"And people come out of their way to see that!" exclaimed M. Grégoire, disillusioned.
Cécile, rosy with health and glad to breathe so pure an air, was cheerfully joking, while Madame Hennebeau made a little grimace of repugnance as she murmured:
"The fact is, this is not pretty at all."
The two engineers laughed. They tried to interest the visitors, taking them round and explaining to them the working of the pumps and the manipulation of the stamper which drove in the piles. But the ladies became anxious. They shuddered when they knew that the pumps would have to work for six or seven years before the shaft was reconstructed and all the water exhausted from the mine. No, they would rather think of something else; this destruction was only good to give bad dreams.
"Let us go," said Madame Hennebeau, turning towards her carriage.
Lucie and Jeanne protested. What! so soon! and the drawing which was not finished. They wanted to remain; their father would bring them to dinner in the evening.
M. Hennebeau alone took his place with his wife in the carriage, for he wished to question Négrel.
"Very well! go on before," said M. Grégoire. "We will follow you; we have a little visit of five minutes to make over there at the settlement. Go on, go on! we shall be at Réquillart as soon as you."
He got up behind Madame Grégoire and Cécile, and while the other carriage went along by the canal, theirs gently ascended the slope.
Their excursion was to be completed by a visit of charity. Zacharie's death had filled them with pity for this tragical Maheu family, about whom the whole country was talking. They had no pity for the father, that brigand, that slayer of soldiers, who had to be struck down like a wolf. But the mother touched them, that poor woman who had just lost her son after having lost her husband, and whose daughter was perhaps a corpse beneath the earth; to say nothing of an invalid grandfather, a child who was lame as the result of a landslip, and a little girl who died of starvation during the strike. So that, though this family had in part deserved its misfortunes by the detestable spirit it had shown, they had resolved to assert the breadth of their charity, their desire for forgetfulness and conciliation, by themselves bringing on alms. Two parcels, carefully wrapped up, had been placed beneath a seat of the carriage.