 

Part II 

105 

the deal; and, since she had no intention of subsidizing them, 

she had become a fervent advocate of marriage. 

‘Zacharie has made his choice, there’s nothing stopping 

them ... When do you fancy.^’ 

‘Let’s leave it for the fine weather,’ replied La Maheude, 

embarrassed. ‘These things are a nuisance! As if they couldn’t 

have waited to be married before they got together! ... I give 

you my word. I’d strangle Catherine, if I found she’d been 

fooling around.’ 

La Levaque shrugged her shoulders. 

‘Don’t worry, she’ll do it same as everyone else!’ 

Bouteloup, with the relaxed air of a man thoroughly at 

home, searched the dresser looking for bread. Some half-peeled 

vegetables for Levaque’s soup, potatoes and leeks, were strewn 

over the end of the table, where they had been started and 

abandoned again ten times over during La Levaque’s endless 

gossiping. She had just got back to work once more, however, 

when she dropped everything yet again in order to take up her 

station by the window. 

‘What have we here ... Hey! It’s Madame Hennebeau with 

some people. And they’re going in to see La Pierronne.’ 

With that, the two of them fell to criticizing La Pierronne 

again. Oh! you could count on it, as soon as the Company 

brought any people to visit a miners’ village, they took them 

straight round to her house, because it was clean. And you 

could bet they didn’t let on about the business with the 

overman. It’s easy enough to keep clean and tidy when you 

have lovers who earn three thousand francs and have their 

heating and rent paid for them, not to mention the sweeteners. 

But even if it did look clean on top it wasn’t so clean if you 

looked underneath. And all the time the visitors were in the 

house opposite, they held forth. 

‘They’re coming out now,’ said La Levaque at last. ‘They’re 

doing the rounds ... Look out, dear, I think they’re coming to 

see you.’ 

La Maheude was terror-stricken. Who could tell whether 

Alzire had remembered to wipe the table.? Not to mention her 

soup, which wasn’t ready either! She stammered out her goodbye 

and fled, running straight home without looking to left or to right. 

io6 Germinal 

But everything was spick and span. Seeing that her mother 

had failed to return, Alzire had decided to make the soup. She 

had donned a tea towel for an apron, pulled up the last leeks 

from the garden, picked some sorrel, and she was at that 

moment in the process of cleaning the vegetables, while a large 

cauldron of bath water was heating on the fire, for the men 

when they got home. Henri and Lenore were behaving them¬ 

selves, for once, putting all their energy into tearing up an old 

calendar. Old Bonnemort was smoking his pipe in silence. 

Just as La Maheude was catching her breath, Madame 

Hennebeau knocked. 

‘You don’t mind, do you, my good woman.?*’ 

She was a tall, blonde woman in her forties, slightly heavy 

but splendidly blooming. She made a good attempt at an 

affable smile, and managed rather well to conceal her fear of 

dirtying the bronze silk outfit that she was wearing under her 

black velvet cape. 

‘Come in, come on in,’ she repeated to her guests. ‘Nobody 

minds ... Look, isn’t this one clean, too? And the good 

woman has seven children! ... All our households are like this 

... As I said, the Company lets them the house for six francs a 

month. There’s a large room downstairs, two bedrooms up¬ 

stairs, a cellar and a garden.’ 

The decorated gent and the fur-coated lady, fresh off the 

train from Paris that morning, stared vacantly round the room, 

showing by their expressions that they were out of their depth 

in this stark and unfamiliar world. 

‘And a garden,’ repeated the lady. ‘But it’s divine, one could 

really live here!’ 

‘We give them more coal than they can burn,’ Madame 

Hennebeau went on. ‘A doctor visits them twice a week; and, 

when they are old, they get pensions, although nothing is 

deducted from their wages.’ 

‘It’s Eldorado! The promised land!’ murmured the gentle¬ 

man, enchanted. 

La Maheude had hastened to offer them chairs, but the 

ladies declined. Madame Hennebeau was already bored, al¬ 

though she had been amused for a moment to forget her weary 

exile and act the role of safari guide; but she was soon repelled 

Part II 

107 

by the stale odour of poverty, despite the carefully selected 

cleanliness of the houses where she ventured. Besides, she only 

ever repeated snatches of things she had heard people say, 

never bothering to understand this race of workers, who toiled 

and suffered so close by her side. 

‘What lovely children,’ murmured the lady, who thought 

they were dreadful, with their oversized heads and their matted, 

straw-coloured hair. 

Then La Maheude had to tell them their ages, and they 

asked her about Estelle, to be polite. As a mark of respect old 

Bonnemort had taken his pipe out of his mouth; but they still 

found him disturbing enough, he was so ravaged by his forty 

years down the pit, with his stiff legs and his broken frame and 

his ashen face. Just then, he was seized by a violent fit of 

coughing, so he thought he had better go outside and spit, in 

case the black phlegm upset the visitors. 

Alzire was the main attraction. What a pretty little house¬ 

wife, with her tea towel! They complimented the mother on 

having a little girl who was so sensible so young. And no one 

mentioned her hump, although they did keep sneaking looks of 

embarrassed compassion at the poor little cripple. 

‘Well then,’ Madame Hennebeau concluded, ‘if they ask you 

about our mining villages when you get back to Paris, you 

know what to say. Never a voice raised in anger, traditional 

family morality, everyone healthy and happy as you can see, a 

place where you could go for a holiday, just for the fresh air 

and the peace and quiet.’ 

‘It’s marvellous, too marvellous!’ cried the gentleman, with 

a final burst of enthusiasm. 

They left with an air of enchantment, as if they had just 

seen a fairground side-show, and La Maheude saw them to the 

door, then waited there while they walked slowly away, talking 

at the top of their voices. The streets had filled with people, 

and they had to walk through groups of women, who had been 

attracted by the news of their visit, which they broadcast from 

house to house. 

La Levaque, for instance, had intercepted La Pierronne at 

her front door, when she rushed up out of curiosity. Both 

claimed to be disagreeably surprised. Well, whatever next, 

io8 Germinal 

were they going to spend the night there, at the Maheus’? 

There wasn’t that much to see there, surely. 

‘Always broke, despite what they earn! Heavens, when you 

can’t control yourselfl’ 

‘I’ve just heard that she went this morning to see the 

bourgeois at La Piolaine, and Maigrat who refused to give 

them any bread has given her some now ... you know what 

Maigrat wants to be paid with.’ 

‘Nothing she’s got to offer, I reckon, you’d have to be pretty 

desperate .,. It’s Catherine he wants it from.’ 

‘Oh, just think, you wouldn’t believe the cheek, she told me 

just now that she’d strangle Catherine if she caught her at 

it! . .. As if that great oaf Chaval hadn’t had her flat on her 

arse on the hutch ages ago!’ 

‘Shh!... Here they come.’ 

