GERMINAL
rose cardboard box, an old present from Maheu, which Maheude treasured like a jewel. The two good chairs had gone; Father Bonnemort and the children were squeezed together on an old mossy bench brought in from the garden. And the livid twilight now coming on seemed to increase the cold.
"What's to be done?" repeated Maheude, crouching down in the corner by the oven.
Étienne stood up, looking at the portraits of the Emperor and Empress stuck against the wall. He would have torn them down long since if the family had not preserved them for ornament. So he murmured, with clenched teeth:
"And to think that we can't get two sous out of these damned idiots, who are watching us starve!"
"If I were to take the box?" said the woman, very pale, after some hesitation.
Maheu, seated on the edge of the table, with hanging legs, and his head on his chest, sat up.
"No! I won't have it!"
Maheude painfully rose and walked round the room. Good God! was it possible that they were reduced to such misery? The cupboard without a crumb, nothing more to sell, no notion where to get a loaf! And the fire, which was nearly out! She became angry with Alzire, whom she had sent in the morning to glean on the pit-bank, and who had come back with empty hands, saying that the Company would not allow gleaning. Did it matter a hang what the Company wanted? As if they were robbing anyone by picking up the bits of lost coal! The little girl, in despair, told how a man had threatened to hit her; then she promised to go back next day, even if she was beaten.
"And that imp, Jeanlin," cried the mother; "where is he now I should like to know? He ought to have brought the salad; we can browse on that like beasts, at all events! You will see, he won't come back. Yesterday, too, he slept out. I don't know what he's up to; the rascal always looks as though his belly were full."
"Perhaps," said Étienne, "he picks up sous on the road."
She suddenly lifted both fists furiously.
"If I knew that! My children beg! I'd rather kill them and myself too."
[231]
