GERMINAL
PART V
CHAPTER V
M. HENNEBEAU had placed himself in front of
his study window to watch the departure of the
carriage which was taking away his wife to lunch
at Marchiennes. His eyes followed Négrel
for a moment, as he trotted beside the carriage
door. Then he quietly returned and seated himself
at his desk. When neither his wife nor his nephew
animated the place with their presence the house
seemed empty. On this day the coachman was
driving his wife; Rose, the new housemaid, had
leave to go out till five o'clock; there only
remained Hippolyte, the valet de chambre, trailing
about the rooms in slippers, and the cook, who had
been occupied since dawn in struggling with her
saucepans, entirely absorbed in the dinner which
was to be given in the evening. So M. Hennebeau
promised himself a day of serious work in this
deep calm of the deserted house.
Towards nine o'clock, although he had received
orders to send every one away, Hippolyte took the
liberty of announcing Dansaert, who was bringing
news. The manager then heard, for the first time,
of the meeting in the forest the evening before;
the details were very precise, and he listened
while thinking of the intrigue with Pierronne, so
well known that two or three anonymous letters
every week denounced the licentiousness of the
head captain. Evidently the husband had talked,
and no doubt the wife had, too. He even took
advantage of the occasion; he let the head captain
know that he was aware of everything, contenting
himself with recommending prudence for fear of a
scandal. Startled by these reproaches in the
midst of his report, Dansaert denied, stammered
excuses, while his great nose confessed the crime
by its sudden redness. He did not insist,
however, glad to get off so easily; for, as a
rule, the manager displayed the implacable
severity of the virtuous man whenever an employee
allowed himself the indulgence of a pretty girl in
the pit. The conversation continued concerning
the strike; that meeting in the forest was only
the swagger of blusterers; nothing serious
threatened. In any case, the settlements would
surely not stir for some days, beneath the
impression of respectful fear which must have been
produced by the military promenade of the morning.
When M. Hennebeau was alone again he was, however,
on the point of sending a telegram to the prefect.
Only the fear of uselessly showing a sign of
anxiety held him back. Already he could not
forgive himself his lack of insight in saying
everywhere, and even writing to the directors,
that the strike would last at most a fortnight.
It had been going on and on for nearly two months,
to his great surprise, and he was in despair over
it; he felt himself every day lowered and
compromised, and was forced to imagine some
brilliant achievement which would bring him back
into favour with the directors. He had just asked
them for orders in the case of a skirmish. There
was delay over the reply, and he was expecting it
by the afternoon post. He said to himself that
there would be time then to send out telegrams,
and to obtain the military occupation of the pits,
if such was the desire of those gentlemen. In his
own opinion there would certainly be a battle and
an expenditure of blood. This responsibility
troubled him in spite of his habitual energy.
Up to eleven o'clock he worked peacefully; there
was no sound in the dead house except Hippolyte's
waxingstick, which was rubbing a floor far away on
the first floor. Then, one after the other, he
received two messages, the first announcing the
attack on Jean-Bart by the Montsou band, the
second telling of the cut cables, the overturned
fires, and all the destruction. He could not
understand. Why had the strikers gone to Deneulin
instead of attacking one of the Company's pits?
Besides, they were quite welcome to sack Vandame;
that would merely ripen the plan of conquest which
he was meditating. And at midday he lunched alone
in the large dining-room, served so quietly by the
servant that he could not even hear his slippers.
This solitude rendered his preoccupations more
gloomy; he was feeling cold at the heart when a
captain, who had arrived running, was shown in,
and told him of the mob's march on Mirou. Almost
immediately, as he was finishing his coffee, a
telegram informed him that Madeleine and
Crévecoeur were in their turn threatened.
Then his perplexity became extreme. He was
expecting the postman at two o'clock; ought he at
once to ask for troops? or would it be better to
wait patiently, and not to act until he had
received the directors' orders? He went back into
his study; he wished to read a report which he had
asked Négrel to prepare the day before for
the prefect. But he could not put his hand on it;
he reflected that perhaps the young man had left
it in his room, where he often wrote at night, and
without taking any decision, pursued by the idea
of this report, he went upstairs to look for it in
the room.