La Levaque and La Pierronne, affecting the courteous air of 

the discreetly incurious, contented themselves with watching 

the visitors leave out of the corner of their eyes. Then they 

made urgent signs to La Maheude, who was still carrying 

Estelle in her arms. And all three watched motionless while 

the well-dressed backs of Madame Hennebeau and her guests 

receded into the distance. As soon as they were about thirty 

paces away, the gossiping started up again more furiously than 

ever. 

‘They’ve got a gold mine on their backs, worth more than 

they are, I reckon!’ 

‘You bet... I don’t know the stranger, but I wouldn’t give 

tuppence for the one from round here, despite all the fine flesh 

on her. I’ve heard plenty of stories ...’ 

‘Eh.? What stories.?’ 

‘They say she has men, you know! ... First there’s the engi¬ 

neer ...’ 

‘That weedy little runt! ... Oh, he’s too skinny, she’d lose 

him in the bedclothes.’ 

‘Why should you care, as long as it keeps her happy.? ... I 

have my doubts, you know, when I see a lady who looks so 

snooty that she’s never satisfied wherever she is . .. Look at 

her sticking out her backside as if she despised the lot of us. Is 

that decent?’ 

Part II 

109 

The tourists were moving away at the same slow pace, still 

talking, when a carriage, a barouche in fact, came down the 

road and drew up in front of the church. A gentleman of about 

forty-eight, wearing a tightly buttoned black frock coat, got 

out. His complexion was very dark, and he had a severe, 

formal expression. 

‘The husband!’ murmured La Levaque, lowering her voice 

as if he could hear her, gripped by the hierarchical fear that 

the manager inspired in his 10,000 workmen. ‘But it’s true, 

you can see from his face he’s a cuckold, can’t you!’ 

By now the whole village had come outside. As the curiosity 

of the women increased, the groups came closer together and 

merged into a crowd; while bands of snotty-nosed kids hung 

about the roadside gawping. At one moment even the school¬ 

teacher’s pale face popped up over the school hedge. In the 

middle of the gardens, the man who had been digging stood 

still with his foot on his spade, staring wide-eyed. And the 

murmur of their gossiping gradually grew into a rustling noise, 

like the wind blowing through dry leaves. 

It was mainly in front of La Levaque’s door that the 

meeting had congregated. Two women had come round, then 

ten, then twenty. La Pierronne fell cautiously silent, now that 

there were too many ears listening. La Maheude, who was one 

of the most sensible, was also content just to watch; and in 

order to pacify Estelle, who had woken up and started scream¬ 

ing, she had calmly taken out her maternal breast, which hung 

there in broad daylight like a cow’s udder, distended by its 

bountiful flow of milk. When Monsieur Hennebeau had seated 

his ladies in the back of his carriage, and whisked them off 

towards Marchiennes, there was a last explosion of chattering 

voices. The women gesticulated, and talked too volubly to 

listen, creating a commotion reminiscent of an ant-hill in an 

emergency. 

But the clock struck three. The stonemen, Bouteloup and 

the others, had gone. Suddenly, the first colliers hove into 

view around the church corner on their way back from the pit, 

with their black faces and soaking clothes, hunching their 

shoulders and hugging their chests. Their arrival sent a flurry 

of panic through the crowd, and all these housewives ran off 

no 

Germinal 

home, upset at having been caught in the act of over-indulging in 

coffee and gossip. And on all sides there arose the same anxious 

lament, as they knew the trouble they had let themselves in for: 

‘Oh, my God, my soup! My soup isn’t even ready yet!’ 

CHAPTER IV 

When Maheu got home, after leaving Etienne at Rasseneur’s, 

he found Catherine, Zacharie, and Jeanlin already seated round 

the table finishing their soup. When they got back from the pit 

they were so hungry that they ate in their damp clothes before 

even cleaning themselves up, and nobody waited, the table was 

laid from morning to night, there was always someone there 

swallowing his rations, depending on the time of his shift. 

As soon as he came through the door, Maheu noticed the 

provisions. He said nothing, but his worried face lit up. All 

morning he had been plagued by the thought of the empty 

cupboard, the house with no coffee or butter, it had racked 

him with sudden pangs while he was hacking at the seam in 

the suffocating heat of the coal-face. How would his wife have 

got on.^ And what was to become of them if she returned 

empty-handed.? And now, he saw that they had everything 

they needed. She would explain later. He laughed with relief. 

Catherine and Jeanlin had already left the table and were 

drinking their coffee standing up; while Zacharie, who still felt 

empty after the soup, cut himself a large slice of bread and 

covered it in butter. Of course he had seen the brawn on the 

plate; but he didn’t touch it; if there was only one portion of 

meat, then it was for Father. They had all chased their soup 

down with a great gulp of cold water, the fine clear drink that 

marked the end of the fortnight. 

‘I haven’t got any beer,’ said La Maheude when Father had 

taken his turn to sit at the table. ‘I wanted to keep a bit of 

money over ... But if you want some, the little one can run 

and get you a pint.’ 

He looked at her and beamed. She even had some money 

left over as well! 

Part II 

in 

‘No, no need/ he said. ‘Pve had a glass already, thanks.' 

And slowly but surely Maheu started to swallow the mixture 

of bread, potatoes, leeks, and sorrel, eating it straight out of 

the brimming bowl which he used as a dish. La Maheude, still 

holding Estelle in her arms, helped Alzire make sure that he 

had everything he wanted, pushed the butter and the pork 

within his reach, and put his coffee back on the stove to keep it 

nice and warm. 

Meanwhile, beside the fire, the ablutions commenced, in a 

half-barrel converted into a bath-tub. Catherine, who went 

first, had filled it with lukewarm water; and she took her 

clothes off with no embarrassment, first her cap, then her 

jacket, her breeches, and finally her shirt, as she had ever since 

she was eight years old, a habit she had grown up with without 

seeing anything wrong in it. She did turn her body towards 

the fire, however, then she rubbed herself vigorously with a 

piece of black soap. Nobody watched her; even Lenore and 

Henri were no longer curious to see what she looked like. 

When she was clean, she went upstairs stark naked, leaving her 

soaking shift and her other clothes in a heap on the floor. But 

then a quarrel broke out between the two brothers. Jeanlin had 

quickly leapt into the tub, arguing that Zacharie was still 

eating; and the latter pushed him aside and claimed that it was 

his turn first, shouting that he might be kind enough to let 

Catherine take her dip first, but he didn't want to swim in that 

urchin's dishwater, especially as, by the time he had finished 

with the water, you might as well fill the school ink-wells with 

it. In the end they got washed together, both facing the fire 

too, and they even lent each other a hand to scrub their backs. 

Then, like their sister before them, they went upstairs stark 

naked. 

‘What a mess they make!' muttered La Maheude, picking 

their clothes up off the floor and hanging them up to dry. 

‘Alzire, mop up a bit, will you.?' 

But the sound of an uproar on the other .side of the wall cut 

short her complaint. There was a man swearing and a woman 

crying, then the whole din of battle, including some dull thuds 

which sounded like someone kicking a sack of potatoes. 

‘La Levaque's facing the music,’ stated Maheu calmly, as he 

II2 

Germinal 

scraped the bottom of his bowl with his spoon. ‘It’s odd, 

Bouteloup claimed the soup was ready.’ 

