"Are you never thirsty?" said Étienne to him, laughing.
And he replied with his gentle voice, almost without an accent:
"I am thirsty when I eat."
His companion also joked him about the girls, declaring that he had seen him with a putter in the wheat on the Bas-de-Soie side. Then he shrugged his shoulders with tranquil indifference. What should he do with a putter? Woman was for him a boy, a comrade, when she had the fraternal feeling and the courage of a man. What was the good of having a possible act of cowardice on one's conscience? He desired no bond, either woman or friend; he would be master of his own life and those of others.
Every evening towards nine o'clock, when the inn was emptying, Étienne remained thus talking with Souvarine. He drank his beer in small sips, while the engine-man smoked constant cigarettes, of which the tobacco had at last stained his slender fingers. His vague mystic's eyes followed the smoke in the midst of a dream; his left hand sought occupation by nervously twitching; and he usually ended by installing a tame rabbit on his knees, a large doe with young, who lived at liberty in the house. This rabbit, which he had named Poland, had grown to worship him; she would come and smell his trousers, fawn on him and scratch him with her paws until he took her up like a child. Then, lying in a heap against him, her ears laid back, she would close her eyes; and without growing tired, with an unconscious caressing gesture, he would pass his hand over her grey silky fur, calmed by that warm living softness.
"You know I have had a letter from Pluchart," said Étienne one evening.
Only Rasseneur was there. The last client had departed for the settlement, which was now going to bed.
"Ah!" exclaimed the innkeeper, standing up before his two lodgers. "How are things going with Pluchart?"
During the last two months, Étienne had kept up a constant correspondence with the Lille mechanician, whom he had told of his Montsou engagement, and who was now indoctrinating him, having been struck by the propaganda which he might carry on among the miners.
"The association is getting on very well. It seems that they are coming in from all sides."