As he entered, M. Hennebeau was surprised: the
room had not been done, no doubt through
Hippolyte's forgetfulness or laziness. There was
a moist heat there, the close heat of the past
night, made heavier from the mouth of the hot-air
stove being left open; and he was suffocated, too,
with a penetrating perfume, which he thought must
be the odour of the toilet waters with which the
basin was full. There was great disorder in the
room--garments scattered about, damp towels thrown
on the backs of chairs, the bed yawning, with a
sheet drawn back and draggling on the carpet. But
at first he only glanced round with an abstracted
look as he went towards a table covered with
papers to look for the missing report. Twice he
examined the papers one by one, but it was
certainly not there. Where the devil could that
madcap Paul have stuffed it?
And as M. Hennebeau went back into the middle of
the room, giving a glance at each article of
furniture, he noticed in the open bed a bright
point which shone like a star. He approached
mechanically and put out his hand. It was a
little gold scent-bottle lying between two folds
of the sheet. He at once recognized a
scent-bottle belonging to Madame Hennebeau, the
little ether bottle which was always with her.
But he could not understand its presence here: how
could it have got into Paul's bed? And suddenly
he grew terribly pale. His wife had slept there.
"Beg your pardon, sir," murmured
Hippolyte's voice through the door. "I saw
you going up."
The servant entered and was thrown into
consternation by the disorder.
"Lord! Why, the room is not done! So Rose
has gone out, leaving all the house on my
shoulders!"
M. Hennebeau had hidden the bottle in his hand and
was pressing it almost to breaking.
"What do you want?"
"It's another man, sir; he has come from
Crévecoeur with a letter."
"Good! Leave me alone; tell him to
wait."
His wife had slept there! When he had bolted the
door he opened his hand again and looked at the
little bottle which had left its image in red on
his flesh. Suddenly he saw and understood; this
filthiness had been going on in his house for
months. He recalled his old suspicion, the
rustling against the doors, the naked feet at
night through the silent house. Yes, it was his
wife who went up to sleep there!
Falling into a chair opposite the bed, which he
gazed at fixedly, he remained some minutes as
though crushed. A noise aroused him; someone was
knocking at the door, trying to open it. He
recognized the servant's voice.
"Sir--Ah! you are shut in, sir."
"What is it now?"
"There seems to be a hurry; the men are
breaking everything. There are two more
messengers below. There are also some
telegrams."
"You just leave me alone! I am coming
directly."
The idea that Hippolyte would himself have
discovered the scent-bottle, had he done the room
in the morning, had just frozen him. And besides,
this man must know; he must have found the bed
still hot with adultery twenty times over, with
madame's hairs trailing on the pillow, and
abominable traces staining the linen. The man
kept interrupting him, and it could only be out of
inquisitiveness. Perhaps he had stayed with his
ear stuck to the door, excited by the debauchery
of his masters.
M. Hennebeau did not move. He still gazed at the
bed. His long past of suffering unrolled before
him: his marriage with this woman, their immediate
misunderstanding of the heart and of the flesh,
the lovers whom she had had unknown to him, and
the lover whom he had tolerated for ten years, as
one tolerates an impure taste in a sick woman.
Then came their arrival at Montsou, the mad hope
of curing her, months of languor, of sleepy exile,
the approach of old age which would, perhaps, at
last give her back to him. Then their nephew
arrived, this Paul to whom she became a mother,
and to whom she spoke of her dead heart buried for
ever beneath the ashes. And he, the imbecile
husband, foresaw nothing; he adored this woman who
was his wife, whom other men had possessed, but
whom he alone could not possess! He adored her
with shameful passion, so that he would have
fallen on his knees if she would but have given
him the leavings of other men! The leavings of
the others she gave to this child.
The sound of a distant gong at this moment made M.
Hennebeau start. He recognized it; it was struck,
by his orders, when the postman arrived. He rose
and spoke aloud, breaking into the flood of
coarseness with which his parched throat was
bursting in spite of himself.
"Ah! I don't care a bloody hang for their
telegrams and their letters! not a bloody
hang!"
Now he was carried away by rage, the need of some
sewer in which to stamp down all this filthiness
with his heels. This woman was a vulgar drab; he
sought for crude words and buffeted her image with
them. The sudden idea of the marriage between
C&eacue;cile and Paul, which she was arranging
with so quiet a smile, completed his exasperation.
There was, then, not even passion, not even
jealousy at the bottom of this persistent
sensuality? It was now a perverse plaything, the
habit of the woman, a recreation taken like an
accustomed dessert. And he put all the
responsibility on her, he regarded as almost
innocent the lad at whom she had bitten in this
reawakening of appetite, just as one bites at an
early green fruit, stolen by the wayside. Whom
would she devour, on whom would she fall, when she
no longer had complaisant nephews, sufficiently
practical to accept in their own family the table,
the bed, and the wife?