‘Like hell it was,’ said La Maheude. ‘I saw the vegetables on 

the table, she hadn’t even peeled them.’ 

The shouts and cries got louder, something lurched violently 

against the wall, making it shake, then a long silence fell. Then 

the miner, swallowing his last spoonful, concluded with an air 

of impartial justice: 

‘It’s fair enough, if the soup wasn’t ready.’ 

And when he had drunk a full glass of water, he started on 

the brawn. He cut it into square pieces, spearing them on his 

knife and eating them on his bread without a fork. Nobody 

spoke while Father was eating. He himself fell silent while he 

was busy satisfying his hunger; although he didn’t recognize 

Maigrat’s usual cold meat, and thought it must have come 

from somewhere else; he didn’t ask his wife any questions. He 

just asked whether the old man was still asleep up there. No, 

Grandfather had already gone out for his usual walk. And 

silence reigned again. 

But the smell of meat had alerted Lenore and Henri, who 

looked up from their game of making rivers with the spilled 

bathwater. They both came and stood beside their father, the 

little boy in front. Their eyes followed the fate of every morsel, 

watching hopefully as it left the dish, and observing tragically 

its demise in their father’s mouth. After a while, he noticed 

that they were pale with greed and were licking their lips. 

‘Have they had some.^’ he asked. 

And when he saw his wife hesitate, he said: 

‘You know I don’t like to be unfair. It spoils my appetite to 

see them hanging around me begging.’ 

‘Yes, they damn well have,’ she shouted angrily. ‘Of course, 

if you listen to them you’d give them your share and everyone 

else’s, and they’d stuff their faces till they burst ... It’s true, 

isn’t it, Alzire, we’ve all had some brawn?’ 

‘Of course we have, Mum,’ replied the little hunchback, 

who on great occasions like this could lie with all the sang¬ 

froid of a grown-up. 

Lenore and Henri were dumbstruck with emotion, disgusted 

by such spectacular mendacity, when they would have been 

Part II 113 

whipped if ever they didn’t tell the truth. Their little hearts 

beat furiously, and they were sorely tempted to protest, to say 

that they weren’t there, personally, when the others had had 

theirs. 

‘Be off with you then!’ continued their mother, who shooed 

them away to the other end of the room. ‘You should be 

ashamed to be nosing around your father’s plate like that. And 

even if he was the only one to have some, why shouldn’t he, he 

does all the work, doesn’t he, while you little layabouts do 

nothing all day but spend our money, piles of it, more than 

your weight in gold!’ 

Maheu called them back to his side. He sat Lenore down on 

his left knee and Henri on his right; then he turned the rest of 

his lunch into a picnic, cutting the brawn into little pieces, one 

for you, one for me. The children were delighted and wolfed it 

all down. 

When he had finished he said to his wife: 

‘No, don’t serve the coffee yet. I’m going to get washed first 

, , . And lend me a hand to get rid of the dirty water.’ 

They grabbed hold of the handles of the tub, and were 

emptying it into the gutter outside the door, when Jeanlin 

came downstairs, wearing dry clothes, a faded woollen jacket 

and breeches which were too big for him, having already done 

their share of service for his brother. Seeing him trying to slip 

through the open door on the sly, his mother stopped him. 

‘Where are you going.^’ 

‘Out.’ 

‘Out where.^ .. . Listen, you can go and gather some dande¬ 

lion leaves for the salad this evening. Hey, are you listening, if 

you don’t bring the dandelion leaves back. I’ll give you what 

for.’ 

‘Oh, all right.’ 

Jeanlin went off with his hands in his pockets, dragging his 

feet, swaying his skinny, rickety ten-year-old hips as if he were 

a mature miner. Then Zacharie came down, more neatly 

dressed, sporting a tight black woollen sweater with blue 

stripes. His father shouted out to him not to be late home, and 

he nodded his head as he left, but without removing his pipe 

from between his teeth. 

114 

Germinal 

Once again the tub was filled with warm water. Maheu was 

already slowly peeling his jacket off. Alzire caught her mother’s 

eye and took Lenore and Henri to play outside. Father didn’t 

like getting washed in the tub surrounded by the rest of the 

family, although lots of the other men in the village didn’t 

mind. Not that he had anything against it, he just said that it 

was all right by him if the children wanted to splash around 

together. 

‘What are you doing up there?’ La Maheude shouted 

upstairs. 

‘I’m mending my dress, I tore it yesterday,’ Catherine 

answered. 

‘That’s all right... Don’t come down, your father’s getting 

washed.’ 

So Maheu and his wife were alone. She had decided to put 

Estelle down on a chair, and by some miracle the baby was 

pleased to be by the fireside, and didn’t scream, but merely 

turned her mindless little infant eyes towards her parents. 

Maheu squatted quite naked in front of the tub, dipping his 

head in first, when he had finished scrubbing it with the black 

soap whose constant use from generation to generation turns 

the hair of a whole race of miners into a discoloured, yellow 

thatch. Then he got into the water, smeared soap over his 

chest and stomach, arms and thighs, and scrubbed away 

energetically with both hands. His wife stood watching him. 

‘You know,’ she started, ‘I saw the look on your face when 

you came in ... You were worried, weren’t you? You weren’t 

half relieved when you saw the groceries ... Can you believe 

it, the bourgeois at La Piolaine wouldn’t cough up a single 

sou. Oh, they were kind enough, they’ve given us clothes for 

the little ones, and I felt too ashamed to ask for money, the 

words just stick in my throat.’ 

She broke off for a moment, to wedge Estelle more securely 

in the chair, in case she fell off. Father continued to rub 

away at his skin, not wanting to spoil the story by asking 

any questions, despite his curiosity, patiently waiting to be 

enlightened. 

‘And you know Maigrat had already turned me down, point 

blank, just like I was a dog he was kicking out ... Guess how 

Part II 

cheerful I felt! Woollen clothes keep you warm, but you can’t 

eat them, can you?’ 

He looked up, and still said nothing. Nothing from La 

Piolaine, nothing from Maigrat, so how come? But as usual she 

merely roiled up her sleeves, and started washing his back and 

the other bits that were hard to reach. Besides, he enjoyed it 

when she covered him in soap, and then rubbed him all over 

till her wrists were aching. She picked up the soap and 

pummelled his shoulders, while he tensed his muscles to resist 

the pressure. 

‘So, back I went to Maigrat, I told him what I thought, I 

really told him ... I said he must be made of stone, and he’d 

come to a sticky end, if there was any justice in this world ... 

He didn’t like that much, he looked the other way, he would 

have liked to escape . . .’ 

She moved down the back to the buttocks; then swept 

onwards into the nooks and crannies, leaving not an inch of his 

body unscrubbed, making him shine like her three saucepans 

when she did her Saturday spring cleaning. But she got 

terribly hot and sweaty from lathering away with her arms, all 

shaken and breathless, so that her words came out in fits and 

starts. 

