GERMINAL
engine moved every three minutes, the cables unrolled, the cages continued to swallow down men.
"Come along, you loungers, look sharp!" shouted Pierron. "Get in; we shall never have done with it to-day."
Maheude, whom he was looking at, did not stir. She had already allowed three cages to pass, and she said, as though arousing herself and remembering Étienne's first words:
"Then you're going away?"'
"Yes, this morning."
"You're right; better be somewhere else if one can. And I'm glad to have seen you, because you can know now, anyhow, that I've nothing on my mind against you. For a moment I could have killed you, after all that slaughter. But one thinks, doesn't one? One sees that when all's reckoned up it's nobody's fault. No, no! it's not your fault; it's the fault of everybody."
Now she talked with tranquillity of her dead, of her man, of Zacharie, of Catherine; and tears only came into her eyes when she uttered Alzire's name. She had resumed her calm reasonableness, and judged things sensibley. It would bring no luck to the middle class to have killed so many poor people. Sure enough, they would be punished for it one day, for everything has to be paid for. There would even be no need to interfere; the whole thing would explode by itself. The soldiers would fire on the masters just as they had fired on the men. And in her everlasting resignation, in that hereditary discipline under which she was again bowing, a conviction had established itself, the certainty that injustice could not last longer, and that, if there were no good God left, another would spring up to avenge the wretched.
She spoke in a low voice, with suspicious glances round. Then, as Pierron was coming up, she added, aloud:
"Well, if you're going, you must take your things from our house. There are still two shirts, three handkerchiefs, and an old pair of trousers."
Étienne, with a gesture, refused these few things saved from the dealers.
"No, it's not worth while; they can be for the children. At Paris I can arrange for myself."
Two cages had once more gone down, and Pierron decided to speak straight to Maheude.
[467]
