GERMINAL
for eighteen years. Then, because of my cursed legs, they put me into the earth cutting, to bank up and patch, until they had to bring me up, because the doctor said I should stay there for good. Then, after five years of that, they made me carman. Eh?. that’s fine—fifty years at the mine, forty-five down below.
While he was speaking, fragments of burning coal, which now and then fell from the basket, lit up his pale face with their red reflection.
“They tell me to rest,” he went on, “but I’m not going to; I'm not such a fool. I can get on for two years longer, to my sixtieth, so as to get the pension of one hundred and eighty francs. If I wish them good-evening to-day they would give me a hundred and fifty at once. They are cunning, the beggars. Besides, I am sound, except my legs. You see, it’s the water which has got under my skin through being always wet in the cuttings. There are days when I can’t move a paw without screaming.”
A spasm of coughing interrupted him again.
“And that makes you cough so,” said Étienne.
But he vigorously shook his head. Then, when he could speak:
“No, no! I got cold a month ago. I never used to cough; now I can’t get rid of it. And the queer thing is that I spit, that I spit—”
The rasping was again heard in his throat, followed by the black expectoration.
“Is it blood?” asked Étienne, at last venturing to question him.
Bonnemort slowly wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“It’s coal. I’ve got enough in my carcase to warm me till I die. And it’s five years since I put a foot down below. I stored it up, it seems, without knowing it. Bah, it keeps you!”
There was silence. The distant hammer struck regular blows in the pit, and the wind passed by with its moan, like a cry of hunger and weariness coming out of the depths of the night. Before the flames which grew wild, the old man went on in lower tones, chewing over again his old recollections. Ah, certainly: it was not yesterday that he and his began ham-
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