"I say, comrade," he shouted, "hand me those shovels that belong to us, over there against the slope, so that if we happen to want them we shall be able to find them again."
And when the quarryman had rendered him this last service he gave him a hearty shake of the hand, to show him that he felt esteem for him in spite of all, having seen him at work.
"You are a good fellow, you are," said he.
This mark of friendship agitated Cabuche in an extraordinary manner.
"Thank you," he answered simply, stifling his tears.
Misard, who had made friends with him again, after accusing him before the examining-magistrate, gave his approval with an inclination of the head, pinching his lips into a slight smile. He had long since ceased working, and, with his hands in his pockets, stood gazing at the train with a bilious look, as if waiting to see whether he would not be able to pick up something lost between the wheels.
At length, the headguard had just decided with Jacques that an attempt could be made to go on again, when Pecqueux, who had got down on to the line, called the driver.
"Come and look!" said he. "One of the cylinders has had a shock."
Jacques, approaching him, also bent down. He had already discovered, on examining La Lison carefully, that it had received a blow at the place indicated. In clearing the engine, the workmen had ascertained that some oak sleepers, left at the bottom of the slope by the platelayers, had been shifted by the action of the snow and wind, so that they rested on the rails; and the stoppage, even, must have been partly due to this obstruction, for the locomotive had run against the sleepers. They could see the scratch on the box of the cylinder, and the piston it enclosed seemed slightly bent; but that was all the visible harm, and the fears of the driver were at first removed. Perhaps there existed serious interior injuries; nothing is more delicate than the complicated mechanism of the slide valves, where beats the heart, the living spirit of the machine.
Jacques got up again, blew the whistle, and opened the regulator to feel the articulations of La Lison. It took a long time to move, like a person bruised by a fall, who has difficulty in recovering the use of his limbs. At last, with a painful puff, it started, gave a few turns of the wheels still dizzy and ponderous. It would do, it could move, and would perform the journey. Only Jacques tossed his head, for he, who knew the locomotive thoroughly, had just felt something singular in his hand—something that had undergone a change, that had grown old, that had been touched somewhere with a mortal blow. It must have got this in the snow, cut to the heart, a death chill, like those strongly built young women who fall into a decline through having returned home one night, from a ball, in icy cold rain.