GERMINAL
overcome on hearing her weep. Estelle was howling, Lénore and Henri were sobbing.
And from the entire settlement there soon arose the same cry of wretchedness. The men had come back, and each household was lamenting the disaster of this bad pay. The doors opened, women appeared, crying aloud outside, as if their complaints could not be held beneath the ceilings of these small houses. A fine rain was falling, but they did not feel it, they called one another from the pavements, they showed one another in the hollow of their hands the money they had received.
"Look! they've given him this. Do they want to make fools of people?"
"As for me, see, I haven't got enough to pay the fortnight's bread with."
"And just count mine! I should have to sell my shifts!"
Maheude had come out like the others. A group had formed around the Levaque woman, who was shouting loudest of all, for her drunkard of a husband had not even turned up, and she knew that, large or small, the pay would melt away at the Volcan. Philomène watched Maheu so that Zacharie should not get hold of the money. Pierronne was the only one who seemed fairly calm, for that hypocritical Pierron always arranged things, no one knew how, so as to have more hours on the captain's ticket than his mates. But Mother Brûlé thought this cowardly of her son-in-law; she was among the enraged, lean and erect in the midst of the group, with her fists stretched towards Montsou.
"To think," she cried, without naming the Hennebeaus, "that this morning I saw their servant go by in a carriage! Yes, the cook in a carriage with two horses, going to Marchiennes to get fish, sure enough!"
A clamour arose, and the abuse began again. That servant in a white apron taken to the market of the neighbouring town in her master's carriage aroused indignation. While the workers were dying of hunger they must then have their fish, at all costs! Perhaps they would not always be able to eat their fish: the turn of the poor people would come. And the ideas sown by Étienne sprang up and expanded in this cry of revolt. It was impatience before the promised age of gold, a haste to get a share of the happiness beyond this horizon of misery, closed in
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