‘Anyway, he called me an old leech . ., We’ve got enough 

bread to last till Saturday, and best of all, he lent me a 

hundred sous ... I got the butter and the coffee and the 

chicory from him, and I was even going to get the cold meat 

and the potatoes, but I saw he was getting annoyed ... Seven 

sous for the brawn, and eighteen for the potatoes, so Fve got 

three francs seventy-five left over for a stew and some boiled 

beef... Well, I didn’t waste my day, did I?’ 

Then she wiped him dry, patting away with a towel at the places 

which stayed obstinately wet. He was enjoying this, and, without 

stopping to worry about the extra debt they were laying up for the 

morrow, burst out laughing and grabbed her in his arms. 

‘Let me go, you big silly! You’re soaking, you’re getting me 

wet ... The only thing is, I hope Maigrat hasn’t got the 

wrong idea . . .’ 

She was going to mention Catherine, but she stopped. Why 

bother Father with it? She’d never hear the end of it. 

ii6 Germinal 

‘What idea?’ he asked. 

‘Like taking us for a ride^ of course! We must get Catherine 

to check the bill twice over.’ 

He grabbed hold of her again, and this time refused to let 

go. The bath always finished this way, she excited him with 

her brisk rubbing, then by patting him all over with towels, 

which tickled the hairs on his arms and his chest. In fact this 

was the time when his workmates in the village usually started 

fooling around, only to find themselves fathering more children 

than they intended. At night you had the whole family under 

your feet. He pushed her towards the table, teasing her, he’d 

been waiting all day for a nice bit of pudding, as he called it, 

and a free helping at that. And she pretended to struggle, all 

part of the game, with her stomach and her breasts softly 

heaving. 

‘For heaven’s sake, what a silly! With Estelle watching us! 

Wait till I turn her head the other way.’ 

‘Oh, heavens, do you think they know what’s going on at 

three months old?’ 

When they had finished, Maheu simply put on some dry 

breeches. His little treat, when he was nice and clean and had 

had his bit of fun with his wife, was to leave his chest bare for 

a while. His pale skin, as white as that of an anaemic girl, was 

covered in tattoo marks scraped and scored by the coal, 

‘cuttings’, as the miners call them; and he displayed them 

proudly, flexing his strong arms and broad chest, which 

gleamed like blue-veined marble. In summer, all the miners 

sat out on their doorsteps like this. Despite the day’s wet 

weather, he even went outside for a moment, to exchange 

ribald remarks with another bare-chested neighbour, on the 

other side of the gardens. Other men came out too. And the 

children, who had been playing on the pavements, looked up, 

and laughed with pleasure at the sight of all this tired flesh 

released from work and at last allowed to breathe in some fresh 

air. 

While he was drinking his coffee, and still had no shirt on, 

Maheu told his wife how the engineer had got mad about the 

timbering. He was calm and relaxed, and he nodded his head 

in approval of La Maheude’s wise counsel, for she was always 

full of good advice on these occasions. She always maintained 

that there was no point in butting your head up against the 

Company. Then she told him about Madame Hennebeau’s 

visit. Although neither of them said so, they both felt proud of 

it. 

‘Can we come down.^’ asked Catherine from the top of the 

stairs. 

‘Yes, it’s all right, your father’s getting dried.’ 

Their daughter was wearing her Sunday dress, an old one 

made of bright blue poplin, already faded and worn at the 

pleats. She had put on a very plain black tulle bonnet. 

‘Well, you’re all dressed up .. . Where are you going, then.^’ 

‘I’m going to Montsou to buy a ribbon for my bonnet ... 

I’ve taken the old one off, it was too dirty.' 

‘So you’ve got some money, then.?*’ 

‘No, but Mouquette has promised to lend me ten sous.’ 

Her mother let her go. But when she reached the door she 

called her back, 

‘Listen, don’t go and buy your ribbon from Maigrat ... 

he’ll only rip you off and he’ll think we’re rolling in money.’ 

Her father, who was squatting in front of the fire to dry his 

neck and armpits quicker, merely added: 

‘And try not to be out on the streets after dark.’ 

That afternoon Maheu was busy in the garden. He had 

already sown his potatoes, beans, and peas, and the previous 

day he had heeled in his cabbages and lettuce plants, which he 

was now ready to prick out. This patch of garden kept them in 

vegetables, except for potatoes, which they never had enough 

of. In fact he was very good at growing things, and even 

managed to grow artichokes, which the neighbours thought he 

did just to show off. While Maheu was preparing his trench, 

Levaque came to smoke a pipe in his own patch, admiring the 

cos lettuce that Bouteloup had planted that morning; for 

without the lodger’s energetic spade work, there would have 

been nothing growing there but nettles. And they started to 

chat over the fence. Levaque, refreshed and reinvigorated after 

beating his wife, tried in vain to persuade him to come round 

to Rasseneur’s. Look, he wasn’t afraid of a pint of beer, was 

he? They’d play a round of skittles, they’d stop and say 

ii8 Germinal 

hallo to their mates^ then they’d come back home for dinner. 

That’s what life was all about, after a day down the pit. Maheu 

wasn’t saying that there was anything wrong with it, but he 

stuck to his guns, because if he didn’t prick out his lettuces, 

they would be dead by the morning. But his real motive for 

refusing was thrift—^he didn’t want to have to ask his wife for 

as much as a farthing out of the change from the hundred 

sous. 

The clock was striking five when La Pierronne came to see 

if it was Jeanlin that her Lydie had gone off with. Levaque 

replied that something like that must have happened, for 

Bebert had disappeared too, and the two ruffians were always 

up to their tricks together. When Maheu had calmed them 

down, explaining about the dandelion salad, he and his mate 

started to taunt the young woman, with good-humoured coarse¬ 

ness. She protested, but didn’t depart, for she was secretly 

excited by their rude language, although it had her gasping for 

breath and screaming for mercy. She soon received succour in 

the shape of a thin woman, stammering with fury like a 

clucking hen. Other women, further down the street, came to 

their doors and shouted out protests in sympathy. Now school 

was over, and all the brats were wandering around, there was a 

swarm of little creatures tumbling about, whining and fighting; 

while the fathers who hadn’t gone to the pub formed little 

groups of three or four, found a wall to shelter behind, 

squatted down on their heels as if they were at the bottom of 

the mine, and stayed there smoking their pipes, exchanging 

only the occasional word. La Pierronne departed in a fury, 

after Levaque had tried to pinch her thighs to see if the flesh 

was firm; and he decided to go off to Rasseneur’s on his own, 

since Maheu was still planting away. 

The day suddenly drew in, and La Maheude lit the lamp, 

annoyed that neither her daughter nor her boys had returned. 

