Work [Travail]

by Émile Zola

She cried these things aloud with such strength of youth and hope that the Mazelles, fearing for her reason, were anxious to quiet her by at last yielding to her desires. Besides, they were not people to continue battling; they wished to end their days in peace. As for Sub-Prefect Châtelard, Mayor Gourier, and Judge Gaume, whilst drinking their tea they smiled with some embarrassment, for they felt the girl's free love sweeping them away like bits of straw. One must needs consent to what one cannot prevent.

It was Châtelard who summed up everything in his amiable, bantering way, the irony of which was scarcely perceptible. 'Our friend Gourier is right—we are done for, since it is our children who make the laws now.'

The marriage of Lucien Bonnaire and Louise Mazelle took place a month later. Châtelard for his personal amusement prevailed on his friend Gourier to give a grand ball at the town-hall on the wedding night, as if by way of honouring their friends the Mazelles. At heart he thought it a good joke to make the bourgeoisie of Beauclair dance at this wedding, which became a symbol of the multitude's accession to power. They would dance on the ruins of authority in that town-hall which was gradually becoming the real common-house, where the mayor was no longer anything but a link between the various social groups. The hall was most luxuriously decorated, and there was music and singing as at the wedding of Nanet and Nise. And acclamations once more arose at the sight of the bridal pair, Lucien, so strong and sturdy, followed by all his mates of La Crêcherie, and Louise, so slim and passionate, followed by all the fine society of the town, whose presence had been desired by her parents as a kind of supreme protest. Only it came to pass that the fine folk were swamped by the multitude, won over to the rush of delight, carried away and conquered to such a point that a great many more marriages between the lads and girls of the different classes ensued. Once more, then, love triumphed, all-powerful love which inflames the living universe, and bears it onward to its happy destiny.

Youth flowered on all sides, other alliances were concluded, couples which everything seemed to separate set out together for the future city of happiness. The old trading class of Beauclair, now on the point of disappearing, gave its daughters and sons to the artisans of La Crêcherie and the peasants of Les Combettes. The Laboques set the example by allowing their son Auguste to marry Marthe Bourron, and their daughter Eulalie to marry Arsène Lenfant. They had ceased struggling for some years already, for they realised that the trade of old times, the useless cogwheel which had consumed so much energy and wealth, was vanquished and dying. At the outset they had been obliged to allow their shop of the Rue de Brias to be turned into a mere dépôt of the articles manufactured at La Crêcherie and the other syndicated factories. Then, taking a further step, they had consented to close the shop, which had been merged into the general stores, where Luc's indulgence had procured them an inspectorship by way of occupation. And now old age had come, and they lived in retirement, full of bitterness, and scared by the sight of that new world which evinced none of their own passion for lucre. The new generations had grown up for other forms of activity and delight than moneymaking. And thus their children, Auguste and Eulalie, yielding to love, the great artisan of harmony and peace, married as they pleased, encountering no obstacle on their parents' side save the covert disapproval of old folk who regret the past. It was arranged that the two weddings should be celebrated on the same day at Les Combettes, now a large township, a very suburb of Beauclair, with large bright buildings redolent of the inexhaustible wealth of the earth. And the weddings took place at harvest-time—indeed, on the very last day of the harvesting, when huge ricks already arose upon every side over the great golden plain.

Feuillat, the former farmer of La Guerdache, had already married his son Léon to Eugénie, daughter of Yvonnot, the assessor, whom he had formerly reconciled with Feuillat, the mayor—that reconciliation whence had sprung the good agreement of all the inhabitants of the place, and that impulse to combine together which had made the wretched village, consumed by hatred, a fraternal and flourishing town. Nowadays Feuillat, who was very aged, had become like the patriarch of that agricultural society, for it was he who had dreamt of it, secretly sought to establish it, in former days, when combating the deadly tenant-farming system, and foreseeing what incalculable wealth the tillers of the soil might draw from it when they should agree together to love it like men of science and method. A true love for that soil which for centuries had been exhausting his ancestors, seemed to have sufficed to enlighten that simple farmer, who originally had been a hard-headed and rapacious man like all of his class. He had perceived in what direction lay salvation, peace among all the peasants, a combination of efforts, the earth becoming once more the sole mother, ploughed, sown, and cropped by one family. And he had beheld the fulfilment of his dream, he had seen his neighbours' fields joined together, the farm of La Guerdache merged into the parish of Les Combettes, other smaller villages joined thereto, a vast estate created, and set on the march for the conquest, by successive annexation, of the whole of the vast plain of La Roumagne. Feuillat, who had remained the soul of the association, formed with Lenfant and Yvonnot, its founders, a kind of 'Conseil des Anciens,' who were consulted on all things, and whose advice was always found profitable.

