"I'm damned if I don't fling myself down the shaft before you!"
A great recoil carried away the mob. They all turned, and in the rush took the right-hand road, which stretched far away through the fields. Again cries arose:
"To Madeleine! To Crévecœur! no more work! Bread! bread!"
But in the centre, as they went on, there was hustling. It was Chaval, they said, who was trying to take advantage of an opportunity to escape. Étienne had seized him by the arm, threatening to do for him if he was planning some treachery. And the other struggled and protested furiously:
"What's all this for? Isn't a man free? I've been freezing the last hour. I want to clean myself. Let me go!"
He was, in fact, suffering from the coal glued to his skin by sweat, and his woollen garment was no protection.
"On you go, or we'll clean you," replied Étienne. "Don't expect to get your life at a bargain."
They were still running, and he turned towards Catherine, who was keeping up well. It annoyed him to feel her so near him, so miserable, shivering beneath her man's old jacket and her muddy trousers. She must be nearly dead of fatigue, she was running all the same.
"You can go off, you can," he said at last.
Catherine seemed not to hear. Her eyes, on meeting Étienne's, only flamed with reproach for a moment. She did not stop. Why did he want her to leave her man? Chaval was not at all kind, it was true; he would even beat her sometimes. But he was her man, the one who had had her first; and it enraged her that they should throw themselves on him—more than a thousand of them. She would have defended him without any tenderness at all, out of pride.