She might have bet on it: you could never get them together 

for the one meal where she could have had everyone round the 

same table. And then she was waiting for the dandelion leaves, 

too. How could he be picking anything at this time of night, it 

was black as pitch, the stupid little brat! The salad would have 

gone so well with the ratatouille that she had put to simmer on 

Part II 

119 

the stove, made of potatoes, leeks, and sorrel chopped up with 

fried onion! The whole house wallowed in the rich smell of 

fried onion, which soon turns rancid, impregnating the bricks 

of the village with noxious vapours so strong that your nostrils 

are assailed by the violent odour of this poor man’s cuisine 

from miles away across the country, 

Maheu left the garden as night was falling. He slumped 

down into a chair straight away, resting his head against the 

wall. As soon as he sat down in the evening he fell asleep. The 

cuckoo clock struck seven, Henri and Lenore had just broken a 

plate through insisting on helping Alzire lay the table, when 

old Bonnemort arrived back first, in a hurry to have his dinner 

and return to the pit. So La Maheude woke Maheu. 

‘Oh well, let’s eat, what the hell .. . They’re old enough to 

find their way back home. But it’s a shame about the salad.’ 

CHAPTER V 

At Rasseneur’s, fitienne had eaten his soup and gone upstairs 

to the narrow attic bedroom, overlooking Le Voreux, which 

was going to be his home. He had fallen on to his bed fully 

clothed, numb with fatigue. He had not slept more than four 

hours in the past two days. When he awoke, night was falling, 

and for a moment he lay dazed, not recognizing where he was; 

he felt so dizzy, and his head seemed so heavy, that he had to 

force himself to struggle to his feet, feeling he ought to go out 

and get some fresh air before having dinner and retiring for 

the night. 

Outside the weather had become milder and milder, the sooty 

sky was turning a copper colour, and lowering with the threat of 

one of those endless falls of rain that the Nord is known for, and 

whose imminent arrival you could sense in the warm, damp air. 

The darkness swept down, drowning the furthest points of the 

plain in great misty swathes. Over this huge sea of reddish earth, 

the low sky seemed to be dissolving into black dust, with not a 

breath of air left to enliven the darkness. The whole scene was as 

sad, wan, and lifeless as the grave. 

120 

Germinal 

Etienne set off walking nowhere in particular, with no 

thought in mind other than shaking off his feverish headache. 

When he reached Le Voreux, already difficult to distinguish in 

its murky lair, especially since none of the lanterns had yet 

been lit, he stopped for a moment, to watch the workers from 

the day shift emerge. It must have just struck six o’clock, for 

whole groups of labourers, onsetters, and stablemen were 

leaving, mingling with the blurred figures of the sorting girls, 

who could be heard laughing in the shadows. 

First came old Ma Brule and her son-in-law Pierron. She 

was scolding him because he had not supported her in a 

dispute with one of the supervisors over her tally of stones. 

‘Oh, you weak-kneed weed! How can you call yourself a 

man if you bow and scrape to one of those bastards who bleed 

us to death!’ 

Pierron followed her quietly without answering. Finally he 

said: 

‘So I suppose I was meant to jump at the boss and hit him. 

Thanks a lot, for all the good that would do usl’ 

‘Well, bend over and offer him your arse then!’ she shouted. 

‘God! If my daughter had only listened to me ... It’s not 

enough for them to have killed her father, perhaps you expect 

me to thank them as well. No, you listen to me. I’ll have their 

guts in the end!’ 

Their voices faded away, and Etienne watched her disappear, 

with her aquiline nose and straggling white hair, and her long, 

thin arms flailing wildly. But he pricked up his ears at the 

conversation of two young lads behind him. He had recognized 

the voice of Zacharie, who had been waiting there, and had 

just been hailed by his friend Mouquet. 

‘Are you coming.?’ asked Mouquet. ‘We’re going to get a 

slice of bread, then we’re off to the Volcan.’ 

‘Not yet. I’m busy.’ 

‘Doing what.?’ 

The labourer turned round and saw Philomene coming out 

of the screening shed. He thought he understood. 

‘Oh, I see . .. Okay, I’ll go on ahead.’ 

‘Yes, I’ll catch you up.’ 

As Mouquet went off, he met his father, old Mouque, who 

Part II 

I 2 I 

was also leaving Le Voreux; the two men simply said good¬ 

night to each other, and the son took the high road while his 

father went down by the canal. 

Zacharie had already dragged Philomene down the same, 

lonely path, despite her reluctance. She was in a hurry, next 

time maybe; and they argued together like an old married 

couple. It wasn’t much fun only ever seeing each other out¬ 

doors, especially in the winter, when the ground is wet and 

there isn’t even any wheat in the fields to bed down in. 

‘No, it’s not for that,’ he muttered impatiently. ‘There’s 

something I want to tell you.’ 

He put an arm round her waist, and led her gently along 

with him. Then, when they were in the shadow of the slag- 

heap, he asked her if she had any money. 

‘What for?’ she asked. 

Then he launched into a confused story about a debt of two 

francs which would be the ruin of his family. 

‘Get lost! ... I saw Mouquet, you’re off to the Volcan 

again, where they have those dirty chorus girls.’ 

He denied the charge, crossing his heart and giving his word 

of honour. But then, when she shrugged her shoulders, he 

suddenly said: 

‘You can come with us, if you like . ., you can see I’ve got 

nothing to hide. What would I want a chorus girl for? ... 

D’you want to come?’ 

‘What about the baby?’ she replied. ‘How can I go anywhere 

with a baby crying all the time ., . Let me go back, I bet 

they’re rowing at home.’ 

But he caught hold of her, and pleaded with her. Come on, it 

was so as not to look silly in front of Mouquet, he had promised 

him. A man couldn’t go to bed early every night like a rooster. 

She gave in, and turned up one of the flaps of her jacket, snapped 

the thread with her nail and pulled out several ten-sou pieces 

from under the hem. She was afraid of being robbed by her 

mother, so she hid there what she earned from overtime at the pit. 

‘Look, I’ve got five,’ she said. ‘I can give you three, if you 

like .., But you must promise me you’ll persuade your mother 

to let us get married. I’ve had enough of this life of hanging 

around waiting! And even then my Mum counts the cost of 

122 Germinal 

every mouthful of food that I swallow .. . Swear you will, then 

you can have it/ 

She was a sickly, gangling, apathetic girl, who spoke in 

lifeless tones. She was fed up with the life she was leading. He 

swore blind that it was a promise, honest to God; then, when 

he had the three coins safely in his hand, he kissed her and 

tickled her, making her laugh, and he would have gone all the 

way there and then, up against the side of the slag-heap that 

had become a familiar winter bedroom for the jaded couple, if 

she hadn’t kept saying no, for it wouldn’t give her the slightest 

pleasure. She went back to the village on her own, while he cut 

across the fields, to catch up with his mate. 

Etienne had been following them absent-mindedly at a 

distance without understanding, thinking that it was an ordi¬ 

nary date. The pit girls were precocious; and he remembered 

the working girls at Lille that he used to meet behind the 

factories, those gangs of immoral fourteen-year-olds, whom 

poverty had already corrupted. But he was more surprised by 

the next encounter he made. He stopped dead. 

There, at the bottom of the slag-heap, in a hollow between 

some large fallen rocks, was Jeanlin, roughly berating Lydie 

and Bebert, who were seated on either side of him. 

