GERMINAL
would have knocked the other in if he had not saved himself by his constant goat-like leaps. The blow, however, reached him in the left flank with such effect that he tottered with broken respiration. He became furious on feeling his arm grow limp with pain, and rushed like a wild beast, aiming at his adversary's belly, which he wished to crush with his heel.
"Have at your guts!" he stammered in a choked voice. "I'll pull them out and wind them for you!"
Étienne avoided the blow, so indignant at this infraction of the laws of fair fighting, that he broke silence.
"Hold your tongue, brute! And no feet, by God! or I take a chair and bash you with it!"
Then the struggle became serious. Rasseneur was disgusted, and would again have interfered, but a severe look from his wife held him back: had not two customers a right to settle an affair in the house? He simply placed himself before the fireplace, for fear lest they should tumble over into it. Souvarine, in his quiet way, had rolled a cigarette, but he forgot to light it. Catherine was motionless against the wall; only her hands had unconsciously risen to her waist, and with constant fidgeting movement were twisting and tearing at the stuff of her dress. She was striving as hard as possible not to cry out, and so, perhaps, kill one of them by declaring her preference; but she was, too, so distracted that she did not even know which she preferred.
Chaval, who was bathed in sweat and striking at random, soon became exhausted. In spite of his anger, Étienne continued to cover himself, parrying nearly all the blows, a few of which grazed him. His ear was split, a finger nail had carried away a fragment of his neck, and he was so heated that he swore in his turn as he drove out one of his terrible straight blows. Once more Chaval saved his chest by a leap, but he had lowered himself, and the fist reached his face, smashing his nose and crushing one eye. Immediately a jet of blood came from his nostrils, and his eye was swollen and bluish. Blinded by this red flood, and dazed by the shock to his skull, the wretch was beating the air with his arms at random, when another blow, striking him at last full in the chest, finished him. There was a crunching sound; he fell on his back with a heavy thud, as when a sack of plaster is emptied.
[363]
