IT was at the Bon-Joyeux, Widow Désir’s, that the private meeting was organized for Thursday at two o’clock. The widow, incensed at the miseries inflicted on her children the colliers, was in a constant state of anger, especially as her inn was emptying. Never had there been a less thirsty strike; the drunkards had shut themselves up at home for fear of disobeying the sober word of command. Thus Montsou, which swarmed with people on feast-days, now exhibited its wide street in mute and melancholy desolation. No beer flowed from counters or bellies, the gutters were dry. On the pavement at the Casimir Bar and the Estaminet du Progrés one only saw the pale faces of the landladies, looking inquiringly into the street; then in Montsou itself the deserted doors extended from the Estaminet Lenfant to the Estaminet Tison. passing by the Estaminet Piquette and the Tete-Coupée Bar; only the Estaminet Saint-éloi, which was frequented by captains, still drew occasional glasses; the solitude even extended to the Volcan, where the ladies were resting for lack of admirers, although they had lowered their price from ten sous to five in view of the hard times. A deep mourning was breaking the heart of the entire country.

“By God!” exclaimed Widow Désir, slapping her thighs with both hands, “it’s the fault of the gendarmes! Let them run me in, devil take them, if they like, but I must plague them.”

For her, all authorities and masters were gendarmes; it was a term of general contempt in which she enveloped all the enemies of the people. She had greeted étienne’s request with transport; her whole house belonged to the miners, she would lend her ball-room gratuitously, and would herself issue the invitations since the law required it. Besides, if the law was not pleased, so much the better! She would give them a bit of her mind. Since yesterday the young man had brought her some fifty letters to sign; he had them copied by neighbours in the settlement who knew how to write, and these letters were sent around among the pits to delegates and to men of whom they were sure. The avowed order of the day was a discussion regarding the continuation of the strike; but in reality they were expecting Pluchart, and reckoning on a discourse from him which would cause a general adhesion to the International.

On Thursday morning étienne was disquieted by the non-appearance of his old foreman, who had promised by letter to arrive on Wednesday evening. What, then, was happening? He was annoyed that he would not be able to come to an understanding with him before the meeting. At nine o’clock he went to Montsou, with the idea that the mechanic had, perhaps, gone there direct without stopping at the Voreux.

“No, I’ve not seen your friend,” replied Widow Désir. “But everything is ready. Come and see.”

She led him into the ball-room. The decorations were the same, the garlands which supported at the ceiling a crown of painted paper flowers, and the gilt cardboard shields in a line along the wall with the names of saints, male and female. Only the musicians’ platform had been replaced by a table and three chairs in one corner; and the room was furnished with forms ranged along the floor.

“It’s perfect,” étienne declared.

“And you know,” said the widow, “that you’re at home here. Yell as much as you like. The gendarmes will have to pass over my body if they do come!”

In spite of his anxiety, he could not help smiling when he looked at her, so vast did she appear, with a pair of breasts so huge that one alone would require a man to embrace it, which now led to the saying that of her six weekday lovers she had to take two every evening on account of the work.

But étienne was astonished to see Rasseneur and Souvarine enter; and as the widow left them all three in the large empty hall he exclaimed:

“What! you here already!”

Souvarine, who had worked all night at the Voreux, the engine-men not being on strike, had merely come out of curiosity. As to Rasseneur, he had seemed constrained during the last two days, and his fat round face had lost its good-natured laugh.

“Pluchart has not arrived, and I am very anxious,” added étienne.

The innkeeper turned away his eyes, and replied between his teeth:

“I’m not surprised; I don’t expect him.”

“What!”

Then he made up his mind, and looking the other man in the face bravely:

“I, too, have sent him a letter, if you want me to tell you; and in that letter I have begged him not to come. Yes, I think we ought to manage our own affairs ourselves, without turning to strangers.”

étienne, losing his self-possession and trembling with anger, turned his eyes on his mate’s and stammered:

“You’ve done that, you’ve done that?”

“I have done that, certainly! and you know that I trust Pluchart; he’s a knowing fellow and reliable, one can get on with him. But you see I don’t care a damn for your ideas, I don’t! Politics, Government, and all that, I don’t care a damn for it! What I want is for the miner to be better treated. I have worked down below for twenty years, I’ve sweated down there with fatigue and misery, and I’ve sworn to make it easier for the poor beggars who are there still; and I know well enough you’ll never get anything with all your ideas, you’ll only make the men’s fate more miserable still. When they are forced by hunger to go down again, they will be more crushed than ever; the Company will pay them with strokes of the stick, like a runaway dog who is brought back to his kennel. That’s what I want to prevent, do you see!”