‘Hey? What did you say? ... You’ll both get a smack in the 

eye if you argue ... Whose idea was it, anyway?’ 

And Jeanlin had indeed had an idea. After spending an hour 

wandering along the canal and wading into the meadows 

gathering dandelion leaves with the two others, he had just 

realized, when sizing up the mass of greenery, that they’d 

never get through all that salad at home; so, instead of going 

back to the village, he had gone to Montsou, taking Bebert to 

keep watch, and sending Lydie in to ring on the doors of the 

posh houses, to sell them the dandelion leaves. Armed with 

experience beyond his years, he argued that girls could sell 

whatever they wanted. They had got so carried away by the 

excitement of the trade that they had sold the whole lot, but 

the girl had made eleven sous. And now that they had disposed 

of the goods, the three of them were splitting the proceeds. 

‘It’s not fair!’ said Bebert. ‘You should divide it by three ., . 

If you keep seven sous, we’ll only get two each.’ 

Part II 

123 

‘Why’s that unfair?’ Jeanlin replied angrily. ‘I picked more 

than you did, for a start.’ 

Usually Bebert submitted, from fear and admiration, with 

the credulity of the born victim. Although he was older, and 

stronger, he would even let Jeanlin punch him. But this time, 

the thought of all that money inspired him to resist. 

‘It’s true, isn’t it, Lydie, he’s robbing us ... if he doesn’t 

share it out, we’ll tell his mother.’ 

At that Jeanlin brandished his fist under his nose. 

‘Just you dare. I’ll go and say that you were the one who 

sold our mum’s salad ... And besides, you bloody fool, how 

the hell can I divide eleven sous by three? Why don’t you try 

it yourself, mastermind . .. There’s your two sous each. Hurry 

up and take them before I put them back in my pocket.’ 

Bebert admitted defeat and accepted his two sous. Lydie 

was trembling and hadn’t said anything, for in the presence of 

Jeanlin she felt the fear and affection of a beaten child bride. 

As he held out the two sous to her, she put out her hand with 

a submissive smile. But he suddenly changed his mind. 

‘Hey? what the hell would you do with all that money 

anyway? .,. Your mother’s bound to pinch it, if you’ve got 

nowhere to hide it .,. I’d better keep it for you. When you 

need some money, just come and ask me for it.’ 

And the nine sous disappeared again. To stifle her protests 

he jumped on her, laughing and rolling over with her on the 

slag-heap. She was his little wife, and they got together in dark 

corners to try out the love that they heard going on at home 

behind walls, or saw happening through keyholes. They knew 

all about it, but they were too young to manage, so they would 

spend hours fumbling and tumbling, playing like a pair of 

naughty puppies. He called it ‘playing mums and dads’; and 

where he led, she eagerly followed, letting him grab her with a 

deliciously instinctive thrill. She often got angry with him but 

she always gave way, hoping for something exciting which 

never happened. 

As Bebert wasn’t allowed in on these games, and got 

thumped black and blue any time he tried to have a turn with 

Lydie, he would stand awkwardly by, torn between anger and 

embarrassment, while the two others amused themselves, which 

124 

Germinal 

they often did quite openly in his presence. So his only hope 

was to frighten and interrupt them by shouting out that 

someone was watching. 

‘The game’s up, there’s a bloke watching!’ 

This time he was not making it up, there was someone 

coming, as Etienne had decided to walk on further. The 

children leapt up out of his way and ran out of sight as he 

walked past the slag-heap, following the canal, amused at 

giving the rascals such a fright. Well, obviously they were too 

young; but what of it? They saw such goings-on and heard 

such rude stories that you would have had to clap them in 

irons if you wanted to stop them trying. But deep down inside, 

Etienne felt a twinge of sadness. 

A hundred paces further down the road, he came across 

some more couples. He had arrived at Requillart, which was 

where all the girls from Montsou came with their lovers to 

haunt the ruins of the disused pit. This distant and deserted 

spot was the common meeting-place, where the tram girls 

came to contract their first babies, when they were afraid of 

being seen at the local hutch. Anyone could get through the 

broken fences into the old yard, which had become a waste¬ 

land, littered with the debris of the two sheds which had 

collapsed, and with the skeletons of some of the pylons from 

the overhead railway that were still standing. There were 

broken tubs scattered around, and old timbers lay rotting in 

stacks; while nature was vigorously reclaiming its rights to 

colonize this plot of land, covering it with thick grass and 

riddling it with sturdy, thrusting young trees. So every girl 

could make herself a little nest here, for there was a hideaway 

suitable for every one of them: their sweethearts could lay 

them flat on their arses on piles of beams, or behind stacks of 

timber, or inside the tubs. They all settled down side by side 

without worrying about the couple in the slot next door, even 

though they were near enough to touch. And the result was 

that all round this lifeless machinery, in the shadow of the pit 

which had grown weary of spewing forth coal, creation was 

exacting its revenge, in the form of a free love spurred on by 

wild instinct, which sowed babies in the bellies of these girls 

who were still hardly women. 

Part II 

125 

Yet there was a watchman on the premises, old Mouque, 

who had been given two rooms by the Company, situated 

almost directly beneath the dilapidated headgear, whose last 

remaining beams threatened to fall on his head from one 

moment to the next. He had even had to prop up part of the 

ceiling; and yet he lived there very comfortably with his 

family; himself and Mouquet in one room. La Mouquette in 

the other. As there wasn^t a single pane of glass left in the 

windows, he had taken a hammer and nails and boarded them 

up solid: you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face, but 

it did keep the place warm. Meanwhile, despite being called a 

watchman he didn’t watch a thing, because he went off to Le 

Voreux to look after his horses, and took no interest in the 

ruins of Requillart, whose only going concern was the shaft, 

which they used as a chimney for a single furnace which drove 

the ventilation pump for the neighbouring pit. 

And thus it came to pass that old Mouque spent his old age 

surrounded by lovers. Ever since she had turned ten. La 

Mouquette had been hoisting her skirts in every comer of the 

ruins, not with nervous and immature insolvence like Lydie, 

but from a precociously voluptuous disposition, able to satisfy 

lads whose beards had already started growing. Her father had 

no cause to object, for she showed due respect, and never 

brought her sweethearts home. And then again, he knew all 

about life’s little incidents. Whenever he went off to Le 

Voreux, and whenever he returned, every time that he ventured 

out of his den, he could hardly take a step without stumbling 

upon some couple lying in the grass; and it was even worse if 

he went to gather firewood to heat his soup, or to look for 

burdock for his rabbit at the other end of the mine: then he 

espied all the young girls of Montsou taking it in turns to raise 

their lips hungrily towards the heavens, and he had to be 

careful not to trip over their legs, stretched right out over the 

pathway. Besides, after a while these encounters had finally 

ceased disturbing any of the parties concerned, neither old 

Mouque, whose main concern was to avoid tripping over, nor 

the girls, whom he left to bring their business to a peaceful 

conclusion, as he continued gently on his way like a nature- 

lover anxious not to disturb the wild-life. The only thing was 

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that just as they had now got used to his comings and goings, 

so he had come to recognize them, just as you get to know the 

shameless magpies whose frolics play havoc with the pear trees 

at the bottom of your garden. How greedy were the young, oh, 

how they clutched and sucked at life! Sometimes he shook his 

head, his chin trembling in silent regret, turning away from 

the noisy hussies who were panting too loudly in the darkness. 