There was a timid scratch at the door, and
Hippolyte allowed himself to whisper through the
keyhole:
"The postman, sir. And Monsieur Dansaert,
too, has come back, saying that they are killing
one another."
"I'm coming down, good God!"
What should he do to them? Chase them away on
their return from Marchiennes, like stinking
animals whom he would no longer have beneath his
roof? He would take a cudgel, and would tell them
to carry elsewhere their poisonous coupling. It
was with their sighs, with their mixed breaths,
that the damp warmth of this room had grown heavy;
the penetrating odour which had suffocated him was
the odour of musk which his wife's skin exhaled,
another perverse taste, a fleshly need of violent
perfumes; and he seemed to feel also the heat and
odour of fornication, of living adultery, in the
pots which lay about, in the basins still full, in
the disorder of the linen, of the furniture, of
the entire room tainted with vice. The fury of
impotence threw him on to the bed, which he struck
with his fists, belabouring the places where he
saw the imprint of their two bodies, enraged with
the disordered coverlets and the crumpled sheets,
soft and inert beneath his blows, as though
exhausted themselves by the embraces of the whole
night.
But suddenly he thought he heard Hippolyte coming
up again. He was arrested by shame. For a moment
he stood panting, wiping his forehead, calming the
bounds of his heart. Standing before a mirror he
looked at his face, so changed that he did not
recognize himself. Then, when he had watched it
gradually grow calmer by an effort of supreme
will, he went downstairs.
Five messengers were standing below, not counting
Dansaert. All brought him news of increasing
gravity concerning the march of the strikers among
the pits: and the chief captain told him at length
what had gone on at Mirou and the fine behaviour
of Father Quandieu. He listened, nodding his
head, but he did not hear; his thoughts were in
the room upstairs. At last he sent them away,
saying that he would take due measures. When he
was alone again, seated before his desk, he seemed
to grow drowsy, with his head between his hands,
covering his eyes. His mail was there, and he
decided to look for the expected letter, the
directors' reply. The lines at first danced
before him, but he understood at last that these
gentlemen desired a skirmish; certainly they did
not order him to make things worse, but they
allowed it to be seen that disturbances would
hasten the conclusion of the strike by provoking
energetic repression. After this, he no longer
hesitated, but sent off telegrams on all sides--to
the prefect of Lille, to the corps of soldiery at
Douai, to the police at Marchiennes. It was a
relief; he had nothing to do but shut himself in;
he even spread the report that he was suffering
from gout. And all the afternoon he hid himself
in his study, receiving no one, contenting himself
with reading the telegrams and letters which
continued to rain in. He thus followed the mob
from afar, from Madeleine to Crévecoeur,
from Crévecoeur to the Victoire, from the
Victoire to Gaston-Marie. Information also
reached him of the bewilderment of the police and
the troops, wandering along the roads, and always
with their backs to the pit attacked. They might
kill one another, and destroy everything! He put
his head between his hands again, with his fingers
over his eyes, and buried himself in the deep
silence of the empty house, where he only heard
now and then the noise of the cook's saucepans as
she bustled about preparing the evening's dinner.
The twilight was already darkening the room; it
was five o'clock when a disturbance made M.
Hennebeau jump, as he sat dazed and inert with his
elbows in his papers. He thought that it was the
two wretches coming back. But the tumult
increased, and a terrible cry broke out just as he
was going to the window:
"Bread! bread! bread!"
It was the strikers, now invading Montsou, while
the police, expecting an attack on the Voreux,
were galloping off in the opposite direction to
occupy that pit.
Just then, two kilometres away from the first
houses, a little beyond the crossways where the
main road cut the Vandame road, Madame Hennebeau
and the young ladies had witnessed the passing of
the mob. The day had been spent pleasantly at
Marchiennes; there had been a delightful lunch
with the manager of the Forges, then an
interesting visit to the workshops and to the
neighbouring glass works to occupy the afternoon;
and as they were now going home in the limpid
decline of the beautiful winter day, Cécile
had had the whim to drink a glass of milk, as she
noticed a little farm near the edge of the road.