He raised his voice, protruding his belly and squarely planted on his big legs. The man’s whole patient, reasonable nature was revealed in clear phrases, which flowed abundantly without an effort. Was it not absurd to believe that with one stroke one could change the world, putting the workers in the place of the masters and dividing gold as one divides an apple? It would, perhaps, take thousands and thousands of years for that to be realized. There, hold your tongue, with your miracles! The most sensible plan was, if one did not wish to break one’s nose, to go straight forward, to demand possible reforms, in short, to improve the lot of the workers on every occasion. He did his best, so far as he occupied himself with it, to bring the Company to better terms; if not, damn it all! they would only starve by being obstinate.

étienne had let him speak, his own speech cut short by indignation. Then he cried:

“Haven’t you got any blood in your veins, by God?” At one moment he would have struck him, and to resist the temptation he rushed about the hall with long strides, venting his fury on the benches through which he made a passage.

“Shut the door, at all events,” Souvarine remarked. “There is no need to be heard.”

Having himself gone to shut it, he quietly sat down in one of the office chairs. He had rolled a cigarette, and was looking at the other two men with his mild subtle eye, his lips drawn by a slight smile.

“You won’t get any farther by being angry,” said Rasseneur judiciously. “I believed at first that you had good sense. It was sensible to recommend calmness to the mates, to force them to keep indoors, and to use your power to maintain order. And now you want to get them into a mess!”

At each turn in his walks among the benches, étienne returned towards the innkeeper, seizing him by the shoulders, shaking him, and shouting out his replies in his face.

“But, blast it all! I mean to be calm. Yes, I have imposed order on them! Yes, I do advise them still not to stir! only it doesn’t do to be made a joke of after all! You are lucky to remain cool. Now there are hours when I feel that I am losing my head.”

This was a confession on his part. He railed at his illusions of a novice, his religious dream of a city in which justice would soon reign among the men who had become brothers. A fine method truly! to fold one’s arms and wait, if one wished to see men eating each other to the end of the world like wolves. No! one must interfere, or injustice would be eternal, and the rich would for ever suck the blood of the poor. Therefore he could not forgive himself the stupidity of having said formerly that politics ought to be banished from the social question. He knew nothing then; now he had read and studied, his ideas were ripe, and he boasted that he had a system. He explained it badly, however, in confused phrases which contained a little of all the theories he had successively passed through and abandoned. At the summit Karl Marx’s idea remained standing: capital was the result of spoliation, it was the duty and the privilege of labour to reconquer that stolen wealth. In practice he had at first, with Proudhon, been captured by the chimera of a mutual credit, a vast bank of exchange which suppressed middlemen; then Lassalle’s cooperative societies, endowed by the State, gradually transforming the earth into a single industrial town, had aroused his enthusiasm until he grew disgusted in face of the difficulty of controlling them; and he had arrived recently at collectivism, demanding that all the instruments of production should be restored to the community. But this remained vague; he knew not how to realize this new dream, still hindered by scruples of reason and good sense, not daring to risk the secretary’s absolute affirmations. He simply said that it was a question of getting possession of the government first of all. Afterwards they would see.

“But what has taken you? Why are you going over to the bourgeois?” he continued violently, again planting himself before the innkeeper. “You said yourself it would have to burst up!”

Rasseneur blushed slightly.

“Yes, I said so. And if it does burst up, you will see that I am no more of a coward than any one else. Only I refuse to be among those who increase the mess in order to fish out a position for themselves.”

étienne blushed in his turn. The two men no longer shouted, having become bitter and spiteful, conquered by the coldness of their rivalry. It was at bottom that which always strains systems, making one man revolutionary in the extreme, pushing the other to an affectation of prudence, carrying them, in spite of themselves, beyond their true ideas into those fatal parts which men do not choose for themselves. And Souvarine, who was listening, exhibited on his pale, girlish face a silent contempt — the crushing contempt of the man who was willing to yield his life in obscurity without even gaining the splendour of martyrdom.

