The Monomaniac (La bête humaine)

by Émile Zola

And, rising from her recumbent position, she swore like a man.

"Be quick!" she shouted with an oath. "Get him out from there!"

She made a fruitless effort with both hands to tear away a plank belonging to one of the carriages, which other pieces of wreckage prevented coming towards her. So, running off, she returned with the hatchet that served to chop the wood at home; and brandishing it as a woodcutter wields his axe in the middle of an oak-tree forest, she fell upon the plank with a volley of furious blows. The men, standing aside, allowed her to do as she would, while shouting to her to be careful. But Jacques was the only wounded person there, and he lay sheltered under an entanglement of axle-trees and wheels. Moreover, she paid no attention to what was said. Her spirit being fairly roused, certain of herself, she proceeded with irresistible determination. Each stroke battered down the wood, cut through an obstacle. With her fair hair streaming free, her bodice torn open displaying her bare arms, she resembled some terrible reaper cleaving a way through the destruction she had wrought. The final blow falling upon an axletree, broke the iron of the hatchet in two. Then, assisted by the others, she put aside the wheels which had protected the young man from being crushed to death, and she was the first to seize him and bear him away in her arms.

"Jacques, Jacques!" she cried. "He is alive; he is breathing. Ah! Great God! he lives. I knew I saw him fall, and that he was there!"

Séverine, who was distracted, followed her. Between them they laid him down at the foot of the hedge beside Henri, who continued gazing, stupefied, as if not understanding where he was, nor what went on around him. Pecqueux, who had approached, remained standing before his driver quite unhinged at seeing him in this deplorable state; while the two women, now kneeling down, one to the right the other to the left, supported the head of the poor fellow, watching in anguish for the slightest shiver on his face.

At length Jacques opened his lids. His troubled look fell upon Flore and Séverine, one after the other, but he did not appear to recognise them. They failed to arouse his interest. But his eyes having encountered the expiring locomotive, a few feet away, first of all assumed a wild expression, then, settling on the object, vacillated with increasing emotion.

He recognised La Lison well, and the sight brought everything back to him: the two blocks of stone across the rails, the abominable shock, the crushing sensation he had experienced, at the same moment, within both the engine and himself, and from which he had emerged alive, while the locomotive had assuredly come to an end. It was not the fault of the engine if it had been intractable; for it had always felt the effects of the accident in the snow; without counting, that age makes limbs heavy and joints stiff, which is as applicable to machinery as to living creatures. And so, overwhelmed with grief at seeing La Lison direfully wounded, in the last throes of death, he readily forgave.

Poor La Lison had but a few minutes more. It was becoming cold. The live coal in the fire-box was turning into cinders, the steam that had escaped in such violence from its open flanks, was exhausting itself with the low moan of a weeping child. The locomotive always so bright, now lay on its back in a black bed of coal, soiled with earth and foam. It had met with the tragic end of a costly animal struck down in the public street. At one moment, it had been possible to perceive its mechanism at work through its shattered plates: the pistons beating like twin-hearts, the steam circulating in the slide valves as the blood of its veins; but the connecting-rods merely moved in a jerky fashion, after the manner of convulsive human arms, and constituted the final efforts of life.

Its spirit was ebbing away along with the power that gave it life, that huge breath whereof it could not absolutely free itself. The eviscerated giantess sank lower still, passing little by little into very gentle slumber, and ended by emitting not a sound. La Lison was dead. And the heap of iron, steel, and copper, lying there, this pounded colossal mass with the barrel ripped asunder, the scattered limbs, the interior mechanism smashed, exposed to broad daylight, displayed the frightfully mournful aspect of some enormous human corpse, of a whole world that had lived, and from which life had just been torn in anguish.

Then Jacques, understanding that La Lison was no more, closed his eyes, desiring to die also; moreover, he was so weak that he fancied himself borne away in the final little puff of the engine; and tears, trickling from his closed lids, drenched his cheeks. This was too much for Pecqueux who had remained there motionless with a lump in his throat. Their dear friend had gone, and here was his driver wishing to follow. So the happy family of three was at an end. All over those journeys of hundreds of leagues they made together without exchanging a word, and yet all three understanding one another so well, that they had no need to make even a sign to comprehend. Ah! poor La Lison, as gentle as strong, so beautiful when sparkling in the sun! And Pecqueux, who, nevertheless, had not been drinking, burst into violent sobs, unable to master the hiccoughs that agitated his huge frame.