They all then got down from the carriage, and
Négrel gallantly leapt off his horse; while
the peasant-woman, alarmed by all these fine
people, rushed about, and spoke of laying a cloth
before serving the milk. But Lucie and Jeanne
wanted to see the cow milked, and they went into
the cattle-shed with their cups, making a little
rural party, and laughing greatly at the litter in
which one sank.
Madame Hennebeau, with her complacent maternal
air, was drinking with the edge of her lips, when
a strange roaring noise from without disturbed
her.
"What is that, then?"
The cattle-shed, built at the edge of the road,
had a large door for carts, for it was also used
as a barn for hay. The young girls, who had put
out their heads, were astonished to see on the
left a black flood, a shouting band which was
moving along the Vandame road.
"The deuce!" muttered Négrel, who
had also gone out. "Are our brawlers getting
angry at last?"
"It is perhaps the colliers again," said
the peasant woman. "This is twice they've
passed. Seems things are not going well; they're
masters of the country."
She uttered every word prudently, watching the
effect on their faces; and when she noticed the
fright of all of them, and their deep anxiety at
this encounter, she hastened to conclude:
"Oh, the rascals! the rascals!"
Négrel, seeing that it was too late to get
into their carriage and reach Montsou, ordered the
coachman to bring the vehicle into the farmyard,
where it would remain hidden behind a shed. He
himself fastened his horse, which a lad had been
holding, beneath the shed. When he came back he
found his aunt and the young girls distracted, and
ready to follow the peasant-woman, who proposed
that they should take refuge in her house. But he
was of opinion that they would be safer where they
were, for certainly no one would come and look for
them in the hay. The door, however, shut very
badly, and had such large chinks in it, that the
road could be seen between the worm-eaten planks.
"Come, courage!" he said. "We will
sell our lives dearly."
This joke increased their fear. The noise grew
louder, but nothing could yet be seen; along the
vacant road the wind of a tempest seemed to be
blowing, like those sudden gusts which precede
great storms.
"No, no! I don't want to look," said
Cécile, going to hide herself in the hay.
Madame Hennebeau, who was very pale and felt angry
with these people who had spoilt her pleasure,
stood in the background with a sidelong look of
repugnance; while Lucie and Jeanne, though
trembling, had placed their eyes at a crack,
anxious to lose nothing of the spectacle.
A sound of thunder came near, the earth was
shaken, and Jeanlin galloped up first, blowing
into his horn.
"Take out your scent-bottles, the sweat of
the people is passing by!" murmured
Négrel, who, in spite of his republican
convictions, liked to make fun of the populace
when he was with ladies.
But this witticism was carried away in the
hurricane of gestures and cries. The women had
appeared, nearly a thousand of them, with
outspread hair dishevelled by running, the naked
skin appearing through their rags, the nakedness
of females weary with giving birth to starvelings.
A few held their little ones in their arms,
raising them and shaking them like banners of
mourning and vengeance. Others, who were younger
with the swollen breasts of amazons, brandished
sticks; while frightful old women were yelling so
loudly that the cords of their fleshless necks
seemed to be breaking. And then the men came up,
two thousand madmen--trammers, pikemen, menders--a
compact mass which rolled along like a single
block in confused serried rank so that it was
impossible to distinguish their faded trousers or
ragged woollen jackets, all effaced in the same
earthy uniformity. Their eyes were burning, and
one only distinguished the holes of black mouths
singing the Marseillaise; the stanzas
were lost in a confused roar, accompanied by the
clang of sabots over the hard earth. Above their
heads, amid the bristling iron bars, an axe passed
by, carried erect; and this single axe, which
seemed to be the standard of the band, showed in
the clear air the sharp profile of a
guillotine-blade.
"What atrocious faces!" stammered Madame
Hennebeau.
Négrel said between his teeth:
"Devil take me if I can recognize one of
them! Where do the bandits spring from?"
And in fact anger, hunger, these two months of
suffering and this enraged helter-skelter through
the pits had lengthened the placid faces of the
Montsou colliers into the muzzles of wild beasts.
At this moment the sun was setting; its last rays
of sombre purple cast a gleam of blood over the
plain. The road seemed to be full of blood; men
and women continued to rush by, bloody as butchers
in the midst of slaughter.
"Oh! superb!" whispered Lucie and
Jeanne, stirred in their artistic tastes by the
beautiful horror of it.
They were frightened, however, and drew back close
to Madame Hennebeau, who was leaning on a trough.