“Then it’s to me that you’re saying that?” asked étienne; “you’re jealous!”

“Jealous of what?” replied Rasseneur. “I don’t pose as a big man; I’m not trying to create a section at Montsou for the sake of being made secretary.”

The other man wanted to interrupt him, but he added:

“Why don’t you be frank? You don’t care a damn for the International; you’re only burning to be at our head, the gentleman who corresponds with the famous Federal Council of the Nord!”

There was silence. étienne replied, quivering:

“Good! I don’t think I have anything to reproach myself with. I always asked your advice, for I knew that you had fought here long before me. But since you can’t endure any one by your side, I’ll act alone in future. And first I warn you that the meeting will take place even if Pluchart does not come, and the mates will join in spite of you.”

“Oh! join!” muttered the innkeeper; “that’s not enough. You’ll have to get them to pay their subscriptions.”

“Not at all. The International grants time to workers on strike. It will at once come to our help, and we shall pay later on.”

Rasseneur was carried beyond himself.

“Well, we shall see. I belong to this meeting of yours, and I shall speak. I shall not let you turn our friends’ heads, I shall let them know where their real interests lie. We shall see whom they mean to follow — me, whom they have known for thirty years, or you, who have turned everything upside down among us in less than a year. No, no! damn it all! We shall see which of us is going to crush the other.”

And he went out, banging the door. The garlands of flowers swayed from the ceiling, and the gilt shields jumped against the walls. Then the great room fell back into its heavy calm.

Souvarine was smoking in his quiet way, seated before the table. After having paced for a moment in silence, étienne began to relieve his feelings at length. Was it his fault if they had left that fat lazy fellow to come to him? And he defended himself from having sought popularity. He knew not even how it had happened, this friendliness of the settlement, the confidence of the miners, the power which he now had over them. He was indignant at being accused of wishing to bring everything to confusion out of ambition; he struck his chest, protesting his brotherly feelings.

Suddenly he stopped before Souvarine and exclaimed. “Do you know, if I thought I should cost a drop of blood to a friend, I would go off at once to America!”

The engine-man shrugged his shoulders, and a smile again came on his lips.

“Oh! blood!” he murmured. “What does that matter? The earth has need of it.”

étienne, growing calm, took a chair, and put his elbows on the other side of the table. This fair face, with the dreamy eyes, which sometimes grew savage with a red light, disturbed him, and exercised a singular power over his will. In spite of his comrade’s silence, conquered even by that silence, he felt himself gradually absorbed.

“Well,” he asked, “what would you do in my place? Am I not right to act as I do? Isn’t it best for us to join this association?”

Souvarine, after having slowly ejected a jet of smoke, replied by his favourite word:

“Oh, foolery! but meanwhile it’s always so. Besides, their International will soon begin to move. He has taken it up.”

“Who, then?”

“He!”

He had pronounced this word in a whisper, with religious fervour, casting a glance towards the east. He was speaking of the master, Bakunin the destroyer.

“He alone can give the knock-out blow,” he went on, “while your learned men, with their evolution, are mere cowards. Before three years are past, the International, under his orders, will crush the old world.”

étienne pricked up his ears in attention. He was burning to gain knowledge, to understand this worship of destruction, regarding which the engine-man only uttered occasional obscure words, as though he kept certain mysteries to himself.

“Well, but explain to me. What is your aim?”

“To destroy everything. No more nations, no more governments, no more property, no more God nor worship.”

“I quite understand. Only what will that lead you to?”

“To the primitive formless commune, to a new world, to the renewal of everything.”

“And the means of execution? How do you reckon to set about it?”

“By fire, by poison, by the dagger. The brigand is the true hero, the popular avenger, the revolutionary in action, with no phrases drawn out of books. We need a series of tremendous outrages to frighten the powerful and to arouse the people.”

As he talked, Souvarine grew terrible. An ecstasy raised him on his chair, a mystic flame darted from his pale eyes, and his delicate hands gripped the edge of the table almost to breaking. The other man looked at him in fear, and thought of the stories of which he had received vague intimation, of charged mines beneath the tsar’s palace, of chiefs of police struck down by knives like wild boars, of his mistress, the only woman he had loved, hanged at Moscow one rainy morning, while in the crowd he kissed her with his eyes for the last time.

“No! no!” murmured étienne, as with a gesture he pushed away............