Germinal

by Émile Zola

Then Maheude joined in.

"The bother is, you see, when you have to say to yourself that it won't change. When you're young you think that happiness will come some time, you hope for things; and then the wretchedness begins always over again, and you get shut up in it. Now, I don't wish harm to any one, but there are times when this injustice makes me mad."

There was silence; they were all breathing with the vague discomfort of this closed-in horizon. Father Bonnemort only, if he was there, opened his eyes with surprise, for in his time people used not to worry about things; they were born in the coal and they hammered at the seam, without asking for more; while now there was an air stirring which made the colliers ambitious.

"It don't do to spit at anything," he murmured. "A good glass is a good glass. As to the masters, they're often rascals; but there always will be masters, won't there? What's the use of racking your brains over those things?"

Étienne at once became animated. What! The worker was to be forbidden to think! Why! that was just it; things would change now because the worker had begun to think. In the old man's time the miner lived in the mine like a brute, like a machine for extracting coal, always under the earth, with ears and eyes stopped to outward events. So the rich, who governed, found it easy to sell him and buy him, and to devour his flesh; he did not even know what was going on. But now the miner was waking up down there, germinating in the earth just as a grain germinates; and some fine day he would spring up in the midst of the fields: yes, men would spring up, an army of men who would re-establish justice. Is it not true that all citizens are equal since the Revolution, because they vote together? Why should the worker remain the slave of the master who pays him? The big companies with their machines were crushing everything, and one no longer had against them the ancient guarantees when people of the same trade, united in a body, were able to defend themselves. It was for that, by God, and for no other reason, that all would burst up one day, thanks to education. One had only to look into the settlement itself: the grandfathers could not sign their names, the fathers could do so, and as for the sons, they read and wrote like schoolmasters. Ah! it was springing up, it was springing up, little by little, a rough harvest of men who would ripen in the sun! From the moment when they were no longer each of them stuck to his place for his whole existence, and when they had the ambition to take a neighbour's place, why should they not hit out with their fists and try for the mastery?

Maheu was shaken but remained full of doubts.

"As soon as you move they give you back your certificate," he said. "The old man is right; it will always be the miner who gets all the trouble, without a chance of a leg of mutton now and then as a reward."

Maheude, who had been silent for a while, awoke as from a dream.

"But if what the priests tell is true, if the poor people in this world become the rich ones in the next!"

A burst of laughter interrupted her; even the children shrugged their shoulders, being incredulous in the open air, keeping a secret fear of ghosts in the pit, but glad of the empty sky.