"No, no!" said the mother; "you see we are all waiting. Eh? has the wind prevented you from sleeping, poor darling?"
The young girl looked at her in great surprise.
"Has it been windy? I didn't know anything about it. I haven't moved all night."
Then they thought this funny, and all three began to laugh; the servants who were bringing in the breakfast also broke out laughing, so amused was the household at the idea that mademoiselle had been sleeping for twelve hours right off. The sight of the brioche completed the expansion of their faces.
"What! Is it cooked, then?" said Cécile; "that must be a surprise for me! That'll be good now, hot, with the chocolate!"
They sat down to table at last with the smoking chocolate in their cups, and for a long time talked of nothing but the brioche. Mélanie and Honorine remained to give details about the cooking and watched them stuffing themselves with greasy lips, saying that it was a pleasure to make a cake when one saw the masters enjoying it so much.
But the dogs began to bark loudly; perhaps they announced the music mistress, who came from Marchiennes on Mondays and Fridays. A professor of literature also came. All the young girl's education was thus carried on at Piolaine in happy ignorance, with her childish whims, throwing the book out of the window as soon as anything wearied her.
"It is M. Deneulin," said Honorine, returning.
Behind her, Deneulin, a cousin of M. Grégoire's, appeared without ceremony; with his loud voice, his quick gestures, he had the appearance of an old cavalry officer. Although over fifty, his short hair and thick moustache were as black as ink.
"Yes! It is I. Good day! Don't disturb yourselves."
He had sat down amid the family's exclamations. They turned back at last to their chocolate.
"Have you anything to tell me?" asked M. Grégoire.
"No! nothing at all," Deneulin hastened to reply. "I came out on horseback to rub off the rust a bit, and as I passed your door I thought I would just look in."
Cécile questioned him about Jeanne and Lucie, his daughters. They were perfectly well, the first was always at her painting, while the other, the elder, was training her voice at the piano from morning till night. And there was a slight quiver in his voice, a disquiet which he concealed beneath bursts of gaiety.
M. Grégoire began again:
"And everything goes well at the pit?"
"Well, I am upset over this dirty crisis. Ah! we are paying for the prosperous years! They have built too many workshops, put down too many railways, invested too much capital with a view to a large return, and today the money is asleep. They can't get any more to make the whole thing work. Luckily things are not desperate; I shall get out of it somehow."
Like his cousin he had inherited a denier in the Montsou mines. But being an enterprising engineer, tormented by the desire for a royal fortune, he had hastened to sell out when the denier had reached a million. For some months he had been maturing a scheme. His wife possessed, through an uncle, the little concession of Vandame, where only two pits were open—Jean-Bart and Gaston-Marie—in an abandoned state, and with such defective material that the output hardly covered the cost. Now he was meditating the repair of Jean-Bart, the renewal of the engine, and the enlargement of the shaft so as to facilitate the descent, keeping Gaston-Marie only for exhaustion purposes. They ought to be able to shovel up gold there, he said. The idea was sound. Only the million had been spent over it, and this damnable industrial crisis broke out at the moment when large profits would have shown that he was right. Besides, he was a bad manager, with a rough kindness towards his workmen, and since his wife's death he allowed himself to be pillaged, and also gave the rein to his daughters, the elder of whom talked of going on the stage, while the younger had already had three landscapes refused at the Salon, both of them joyous amid the downfall, and exhibiting in poverty their capacity for good household management.
"You see, Léon," he went on, in a hesitating voice, "you were wrong not to sell out at the same time as I did; now everything is going down. You run risk, and if you had confided your money to me you would have seen what we should have done at Vandame in our mine!"
M. Grégoire finished his chocolate without haste. He replied peacefully:
"Never! You know that I don't want to speculate. I live quietly, and it would be too foolish to worry my head over business affairs. And as for Montsou, it may continue to go down, we shall always get our living out of it. It doesn't do to be so diabolically greedy! Then, listen, it is you who will bite your fingers one day, for Montsou will rise again and Cécile's grandchildren will still get their white bread out of it."
Deneulin listened with a constrained smile.
"Then," he murmured, "if I were to ask you to put a hundred thousand francs in my affair you would refuse?"
But seeing the Grégoires' disturbed faces he regretted having gone so far; he put off his idea of a loan, reserving it until the case was desperate.
"Oh! I have not got to that! it is a joke. Good heavens! Perhaps you are right; the money that other people earn for you is the best to fatten on."
They changed the conversation. Cécile spoke again of her cousins, whose tastes interested, while at the same time they shocked her. Madame Grégoire promised to take her daughter to see those dear little ones on the first fine day. M. Grégoire, however, with a distracted air, did not follow the conversation. He added aloud:
"If I were in your place I wouldn't persist any more; I would treat with Montsou. They want it, and you will get your money back."
He alluded to an old hatred which existed between the concession of Montsou and that of Vandame. In spite of the latter's slight importance, its powerful neighbour was enraged at seeing, enclosed within its own sixty-seven communes, this square league which did not belong to it, and after having vainly tried to kill it had plotted to buy it at a low price when in a failing condition. The war continued without truce. Each party stopped its galleries at two hundred metres from the other; it was a duel to the last drop of blood, although the managers and engineers maintained polite relations with each other.
Deneulin's eyes had flamed up.
"Never!" he cried, in his turn. "Montsou shall never have Vandame as long as I am alive. I dined on Thursday at Hennebeau's, and I saw him fluttering around me. Last autumn, when the big men came to the administration building, they made me all sorts of advances. Yes, yes, I know them—those marquises, and dukes, and generals, and ministers! Brigands who would take away even your shirt at the corner of a wood."
He could not cease. Besides, M. Grégoire did not defend the administration of Montsou—the six stewards established by the treaty of 1760, who governed the Company despotically, and the five survivors of whom on every death chose the new member among the powerful and rich shareholders. The opinion of the owner of Piolaine, with his reasonable ideas, was that these gentlemen were sometimes rather immoderate in their exaggerated love of money.
Mélanie had come to clear away the table. Outside the dogs were again barking, and Honorine was going to the door, when Cécile, who was stifled by heat and food, left the table.
"No, never mind! it must be for my lesson."
Deneulin had also risen. He watched the young girl go out, and asked, smiling:
"Well! and the marriage with little Négrel?"
"Nothing has been settled," said Madame Grégoire; "it is only an idea. We must reflect."
"No doubt!" he went on, with a gay laugh. "I believe that the nephew and the aunt— What baffles me is that Madame Hennebeau should throw herself so on Cécile's neck."
But M. Grégoire was indignant. So distinguished a lady, and fourteen years older than the young man! It was monstrous; he did not like joking