She was frozen at the thought that a glance
between the planks of that disjointed door might
suffice to murder them. Négrel also, who
was usually very brave, felt himself grow pale,
seized by a terror that was superior to his will,
the terror which comes from the unknown.
Cécile, in the hay, no longer stirred; and
the others, in spite of the wish to turn away
their eyes, could not do so: they were compelled
to gaze.
It was the red vision of the revolution, which
would one day inevitably carry them all away, on
some bloody evening at the end of the century.
Yes, some evening the people, unbridled at last,
would thus gallop along the roads, making the
blood of the middle class flow, parading severed
heads and sprinkling gold from disembowelled
coffers. The women would yell, the men would have
those wolf-like jaws open to bite. Yes, the same
rags, the same thunder of great sabots, the same
terrible troop, with dirty skins and tainted
breath, sweeping away the old world beneath an
overflowing flood of barbarians. Fires would
flame; they would not leave standing one stone of
the towns; they would return to the savage life of
the woods, after the great rut, the great
feast-day, when the poor in one night would
emaciate the wives and empty the cellars of the
rich. There would be nothing left, not a sou of
the great fortunes, not a title-deed of properties
acquired; until the day dawned when a new earth
would perhaps spring up once more. Yes, it was
these things which were passing along the road; it
was the force of nature herself, and they were
receiving the terrible wind of it in their faces.
A great cry arose, dominating the
Marseillaise:
"Bread! bread! bread!"
Lucie and Jeanne pressed themselves against Madame
Hennebeau, who was almost fainting; while
Négrel placed himself before them as though
to protect them by his body. Was the old social
order cracking this very evening? And what they
saw immediately after completed their
stupefaction. The band had nearly passed by,
there were only a few stragglers left, when
Mouquette came up. She was delaying, watching the
bourgeois at their garden gates or the windows of
their houses; and whenever she saw them, as she
was not able to spit in their faces, she showed
them what for her was the climax of contempt.
Doubtless she perceived someone now, for suddenly
she raised her skirts, bent her back, and showed
her enormous buttocks, naked beneath the last rays
of the sun. There was nothing obscene in those
fierce buttocks, and nobody laughed.
Everything disappeared: the flood rolled on to
Montsou along the turns of the road, between the
low houses streaked with bright colours. The
carriage was drawn out of the yard, but the
coachman would not take it upon him to convey back
madame and the young ladies without delay; the
strikers occupied the street. And the worst was,
there was no other road.
"We must go back, however, for dinner will be
ready," said Madame Hennebeau, exasperated by
annoyance and fear. "These dirty workpeople
have again chosen a day when I have visitors. How
can you do good to such creatures?"
Lucie and Jeanne were occupied in pulling
Cécile out of the hay. She was struggling,
believing that those savages were still passing
by, and repeating that she did not want to see
them. At last they all took their places in the
carriage again. It then occurred to
Négrel, who had remounted, that they might
go through the Réquillart lanes.
"Go gently," he said to the coachman,
"for the road is atrocious. If any groups
prevent you from returning to the road over there,
you can stop behind the old pit, and we will
return on foot through the little garden door,
while you can put up the carriage and horses
anywhere, in some inn outhouse."
They set out. The band, far away, was streaming
into Montsou. As they had twice seen police and
military, the inhabitants were agitated and seized
by panic. Abominable stories were circulating; it
was said that written placards had been set up
threatening to rip open the bellies of the
bourgeois. Nobody had read them, but all the same
they were able to quote the exact words. At the
lawyer's especially the terror was at its height,
for he had just received by post an anonymous
letter warning him that a barrel of powder was
buried in his cellar, and that it would be blown
up if he did not declare himself on the side of
the people. Just then the Grégoires,
prolonging their visit on the arrival of this
letter, were discussing it, and decided that it
must be the work of a joker, when the invasion of
the mob completed the terror of the house. They,
however, smiled, drawing back a corner of the
curtain to look out, and refused to admit that
there was any danger, certain, they said, that all
would finish up well. Five o'clock struck, and
they had time to wait until the street was free
for them to cross the road to dine with the
Hennebeaus, where Cécile, who had surely
returned, must be waiting for them. But no one in
Montsou seemed to share their confidence. People
were wildly running about; doors and windows were
banged to. They saw Maigrat, on the other side of
the road, barricading his shop with a large supply
of iron bars, and looking so pale and trembling
that his feeble little wife was obliged to fasten
the screws. The band had come to a halt before
the manager's villa, and the cry echoed:
"Bread! bread! bread!"
