They relapsed into silence, for they were now reaching the workshops. A good many pupils spent a part of their playtime there, planing wood, filing iron, sewing or embroidering, whilst others who reigned over a neighbouring strip of ground busied themselves with digging, sowing, and weeding. And now Luc and Suzanne again met Josine, standing in a large room where sewing, knitting, and weaving machines, placed side by side, were worked sometimes by girls and sometimes by boys. Here again several of the children were singing, and a joyous spirit of emulation seemed to animate the workshop.
'Do you hear them?' exclaimed Suzanne, whose gaiety had returned. 'They will always sing, those warblers of mine.'
Josine was explaining to a big girl of sixteen, named Clémentine Bourron, the manner in which she ought to manage a sewing-machine in order to do certain embroidery, whilst another pupil, a girl of nine, Aline Boisgelin by name, was waiting to be shown how she ought to turn down a seam. Clémentine was the daughter of Sébastien Bourron and Agathe Fauchard, her grandfather on her mother's side being Fauchard, the old drawer of the Abyss, and on her father's Bourron the puddler. Aline, who was a younger sister of Ludovic, the son of Paul Boisgelin and Antoinette Bonnaire, laughed affectionately when she perceived her grandmother, Suzanne, who was very fond of her.
'Oh, grandmamma!' said she, 'I can't turn my seams down very well as yet, but I sew them very straight—don't I, friend Josine?'
Suzanne kissed her, then watched Josine, who turned down a seam to serve as a pattern for the child. Luc himself took an interest in these little matters, aware as he was that everything has its importance, that happy life depends upon the happy employment of one's hours. Then, as Sœurette came up, at the moment when he was about to quit Josine and Suzanne in order to repair to the works, he found himself for a moment in the flower garden with the three women, those three loving and devoted hearts that helped him so powerfully to bring about the fulfilment of his dream of goodness and happiness. They surrounded him like symbols of the affectionate solidarity, the universal love which he wished to disseminate among mankind. Taking each other by the hand they stood there smiling at him, old no doubt, with their white hair, but still beautiful, with the wondrous beauty of kindliness. And when, after discussing some details of organisation with them, Luc departed, going towards the works, their loving eyes long followed his footsteps.
The factory halls and workshops, which were now much more extensive than formerly, were full of the healthy gaiety which comes from an abundance of sunshine and air. On all sides fresh water washed the cement pavement, carrying off the slightest particles of dust in such wise that the abode of work, once so grimy, muddy, and pestilential, now shone with cleanliness. Most of the work, too, was now performed by machines which stood around in serried array, like an army of docile, indefatigable artisans, ever ready for the effort required of them. If their metal arms wore out they simply had to be replaced. They themselves did not know what pain was, and they had in part suppressed human pain. They, too, were friendly machines, not the machines of the earlier days, the competitors which aggravated the workman's want by producing a fall in wages, but liberating machines, universal tools toiling for man whilst man rested. Around those sturdy workers, propelled by electricity, there were only so many drivers and watchers, whose sole duties consisted in moving levers or switches, and in making sure that the mechanism acted properly. The working day did not exceed four hours, and a workman never spent more than two upon one task, being relieved at the expiration of his two hours by a mate, whilst he himself passed to some other form of work, industrial art, agriculture, or public function. Again, the general employment of electric power had virtually done away with the uproar with which the workshops had once resounded, and now they were enlivened by the songs of the workmen, the vocal mirth which the latter had brought from their schools like a florescence of harmony embellishing their whole lives. And the singing of those men around that silent machinery, at once so powerful and so easy to manage, proclaimed the delight of just, glorious, and all-saving work.
As Luc passed through the hall containing the puddling furnaces, he paused for a moment to exchange a few friendly words with a strong young man of twenty or thereabouts, who managed one of those furnaces without any need of assistance.
'Well, Adolphe, are things going on satisfactorily, are you satisfied?' Luc inquired.
'Oh! certainly they are! I've just completed my two hours, and the "bloom" is just fit for removal.'
Adolphe was a son of Auguste Laboque and Marthe Bourron. Unlike his maternal grandfather, Bourron the puddler, who had now retired, he did not have to perform the terrible task of stirring the ball of fusing metal with a long bar amidst all the flaring of the fire. The stirring was now performed by mechanical means, and, indeed, an ingenious contrivance brought the dazzling ball out of the furnace and placed it on the chariot which carried it to the helve hammer without the workman having to intervene.