GERMINAL
"Then, sir," he concluded, "we have come to tell you that if we've got to starve we would rather starve doing nothing. It will be a little less trouble. We have left the pits and we don't go down again unless the Company agrees to our terms. The Company wants to lower the price of the tram and to pay for the timbering separately. We ask for things to be left as they were, and we also ask for five centimes more the tram. Now it is for you to see if you are on the side of justice and work."
Voices rose among the miners.
"That's it—he has said what we all feel—we only ask what's reason."
Others, without speaking, showed their approval by nodding their heads. The luxurious room had disappeared, with its gold and its embroideries, its mysterious piling up of ancient things; and they no longer even felt the carpet which they crushed beneath their heavy boots.
"Let me reply, then," at last exclaimed M. Hennebeau, who was growing angry. "First of all, 1t is not true that the Company gains two centimes the tram. Let us look at the figures."
A confused discussion followed. The manager, trying to divide them, appealed to Pierron, who hid himself, stammering. Levaque, on the contrary, was at the head of the more aggressive, muddling up things and affirming facts of which he was ignorant. The loud murmurs of their voices were stifled beneath the hangings in the hothouse atmosphere.
"If you all talk at the same time," said M. Hennebeau, "we shall never come to an understanding."
He had regained his calmness again, the rough politeness, without bitterness, of an agent who has received his instructions, and means that they shall be respected. From the first word he never took his eye off Étienne, and manœuvred to draw the young man out of his obstinate silence. Leaving the discussion about the two centimes, he suddenly enlarged the question:
"No, acknowledge the truth: you are yielding to abominable incitations. It is a plague which is now blowing over the workers everywhere, and corrupting the best. Oh! I have no need for anyone to confess. I can see well that you have been changed, you who used to be so quiet. Is it not so? You have
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