Only one thing upset him: two lovers had developed the bad 

habit of embracing right up against his bedroom wall. Not that 

it kept him awake at nights, of course, but they went at it so 

hard that in the long run they were damaging the wall. 

Every evening old Mouque entertained his friend old Bonne- 

mort, who regularly took the same walk before dinner. The 

two cronies hardly exchanged more than a dozen words during 

the half-hour that they spent together. But it cheered them up 

to be together chewing over old times without needing to talk. 

At Requillart they sat down on a beam side by side, let slip a 

word from time to time, then went off into their daydreaming, 

staring at the ground. No doubt they were reliving their youth. 

All around them there were lovers bedding their loved ones, in 

a flurry of whispered laughs and kisses, and a warm scent of 

girls’ flesh rose from the depths of the cool, crushed grass. It 

was forty-three years now, since Bonnemort had gone behind 

the pit to take his wife, a tram girl so small and frail that he 

had to lift her up on to a tub to kiss her in comfort. Ah, those 

were the days! And the two old men, nodding their heads, 

finally left for the night, often without even saying good-night. 

But that evening, just as Etienne was approaching, old 

Bonnemort happened to be getting up off his beam to go back 

to the village, and saying to Mouque: 

‘Good-night, me old mate! .., Hey, look, did you ever get 

to know a girl called La Roussie.^’ 

Mouque stayed silent for a moment, shrugging his shoulders, 

then replied, as he went back indoors: 

‘Good-night, good-night, mate!’ 

Etienne came and sat down on the beam that they had just 

left. He felt even more miserable than before, without under¬ 

standing why. Watching the old man’s back disappear had 

reminded him of his arrival that morning, the flood of words 

Part II 

127 

that the tormenting wind had wrung from that taciturn fellow. 

All that suffering! and all those girls, dropping with tiredness, 

who were still stupid enough to go off in the evening and 

produce babies, more flesh fit only for toil and suffering! 

There would never be an end to it all, if they kept on filling 

themselves up with an endless supply of newborn starvelings. 

Wouldn’t they do better to plug up their bellies and keep their 

legs tightly crossed, battening down the hatches in the face of 

disaster.? Or perhaps he was only mulling over these melancholy 

thoughts because he was upset at his loneliness, while everyone 

else at this hour was pairing off in search of pleasure. The 

muggy weather made him feel rather stifled, and a few scattered 

drops of rain started to fall on his hot, sweaty hands. Yes, all 

the girls succumbed, it was a force stronger than reason. 

And in fact, while Etienne was sitting motionless in the 

shadows, a couple who had come down from Montsou brushed 

past him without noticing him, and walked on to the waste 

ground at Requillart. The girl, who was obviously a virgin, 

was struggling, and resisted with a quiet, pleading voice; but 

the young man took no notice and silently pushed her over to a 

dark corner of one of the sheds that was still standing, where 

there was a pile of mouldy old rope. It was Catherine and big 

tall Chaval. But fitienne had not recognized them as they went 

past, and he watched the story unfold, gripped by a sensual 

excitement which coloured his thoughts. Why should he inter¬ 

vene.? When girls say no, it’s only because they fancy a fight 

before they agree to say yes. 

On leaving village Two Hundred and Forty, Catherine had 

taken the main road towards Montsou. Ever since she had 

turned ten and started earning her living at the pit, she had 

walked all round the country by herself, left in total freedom 

as everyone in a miner’s family was; and if she had reached the 

age of fifteen without a man laying hands on her, it was 

because of her retarded puberty, which showed no signs of 

coming. When she got to the Company’s yards, she crossed 

the road and went into a laundry where she was sure she 

would find La Mouquette; for she spent half her life there, 

with women who took it in turns to stand each other rounds of 

coffee from morning to night. But Catherine was disappointed, 

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Germinal 

for it so happened that La Mouquette had just paid for a 

round herself, so she couldn’t lend her the ten sous she had 

promised. To console her, they offered her a glass of hot 

coffee. She wouldn’t even let her friend borrow the money off 

one of the other women. She had a sudden urge to economize, 

a sort of superstitious fear, making her feel sure that, if she 

insisted on buying the ribbon now, it would bring her bad 

luck. 

She hurried to take the road back to the village, and had 

reached the last houses of Montsou when a man called out to 

her from the doorway of Piquette’s*. 

‘Hey, Catherine, where are you off to so fast.^’ 

It was big tall Chaval, She was annoyed, not because she 

didn’t like him, but because she didn’t feel in the mood for a 

laugh. 

‘Come in and have something to drink ... A little glass of 

sweet wine, if you like.’ 

She refused, courteously: night was falling, and they were 

expecting her at home. But he came out of the tavern, and 

pleaded with her under his breath in the middle of the road. 

He had been laying plans for some time now to persuade her 

to come and see the room he lived in on the first floor of 

Piquette’s; it was a lovely room with a nice wide bed, just right 

for two. Was she afraid of him, then, was that why she kept on 

rejecting him.^ She laughed good-naturedly, and said she’d go 

upstairs with him the week that children stopped growing. 

Then one thing led to another, and without quite knowing 

how, she got round to mentioning the blue ribbon which she 

hadn’t been able to buy. 

‘But why don’t I buy you one.^’ he cried. 

She blushed, for she felt that she really ought to keep on 

refusing, but she was racked by a secret urge to possess that 

ribbon. The idea of a loan came to her mind again, and she 

finally accepted his offer, on condition that she paid him back 

whatever he spent on her. That led to another exchange of 

pleasantries: and they agreed that if she didn’t sleep with him, 

she would give him his money back. But there was another 

problem, when he spoke of going to Maigrat’s, 

‘No, not Maigrat’s, Mum told me I mustn’t.’ 

Part II 

129 

‘Don’t worry, there’s no need to say where we went! .. . 

He’s got the nicest ribbons in Montsoul’ 

When Maigrat saw Catherine and big tall Chaval enter his 

shop like a loving couple choosing their wedding present, he 

went bright red, and showed his pieces of blue ribbon with the 

fury of a man who feels he is being made a laughing stock. 

Then, when he had served the young couple, he went out and 

stood rooted to the doorstep of his shop, watching them move 

off into the twilight; and, when his wife came to ask a timid 

question, he fell upon her, and swore at her, crying that he’d 

make the bastards sorry one day for showing no gratitude 

when they should be grovelling at his feet and licking his 

boots. 