Thus, when the wedding of Lenfant's son Arsène with Eulalie Laboque was decided upon, and the latter's brother Auguste determined to celebrate his marriage with Marthe Bourron at the same time, it occurred to Feuillat, whose idea was accepted and acclaimed by all, to organise a great fête which should be like the festival of the pacification and triumph of Les Combettes. They would drink to fraternity between the peasant and the industrial worker, formerly so bitterly opposed to one another, but whose alliance alone could establish social wealth and peace. They would drink also to the end of all antagonism, to the disappearance of that barbarous thing called trade which had perpetuated a hateful struggle between the dealer who sold a tool, the peasant who made corn grow, and the baker who sold bread, at a price increased by the thefts of a number of intermediaries. And what better day could be chosen to celebrate the reconciliation than that when the enemies of former days, the castes which had seemed bent on devouring and destroying one another, ended by exchanging their lads and girls, consenting to marriages which would hasten the advent of the future! Thus it was decided that the fête should take place in a large field near the town, a field where lofty ricks, golden under the bright sun, arose like the symmetrically disposed columns of some gigantic temple. The colonnade stretched indeed to the very horizon; other ricks and other ricks arose, proclaiming the inexhaustible fruitfulness of the soil. And it was there that they sang, that they danced, amidst the pleasant odour of the ripe corn, amidst the great fertile plain, whence the work of man, now at last reconciled, drew bread enough for the happiness of all.

The Laboques brought in their train all the former tradesmen of Beauclair, whilst the Bourrons brought the whole of La Crêcherie. The Lenfants were there, at home, and never yet had folk fraternised so fully, the groups fast mingling and uniting in one sole family. The Laboques, no doubt, remained grave and somewhat embarrassed, but the Lenfants made merry with all their hearts, whilst the great sight of all was Babette Bourron, whose everlasting good humour, her certainty, even amidst the greatest worries, that things would turn out well at last, now proved triumphant. She personified hope, marching radiant behind the two bridal couples; and when these arrived—Marthe Bourron on the arm of Auguste Laboque, Eulalie Laboque on the arm of Arsène Lenfant—they brought with them such a blaze of youth and strength and delight, that endless acclamations rolled from one to the other end of the stubbles. The onlookers called to them affectionately, they were loved, they were praised because they indeed personified sovereign and victorious love, that love which had already drawn all those folk together, by giving them those overflowing harvests amidst which they would henceforth swarm like a free and united people, ignorant alike of hatred and of want.

That same day other marriages were decided upon, as had already happened at the wedding of Lucien Bonnaire and Louise Mazelle. Madame Mitaine, the former bakeress, who had remained for everybody the 'beautiful Madame Mitaine,' in spite of her sixty-five years, kissed Olympe Lenfant, sister to one of the bridegrooms, and told her that she would be happy to call her 'daughter,' for her son Évariste had confessed that he adored her. The beautiful bakeress's husband had been dead for ten years, and her establishment had been merged into the general stores of La Crêcherie, as was the case with most of the retail businesses of the town. She lived like a retired worker with her son Évariste, both very proud of the fact that Luc had given them the charge of the electrical kneading appliances, which yielded an abundance of white light bread. Whilst Évariste in his turn was bestowing a betrothal kiss on Olympe, who had turned pink with pleasure, Madame Mitaine suddenly recognised in a thin, dark little woman seated beside a rick, her old neighbour, Madame Dacheux, the butcher's wife. She thereupon went and sat down beside her. 'Must it not all finish in weddings,' she asked gaily, 'since all these young folk were ever playing together?'

Madame Dacheux, however, remained silent and gloomy. She also had lost her husband, who had died from the effects of a badly aimed blow with his chopper, which had struck off his right hand. According to some folk, clumsiness had nothing to do with it, the butcher having voluntarily cut off his hand in a fit of furious anger, rather than sign a transfer of his shop to La Crêcherie. Decent occurrences, and the idea that holy meat, the meat of the wealthy, was now being placed within the reach of all and appearing at the tables of the poorest, must have maddened that violent, reactionary, and tyrannical man. He had died from the effects of gangrene improperly treated, leaving his wife in a state of terror from the oaths which he had heaped upon her during his final agony.

'And your Julienne, how is she?' Madame Mitaine inquired in her amiable way. 'I met her the other day. She looked superb.'