"Say that again, by God! Just dare to say that again!"
Catherine had declared her intention to go back to the Voreux. The idea of not gaining her bread, of being thus tolerated in her mother's house, like a useless animal that is in the way, was becoming every day more unbearable; and if it had not been for the fear of Chaval she would have gone down on Tuesday.
She said again, stammering:
"What would you have? We can't go on doing nothing. We should get bread, anyhow."
Maheude interrupted her.
"Listen to me: the first one of you who goes to work, I'll do for you. No, that would be too much, to kill the father and go on taking it out of the children! I've had enough of it; I'd rather see you all put in your coffins, like him that's gone already."
And her long silence broke out into a furious flood of words. A fine sum Catherine would bring her! hardly thirty sous, to which they might add twenty sous if the bosses were good enough to find work for that brigand Jeanlin. Fifty sous, and seven mouths to feed! The brats were only good to swallow soup. As to the grandfather, he must have broken something in his brain when he fell, for he seemed imbecile; unless it had turned his blood to see the soldiers firing at his mates.
"That's it, old man, isn't it? They've quite done for you. It's no good having your hands still strong; you're done for."
Bonnemort looked at her with his dim eyes without understanding. He remained for hours with fixed gaze, having no intelligence now except to spit into a plate filled with ashes, which was put beside him for cleanliness.
"And they've not settled his pension, either," she went on. "And I'm sure they won't give it, because of our ideas. No! I tell you that we've had too much to do with those people who bring ill luck."
"But," Catherine ventured to say, "they promise on the placard—"
"Just let me alone with your damned placard! More birdlime for catching us and eating us. They can be mighty kind now that they have ripped us open."
"But where shall we go, mother? They won't keep us at the settlement, sure enough."
Maheude made a vague, terrified gesture. Where should they go to? She did not know at all; she avoided thinking, it made her mad. They would go elsewhere—somewhere. And as the noise of the saucepan was becoming unbearable, she turned round on Lénore and Henri and boxed their ears. The fall of Estelle, who had been crawling on all fours, increased the disturbance. The mother quieted her with a push—a good thing if it had killed her! She spoke of Alzire; she wished the others might have that child's luck. Then suddenly she burst out into loud sobs, with her head against the wall.
Étienne, who was standing by, did not dare to interfere. He no longer counted for anything in the house, and even the children drew back from him suspiciously. But the unfortunate woman's tears went to his heart, and he murmured:
"Come, come! courage! we must try to get out of it."
She did not seem to hear him, and was bemoaning herself now in a low continuous complaint.
"Ah! the wretchedness! is it possible? Things did go on before these horrors. We ate our bread dry, but we were all together; and what has happened, good God! What have we done, then, that we should have such troubles—some under the earth, and the others with nothing left but to long to get there too? It's true enough that they harnessed us like horses to work, and it's not at all a just sharing of things to be always getting the stick and making rich people's fortunes bigger without hope of ever tasting the good things. There's no pleasure in life when hope goes. Yes, that couldn't have gone on longer; we had to breathe a bit. If we had only known! Is it possible to make oneself so wretched through wanting justice?"
Sighs swelled her breast, and her voice choked with immense sadness.
"Then there are always some clever people there who promise you that everything can be arranged by just taking a little trouble. Then one loses one's head, and one suffers so much from things as they are that one asks for things that can't be. Now, I was dreaming like a fool; I seemed to see a life of good friendship with everybody; I went off into the air, my faith! into the clouds. And then one breaks one's back when one tumbles down into the mud again. It's not true; there's nothing over there of the things that people tell of. What there is, is only wretchedness, ah! wretchedness, as much as you like of it, and bullets into the bargain."
Étienne listened to this lamentation, and every tear struck him with remorse. He knew not what to say to calm Maheude, broken by her terrible fall from the heights of the ideal. She had come back to the middle of the room, and was now looking at him; she addressed him with contemptuous familiarity in a last cry of rage:
"And you, do you talk of going back to the pit, too, after driving us out of the bloody place! I've nothing to reproach you with; but if I were in your shoes I should be dead of grief by now after causing such harm to the mates."
He was about to reply, but then shrugged his shoulders in despair. What was the good of explaining, for she would not understand in her grief? And he went away, for he was suffering too much, and resumed his wild walk outside.
There again he found the settlement apparently waiting for him, the men at the doors, the women at the windows. As soon as he appeared growls were heard, and the crowd increased. The breath of gossip, which had been swelling for four days, was breaking out in a universal malediction. Fists were stretched towards him, mothers spitefully pointed him out to their boys, old men spat as they looked at him. It was the change which follows on the morrow of defeat, the fatal reverse of popularity, an execration exasperated by all the suffering endured without result. He had to pay for famine and death.
Zacharie, who came up with Philoméne, hustled Étienne as he went out, grinning maliciously.
"Well, he gets fat. It's filling, then, to live on other people's deaths?"
The Levaque woman had already come to her door with Bouteloup. She spoke of Bébert, her youngster, killed by a bullet, and cried:
"Yes, there are cowards who get children murdered! Let him go and look for mine in the earth if he wants to give it me back!"
She was forgetting her man in prison, for the household was going on since Bouteloup remained; but she thought of him, however, and went on in a shrill voice:
"Get along! rascals may walk about while good people are put away!"
In avoiding her, Étienne tumbled on to Pierronne, who was running up across the gardens. She had regarded her mother's death as a deliverance, for the old woman's violence threatened to get them hanged; nor did she weep over Pierron's little girl, that street-walker Lydie—a good riddance. But she joined in with her neighbours with the idea of getting reconciled with them.
"And my mother, eh, and the little girl? You were seen; you were hiding yourself behind them when they caught the lead instead of you!"
What was to be done? Strangle Pierronne and the others, and fight the whole settlement? Étienne wanted to do so for a moment. The blood was throbbing in his head, he now looked upon his mates as brutes, he was irritated to see them so unintelligent and barbarous that they wanted to revenge themselves on him for the logic of facts. How stupid it all was! and he felt disgust at his powerlessness to tame them again; and satisfied himself with hastening his steps as though he were deaf to abuse. Soon it became a flight; every house hooted him as he passed, they hastened on his heels, it was a whole nation cursing him with a voice that was becoming like thunder in its overwhelming hatred. It was he, the exploiter, the murderer, who was the sole cause