GERMINAL
"You will all be mown down, overthrown, cast to the dung-heap. Someone will be born who will annihilate your race with its cowardly enjoyments. And look here! you see my hands; if my hands were able they would take up the earth, like that, and shake it until it was smashed to fragments, and you were all buried beneath the rubbish."
"Well said," declared Madame Rasseneur, with her polite and convinced air.
There was silence again. Then Étienne spoke once more of the Borinage men. He questioned Souvarine concerning the steps that had been taken at the Voreux. But the engine-man was still preoccupied, and scarcely replied. He only knew that cartridges would be distributed to the soldiers who were guarding the pit; and the nervous restlessness of his fingers over his knees increased to such an extent that, at last, he became conscious of what was lacking—the soft and soothing fur of the tame rabbit.
"Where is Poland, then?" he asked.
The innkeeper laughed again as he looked at his wife. After an awkward silence he made up his mind:
"Poland? She is in the pot."
Since her adventure with Jeanlin the pregnant rabbit, no doubt wounded, had only brought forth dead young ones; and to avoid feeding a useless mouth they had resigned themselves that very day to serve her up with potatoes.
"Yes, you ate one of her legs this evening. Eh! You licked your fingers after it!"
Souvarine had not understood at first. Then he became very pale, and his chin contracted with nausea; while, in spite of his stoicism, two large tears were swelling beneath his eyelids.
But no one had time to notice this emotion, for the door had opened roughly and Chaval had appeared, pushing Catherine before him. After having made himself drunk with beer and bluster in all the public-houses of Montsou, the idea had occurred to him to go to the Avantage to show his old friends that he was not afraid. As he came in, he said to his mistress:
"By God! I tell you you shall drink a glass in here; I'll break the jaws of the first man who looks at me askance!"
Catherine, moved at the sight of Étienne, had become very
[360]
