GERMINAL
from noxious gases, all the fire-damp had gone, and one only smelled now the odour of old fermented wood, a subtle ethereal odour, as if sharpened with a dash of cloves. This wood, besides, had become curious to look at, with a yellowish pallor of marble, fringed with whitish thread lace, flaky vegetations which seemed to drape it with an embroidery of silk and pearls. In other places the timber was bristling with toadstools. And there were flights of white butterflies, snowy flies and spiders, a decolourised population for ever ignorant of the sun.
"Then you're not afraid?" asked Étienne.
Jeanlin looked at him in astonishment.
"Afraid of what? I am quite alone."
But the cod was at last scraped. He lighted a little fire of wood, brought out the pan, and grilled it. Then he cut a loaf into two. It was a terribly salt feast, but exquisite all the same for strong stomachs.
Étienne had accepted his share.
"I am not astonished you get fat, while we are all growing lean. Do you know that it is beastly to stuff yourself like this? And the others? you don't think of them!"
"Oh! why are the others such fools?"
"Well, you're right to hide yourself, for if your father knew you stole he would settle you."
"What! when the bourgeois are stealing from us! It's you who are always saying so. If I nabbed this loaf at Maigrat's, you may be pretty sure it's a loaf he owed us."
The young man was silent, with his mouth full, and felt troubled. He looked at him, with his muzzle, his green eyes, his large ears, a degenerate abortion, with an obscure intelligence and savage cunning, slowly gaining back the animality of old. The mine which had made him had just finished him by breaking his legs.
"And Lydie?" asked Étienne again, "do you bring her here sometimes?"
Jeanlin laughed contemptuously.
"The little one? Ah, no, not I; women blab."
And he went on laughing, filled with immense disdain for Lydie and Bebert. Who had ever seen such boobies? To think that they swallowed all his humbug, and went away with empty hands while he ate the cod in this warm place,
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