GERMINAL
left surmounted by confused gables, a vision of a village with low uniform roofs. He went on some two hundred paces. Suddenly, at a bend in the road, the fires re-appeared close to him, though he could not understand how they burnt so high in the dead sky, like smoky moons. But on the level soil another sight had struck him. It was a heavy mass, a low pile of buildings from which rose the silhouette of a factory chimney; occasional gleams appeared from dirty windows, five or six melancholy lanterns were hung outside to frames of blackened wood, which vaguely outlined the profiles of gigantic stages; and from this fantastic apparition, drowned in night and smoke, a single voice arose, the thick, long breathing of a steam escapement that could not be seen.
Then the man recognised a pit. His despair returned. What was the good? There would be no work. Instead of turning towards the buildings he decided at last to ascend the pit bank, on which burnt in iron baskets the three coal fires which gave light and warmth for work. The labourers in the cutting must have been working late; they were still throwing out the useless rubbish. Now he heard the landers push the waggons on the stages. He could distinguish living shadows tipping over the trams or tubs near each fire.
“Good-day,” he said, approaching one of the baskets.
Turning his back to the stove, the carman stood upright. He was an old man, dressed in knitted violet wool with a rabbit-skin cap on his head; while his horse, a great yellow horse, waited with the immobility of stone while they emptied the six teams he drew. The workmen employed at the tipping-cradle, a red-haired lean fellow, did not hurry himself; he pressed on the lever with a sleepy hand. And above, the wind grew stronger—an icy north wind—and its great, regular breaths passed by like the strokes of a scythe.
“Good-day,” replied the old man. There was silence. The man, who felt that he was being looked at suspiciously, at once told his name.
“I am called Étienne Lantier. I am an engine man. Any work here?”’
The flames lit him up. He might be about twenty-one years of age, a very brown, handsome man, who looked strong in spite of his thin limbs.
[2]
