CHAPTER II
ON Sunday Étienne escaped from the settlement at nightfall. A very clear sky, sprinkled with stars, lit up the earth with the blue haze of twilight. He went down towards the canal, and followed the bank slowly, in the direction of Marchiennes. It was his favourite walk, a grass-covered path two leagues long, passing straight beside this geometrical stream, which unrolled itself like an endless ingot of molten silver. He never met anyone there. But on this day he was vexed to see a man come up to him. Beneath the pale starlight, the two solitary walkers only recognised each other when they were face to face.
"What! is it you?" said Étienne.
Souvarine nodded his head without replying. For a moment they remained motionless, then side by side they set out towards Marchiennes. Each of them seemed to be continuing his own reflections, as though they were far away from each other.
"Have you seen in the paper about Pluchart's success at Paris?" asked Étienne, at length. "After that meeting at Belleville, they waited for him on the pavement, and gave him an ovation. Oh! he's afloat now, in spite of his sore throat. He can do what he likes in the future."
The engine-man shrugged his shoulders. He felt contempt for fine talkers, fellows who go into politics as one goes to the bar, to get an income out of phrases.
Étienne was now studying Darwin. He had read fragments, summarised and popularised in a five-sou volume; and out of this ill-understood reading he had gained for himself a revolutionary idea of the struggle for existence, the lean eating the fat, the strong people devouring the pallid middle class. But Souvarine furiously attacked the stupidity of the Socialists who accept Darwin, that apostle of scientific inequality, whose famous selection was only good for aristocratic philosophers. His mate persisted, however, wishing to reason out the matter,
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