M. Hennebeau was standing at the window when
Hippolyte came in to close the shutters, for fear
the windows should be broken by stones. He closed
all on the ground floor, and then went up to the
first floor; the creak of the window-fasteners was
heard and the clack of the shutters one by one.
Unfortunately, it was not possible to shut the
kitchen window in the area in the same way, a
window made disquietingly ruddy by the gleams from
the saucepans and the spit.
Mechanically, M. Hennebeau, who wished to look
out, went up to Paul's room on the second floor:
it was on the left, the best situated, for it
commanded the road as far as the Company's Yards.
And he stood behind the blinds overlooking the
crowd. But this room had again overcome him, the
toilet table sponged and in order, the cold bed
with neat and well-drawn sheets. All his rage of
the afternoon, that furious battle in the depths
of his silent solitude, had now turned to an
immense fatigue. His whole being was now like
this room, grown cold, swept of the filth of the
morning, returned to its habitual correctness.
What was the good of a scandal? had anything
really changed in his house? His wife had simply
taken another lover; that she had chosen him in
the family scarcely aggravated the fact; perhaps
even it was an advantage, for she thus preserved
appearances. He pitied himself when he thought of
his mad jealousy. How ridiculous to have struck
that bed with his fists! Since he had tolerated
another man, he could certainly tolerate this one.
It was only a matter of a little more contempt. A
terrible bitterness was poisoning his mouth, the
uselessness of everything, the eternal pain of
existence, shame for himself who always adored and
desired this woman in the dirt in which he had
abandoned her.
Beneath the window the yells broke out with
increased violence:
"Bread! bread! bread!"
"Idiots!" said M. Hennebeau between his
clenched teeth.
He heard them abusing him for his large salary,
calling him a bloated idler, a bloody beast who
stuffed himself to indigestion with good things,
while the worker was dying of hunger. The women
had noticed the kitchen, and there was a tempest
of imprecations against the pheasant roasting
there, against the sauces that with fat odours
irritated their empty stomachs. Ah! the stinking
bourgeois, they should be stuffed with champagne
and truffles till their guts burst.
"Bread! bread! bread!"
"Idiots!" repeated M. Hennebeau;
"am I happy?"
Anger arose in him against these people who could
not understand. He would willingly have made them
a present of his large salary to possess their
hard skin and their facility of coupling without
regret. Why could he not seat them at his table
and stuff them with his pheasant, while he went to
fornicate behind the hedges, to tumble the girls
over, making fun of those who had tumbled them
over before him! He would have given everything
his education, his comfort, his luxury, his power
as manager, if he could be for one day the vilest
of the wretches who obeyed him, free of his flesh,
enough of a blackguard to beat his wife and to
take his pleasure with his neighbours' wives. And
he longed also to be dying of hunger, to have an
empty belly, a stomach twisted by cramps that
would make his head turn with giddiness: perhaps
that would have killed the eternal pain. Ah! to
live like a brute, to possess nothing, to scour
the fields with the ugliest and dirtiest putter,
and to be able to be happy!
"Bread! bread! bread!"
Then he grew angry and shouted furiously in the
tumult:
"Bread! is that enough, idiots!"
He could eat, and all the same he was groaning
with torment. His desolate household, his whole
wounded life, choked him at the throat like a
death agony. Things were not all for the best
because one had bread. Who was the fool who
placed earthly happiness in the partition of
wealth? These revolutionary dreamers might
demolish society and rebuilt another society; they
would not add one joy to humanity, they would not
take away one pain, by cutting bread-and-butter
for everybody. They would even enlarge the
unhappiness of the earth; they would one day make
the very dogs howl with despair when they had
taken them out of the tranquil satisfaction of
instinct, to raise them to the unappeasable
suffering of passion. No, the one good thing was
not to exist, and if one existed, to be a tree, a
stone, less still, a grain of sand, which cannot
bleed beneath the heels of the passer-by.
And in this exasperation of his torment, tears
swelled in M. Hennebeau's eyes, and broke in
burning drops on his cheeks. The twilight was
drowning the road when stones began to riddle the
front of the villa. With no anger now against
these starving people, only enraged by the burning
wound at his heart he continued to stammer in the
midst of his tears:
"Idiots! idiots!"
But the cry of the belly dominated, and a roar
blew like a tempest, sweeping everything before
it:
"Bread! bread! bread!"