Walking along the road big tall Chaval kept Catherine 

company. He walked alongside her, swinging his arms; but he 

nudged her hips and casually guided her in the direction he 

intended. Suddenly she realized that he had led her off the 

cobbled road and that they were walking down the narrow 

path to Requillart together. But she didn’t have time to get 

angry: he already had his arm round her waist and he dazed 

her with a continuous patter of soothing words. Wasn’t she 

silly to be afraid! Would anyone want to harm a sweet little 

thing like her, as soft as silk, tender enough to eat.? And he 

breathed on her neck behind her ear, which made a thrill pass 

over her skin all down her body. She was choking with 

emotion and found nothing to say. It was true that he seemed 

to love her. Saturday evening, after she had put the candle out, 

she had asked herself precisely this question, what would 

happen if he took her like that; then as she fell asleep, she had 

dreamed that she stopped saying no, as her courage was 

overwhelmed by her pleasure. Why then did she feel repelled 

or even saddened by the same idea today? While he was 

tickling her neck with his moustache, so gently that she closed 

her eyes, the silhouette of another man, the lad she had seen 

that morning, went past her closed eyes in the darkness. 

Suddenly Catherine looked around and realized that Chaval 

had led her into the ruins of Requillart, and she started back 

with a shiver from the shadows of the dilapidated shed. 

‘Oh, no! Oh, no!’ she murmured, ‘please leave me alone.’ 

130 Germinal 

She panicked, with that instinctive fear of the male that 

stiffens a girl’s muscles in self-defence even when she is 

willing, as she feels the man’s triumphal approach. Her virgin¬ 

ity was not based on ignorance, but she was still as terrified as 

if she had been threatened with a beating, faced with the 

wound whose unknown pain she dreaded. 

‘No, no, I don’t want to! You know I’m too young .. . It’s 

true! Wait till later on, at least till I’m grown up.’ 

He growled under his breath: 

‘Silly! that means there’s no danger .. . Why should you 

worry 

Then he stopped talking. He grabbed hold of her firmly, 

and thrust her into the shed. And she fell backwards on to the 

pile of old rope, stopped resisting, and, although her body 

wasn’t ready, she let the male have his way with her, with the 

hereditary submissiveness that sent all the girls of her race 

rolling flat on their backs while they were little more than 

children. Her terrified stammerings died away, and nothing 

could be heard except the man’s fierce breathing. 

Meanwhile Etienne had been listening motionless. Another 

one taking the plunge! And now that he had finished watching 

the show, he got up, filled with an awkward feeling of mounting 

anger and a kind of jealous excitement. He stopped trying to 

be tactful, and walked right across the beams, for the pair were 

far too busy by now to take any notice of him. So he was 

surprised when he had walked about a hundred paces down 

the road to look round and see that they were already on their 

feet again, and that they seemed to be following the same path 

as him back down to the village. The man had taken hold of 

the girl’s waist again, squeezing her with a grateful air, and 

talking with his face nuzzling her neck; and she was the one 

who seemed impatient to get back home quickly, looking as if 

she were more worried about being late than about anything 

else. 

Then Etienne was tormented by a desire to see their faces. 

It was a stupid whim, and he quickened his stride so as not to 

give in to it. But his feet slowed down all by themselves, and 

as soon as he reached the first street lamp, he stopped and hid 

in the shadows. He was rooted to the spot with stupefaction 

when he recognized Catherine and big tall Chaval as they 

walked past. At first he could hardly believe his eyes, could it 

really be her, that young lady wearing a bonnet and a bright 

blue dress? Was that the urchin he had seen in breeches, with 

a cotton cap pulled down over her ears? That explained how 

she had managed to brush past him without him guessing who 

she was. But he could doubt it no longer, as soon as he 

recognized the limpid green tint of her eyes, as clear and deep 

as water from a spring. What a whore! and he felt an irrational 

contempt for her, together with a furious desire to get his 

revenge. Besides, it didn’t suit her to be got up as a girl: she 

looked awful. 

Slowly, Catherine and Chaval went past, with no idea that 

they were being spied on, and he held her back to kiss her 

behind the ear, while she started to slow down as he caressed 

her, for it made her laugh. Since he had hung back, Etienne 

was now obliged to follow them, but he was annoyed to realize 

that they were blocking his path, and forcing him to see things 

that tried his patience. So it was true, what she had sworn to 

him that morning: she had never been anyone’s mistress; and 

to think he hadn’t believed her, that he had even resisted her 

so as not to act like the other fellow! And that he had let her 

be snatched away from him right under his nose, that of all the 

damn fool things to do he had enjoyed getting into a lecherous 

mood over watching them! That made him feel mad, and he 

clenched his fists, he would have torn the man to shreds if 

he’d got into one of his blind, murderous rages. 

The promenade lasted for another half an hour. As Chaval 

and Catherine approached Le Voreux, they walked even slower; 

stopping twice on the banks of the canal and three times on 

the side of the slag-heap, for they had become very gay, and 

were amusing themselves with tender little games. Etienne had 

to stop each time too and await their pleasure, for fear of being 

seen. He tried to feel only a crude disappointment: this would 

teach him to respect girls and act politely! Then, when they 

had left Le Voreux, and he was at last free to go and dine at 

Rasseneur’s, he continued to follow in their footsteps as far as 

the village, and stayed standing in the shadows there for a 

quarter of an hour waiting for Chaval to let Catherine go 

132 

Germinal 

home. Then, when he was sure that they were no longer 

together, he set off again, and walked a long way out over the 

road to Marchiennes, tramping along mindlessly, too choked 

with sadness to go and shut himself up in his room. 

Not until an hour later, towards nine o’clock, did Etienne 

come back through the village, realizing that he must eat and 

go to bed, if he wanted to be up again at four in the morning. 

The village was already asleep, and plunged in darkness. 

There was not a single ray of light to be seen through the 

closed shutters, and the long terraces stretched away in front 

of him, as heavy with sleep as a barracks full of snoring 

soldiers. A solitary cat emerged, and fled across the empty 

gardens. It was the end of the day, and the workers fell heavily 

from table to bed, crushed with fatigue and full of food. 

Back at Rasseneur’s there was still a light on in the bar, 

where a mechanic and two day-shift workers were drinking 

pints. But before he went in, Etienne stopped, and cast a last 

look into the gathering night. He discovered the same fathom¬ 

less darkness as that morning, when he had arrived in the 

middle of a gale. In front of him lay Le Voreux, crouching like 

some evil beast, its shape unclear, except where it was picked 

out here and there by the gleam of a lantern. The three 

braziers at the slag-heap were burning in mid-air, like bleeding 

moons, episodically projecting the gigantic shadows of old 

Bonnemort and his straw-coloured pony. And further away the 

shadows had engulfed everything all over the flat plain—^Mont- 

sou, Marchiennes, the forest of Vandame, the great ocean of 

wheat and sugar-beet, where the only lights, gleaming like 

beams from distant lighthouses, were blue flames from the 

blast-furnaces and red flames from the coke ovens. Gradually 

everything became drowned in darkness, as the rain started 

falling, slowly and persistently, swamping the empty space 

with its monotonous drizzle; while only one voice could still be 

heard, the heavy, slow wheezing of the drainage pump, panting 

away day after day and night after night. 

PART III 

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CHAPTER I