GERMINAL
into their noses throughout the seam. She knew that bad air well; dead air the miners called it; it was below the heavy asphyxiating gases, above the light gases which catch fire and blow up all the stalls of a pit, with hundreds of men, in a single burst of thunder. From her childhood she had swallowed so much that she was surprised she bore it so badly, with buzzing ears and burning throat.
Unable to go further, she felt the need of taking off her chemise. It was beginning to torture her, this garment of which the least folds cut and burnt her. She resisted the longing, and tried to push again, but was forced to stand upright. Then quickly, saying to herself that she would cover herself at the relay, she took off everything, the cord and the chemise, so feverishly that she would have torn off her skin if she could. And now, naked and pitiful, brought down to the level of the female animal seeking its living in the mire of the streets, with rump covered with soot and mud up to the belly, she laboured on like a cab-hack. On all fours she pushed onwards.
But despair came; it gave her no relief to be naked. What more could she take off? The buzzing in her ears deafened her; she seemed to feel a vice pressing in her temples. She fell on her knees. The lamp, wedged into the coal in the tram, seemed to her to be going out. The intention to turn up the wick alone survived in the midst of her confused ideas. Twice she tried to examine it, and both times when she placed it before her on the earth she saw it turn pale, as though it also lacked breath. Suddenly the lamp went out. Then everything whirled around her in the darkness; a millstone turned in her head, her heart grew weak and left off beating, numbed in its turn by the immense weariness which was putting her limbs to sleep. She had fallen back in anguish amid the asphyxiating air close to the ground.
"By God! I believe she's lazing again," growled Chaval's voice.
He listened from the top of the cutting, and could hear no sound of wheels.
"Eh, Catherine! you damned viper!"
His voice was lost afar in the black gallery, and not a breath replied.
"I'll come and make you move, I will!"
[276]
