3 Books To Know French Literature. Victor Hugo
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waiting she fell on the soldiers, her black mouth belching abuse.
"Pack of scoundrels! dirty scum! ready to lick their masters' boots, and only brave against poor people!"
Then the others joined her, and there were volleys of insults. A few, indeed, cried: "Hurrah for the soldiers! to the shaft with the officer!" but soon there was only one clamour: "Down with the red breeches!" These men, who had listened quietly, with motionless mute faces, to the fraternal appeals and the friendly attempts to win them over, preserved the same stiff passivity beneath this hail of abuse. Behind them the captain had drawn his sword, and as the crowd pressed in on them more and more, threatening to crush them against the wall, he ordered them to present bayonets. They obeyed, and a double row of steel points was placed in front of the strikers' breasts.
"Ah! the bloody swine!" yelled Mother Brulé, drawing back.
But already they were coming on again, in excited contempt of death. The women were throwing themselves forward, Maheude and the Levaque shouting:
"Kill us! Kill us, then! We want our rights!"
Levaque, at the risk of getting cut, had seized three bayonets in his hands, shaking and pulling them in the effort to snatch them away. He twisted them in the strength of his fury; while Bouteloup, standing aside, and annoyed at having followed his mate, quietly watched him.
"Just come and look here," said Maheu; "just look a bit if you are good chaps!"
And he opened his jacket and drew aside his shirt, showing his naked breast, with his hairy skin tattooed by coal. He pressed on the bayonets, compelling the soldiers to draw back, terrible in his insolence and bravado. One of them had pricked him in the chest, and he became like a madman, trying to make it enter deeper and to hear his ribs crack.
"Cowards, you don't dare! There are ten thousand behind us. Yes, you can kill us; there are ten thousand more of us to kill yet."
The position of the soldiers was becoming critical, for they had received strict orders not to make use of their weapons until the last extremity. And how were they to prevent these furious people from impaling themselves? Besides, the space was getting less; they were now pushed back against the wall, and it was impossible to draw further back. Their little troop—a mere handful of men—opposed to the rising flood of miners, still held its own, however, and calmly executed the brief orders given by the captain. The latter, with keen eyes and nervously compressed lips, only feared lest they should be carried away by this abuse. Already a young sergeant, a tall lean fellow whose thin moustache was bristling up, was blinking his eyes in a disquieting manner. Near him an old soldier, with tanned skin and stripes won in twenty campaigns, had grown pale when he saw his bayonet twisted like a straw. Another, doubtless a recruit still smelling the fields, became very red every time he heard himself called "scum" and "riff-raff." And the violence did not cease, the outstretched fists, the abominable words, the shovelfuls of accusations and threats which buffeted their faces. It required all the force of order to keep them thus, with mute faces, in the proud, gloomy silence of military discipline.
A collision seemed inevitable, when Captain Richomme appeared from behind the troop with his benevolent white head, overwhelmed by emotion. He spoke out loudly:
"By God! this is idiotic! such tomfoolery can't go on!"
And he threw himself between the bayonets and the miners.
"Mates, listen to me. You know that I am an old workman, and that I have always been one of you. Well, by God! I promise you, that if they're not just with you, I'm the man to go and say to the bosses how things lie. But this is too much, it does no good at all to howl bad names at these good fellows, and try and get your bellies ripped up."
They listened, hesitating. But up above, unfortunately, little Négrel's short profile reappeared. He feared, no doubt, that he would be accused of sending a captain in place of venturing out himself; and he tried to speak. But his voice was lost in the midst of so frightful a tumult that he had to leave the window again, simply shrugging his shoulders. Richomme then found it vain to entreat them in his own name, and to repeat that the thing must be arranged between mates; they repelled him, suspecting him. But he was obstinate and remained amongst them.
"By God! let them break my head as well as yours, for I don't leave you while you are so foolish!"
Étienne, whom he begged to help him in making them hear reason, made a gesture of powerlessness. It was too late, there were now more than five hundred of them. And besides the madmen who were rushing up to chase away the Borains, some came out of inquisitiveness, or to joke and amuse themselves over the battle. In the midst of one group, at some distance, Zacharie and Philoméne were looking on as at a theatre so peacefully that they had brought their two children, Achille and Désirée. Another stream was arriving from Réquillart, including Mouquet and Mouquette. The former at once went on, grinning, to slap his friend Zacharie on the back; while Mouquette, in a very excited condition, rushed to the first rank of the evil-disposed.
Every minute, however, the captain looked down the Montsou road. The desired reinforcements had not arrived, and his sixty men could hold out no longer. At last it occurred to him to strike the imagination of the crowd, and he ordered his men to load. The soldiers executed the order, but the disturbance increased, the blustering, and the mockery.
"Ah! these shammers, they're going off to the target!" jeered the women, the Brulé, the Levaque, and the others.
Maheude, with her breast covered by the little body of Estelle, who was awake and crying, came so near that the sergeant asked her what she was going to do with that poor little brat.
"What the devil's that to do with you?" she replied. "Fire at it if you dare!"
The men shook their heads with contempt. None believed that they would fire on them.
"There are no balls in their cartridges," said Levaque.
"Are we Cossacks?" cried Maheu. "You don't fire against Frenchmen, by God!"
Others said that when people had been through the Crimean campaign they were not afraid of lead. And all continued to thrust themselves on to the rifles. If firing had begun at this moment the crowd would have been mown down.
In the front rank Mouquette was choking with fury, thinking that the soldiers were going to gash the women's skins. She had spat out all her coarse words at them, and could find no vulgarity low enough, when suddenly, having nothing left but that mortal offence with which to bombard the faces of the troop, she exhibited her backside. With both hands she raised her skirts, bent her back, and expanded the enormous rotundity.
"Here, that's for you! and it's a lot too clean, you dirty blackguards!"
She ducked and butted so that each might have his share, repeating after each thrust:
"There's for the officer! there's for the sergeant! there's for the soldiers!"
A tempest of laughter arose; Bébert and Lydie were in convulsions; Étienne himself, in spite of his sombre expectation, applauded this insulting nudity. All of them, the banterers as well as the infuriated, were now hooting the soldiers as though they had seen them stained by a splash of filth; Catherine only, standing aside on some old timber, remained silent with the blood at her heart, slowly carried away by the hatred that was rising within her.
But a hustling took place. To calm the excitement of his men, the captain decided to make prisoners. With a leap Mouquette escaped, saving herself between the legs of her comrades. Three miners, Levaque and two others, were seized among the more violent, and kept in sight at the other end of the captains' room. Négrel and Dansaert, above, were shouting to the captain to come in and take refuge with them. He refused; he felt that these buildings with their doors without locks would be carried by assault, and that he would undergo the shame of being disarmed. His little troop was already growling with impatience; it was impossible to flee before these wretches in sabots. The sixty, with their backs to the wall and their rifles loaded, again faced the mob.
At first there was a recoil, followed by deep silence; the strikers were astonished