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Mobile Agents in Networking and Distributed Computing
1st Edition Jiannong Cao Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Jiannong Cao, Sajal K. Das
ISBN(s): 9780471751601, 047175160X
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 3.22 MB
Year: 2012
Language: english

MOBILE AGENTS
IN NETWORKING
AND DISTRIBUTED
COMPUTING

Wiley Series in Agent Technology
Series Editor: Michael Wooldridge, University of Liverpool, UK
The ‘Wiley Series in Agent Technology’ is a series of comprehensive practical
guides and cutting-edge research titles on new developments in agent technol-
ogies. The series focuses on all aspects of developing agent-based applications,
drawing from the Internet, telecommunications, and Artiﬁcial Intelligence
communities with a strong applications/technologies focus.
The books will provide timely, accurate and reliable information about the
state of the art to researchers and developers in the Telecommunications and
Computing sectors.
Titles in the series:
Padgham/Winikoff: Developing Intelligent Agent Systems 0-470-86120-7 (June
2004)
Bellifemine/Caire/Greenwood: Developing Multi-Agent Systems with JADE
0-470-05747-5 (February 2007)
Bordini/Hübner/Wooldrige: Programming Multi-Agent Systems in Agent-
Speak using Jason 0-470-02900-5 (October 2007)
Nishida: Conversational Informatics: An Engineering Approach 0-470-02699-5
(November 2007)
Jokinen: Constructive Dialogue Modelling: Speech Interaction and Rational
Agents 0-470-06026-3 (April 2009)
Castelfranchi/Falcone: Trust Theory: A Socio-Cognitive and Computational
Model 0-470-02875-0 (March 2010)
Cao/Das: Mobile Agents in Networking and Distributed Computing
0-471-7516-0 (January or July? 2012)

MOBILE AGENTS
IN NETWORKING
AND DISTRIBUTED
COMPUTING
Edited by
Jiannong Cao
Sajal K. Das

Copyright r 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise,
except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without
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Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Cao, Jiannong.
Mobile agents in networking and distributed computing / Jiannong Cao, Sajal K. Das.
p. cm—(Wiley series in agent technology ; 3)
ISBN 978-0-471-75160-1 (hardback)
1. Mobile agents (Computer software) 2. Electronic data processing—Distributed
processing. I. Das, Sajal K. II. Title.
QA76.76.I58C36 2012
006.3—dc23
2011017017
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

“To my wife, Miao Yan, for her tolerance, support and caring”
—Jiannong Cao
“To my professors Late A. K. Choudhury (Calcutta University),
Lalit M. Patnaik (Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore), and
Narsingh Deo (University of Central Florida) for their
mentoring and showing the beauty of research.”
—Sajal K. Das

CONTENTS
FOREWORD ix
PREFACE xi
CONTRIBUTORS xiii
PART I INTRODUCTION 1
1 Mobile Agents and Applications in Networking
and Distributed Computing 3
PART II PRINCIPLES OF APPLYING MOBILE AGENTS 17
2 Mobile Agent Communications 19
3 Distributed Security Algorithms for Mobile Agents 41
4 Mobile Agent Coordination 71
5 Cooperating Mobile Agents 93
PART III MOBILE AGENT BASED TECHNIQUES AND
APPLICATIONS 127
6 Network Routing 129
7 Resource and Service Discovery 161
8 Distributed Control 189
9 Distributed Databases and Transaction Processing 219
10 Mobile Agents in Mobile and Wireless Computing 243
vii

PART IV DESIGN AND EVALUATION 263
11 Naplet: Microkernel and Pluggable Design of Mobile Agent Systems 265
12 Performance Evaluation of Mobile Agent Platforms and
Comparison with Client–Server Technologies 299
Index 323
viii CONTENTS

FOREWORD
I have worked in the area of artificial intelligence, and specifically on challenges
in machine learning and data mining, for twenty years. Originally these chal-
lenges focused on theoretical and algorithmic issues. Eventually, I became
interested in applying these ideas to complex, real-world problems. Applied
AI and machine learning not only allows researchers like me to see tangible
benefits of the work, but it also introduces new algorithmic and theoretical
challenges that need to be tackled.
As AI algorithms scale, they no longer exist just in the virtual world but find
use in the real world. The result is that intelligent agents not only need to focus
on their own problems but need to interact with other agents. As this book
discusses, these agents may be components of a single system. Alternatively,
they may be independent agents that are cooperating in order to solve a larger
problem or they may actually be competing for resources. The agents may be
pieces of software or they could be physical beings such as humans or robots.
An intelligent agent may automatically discover a clever way to negotiate with
others and such an agent may even harness the capabilities of other agents to
boost its own performance.
I met Sajal Das, one of the editors of this book, when we both worked at the
University of Texas at Arlington. Sajal is an expert in mobile computing,
wireless networks, pervasive and distributed systems and has written numerous
books, conference and journal articles on this topic. Together, we decided to
tackle one particularly ambitious application of our respective fields: designing
a smart home. We designed our smart home to perceive the state of the
residents and physical surroundings, to reason about the state and its relation-
ship to the goal of the home, and to change the state of the home using
actuators in a way that achieved the goal of the home. Such a smart home relies
on many components at the physical and software levels that seamlessly share
information and work together to meet the goals of the home. These
components include sensors, controllers, interfaces, networks, databases,
machine learning algorithms, and decision-theoretic reasoners.
As an AI researcher, I find that practical application of AI and machine
learning techniques can at times be overshadowed by the hurdles we face in
trying to facilitate interaction and cooperation of our agents with others. This is
certainly true for smart homes. During the first year that we designed our
MavHome smart home, the bulk of the effort went into designing middleware
(based on agent technologies), communication methodologies, database
ix

support, and interfaces. Each of these components needed to be able to work in
a distributed fashion and cooperate with the other components in a seamless
manner. The next evolution of the smart home project, the CASAS smart
home, made even more effective use of mobile agent technology as described in
this book and so was able to be up and running with less design time and a
smaller software and physical footprint.
The danger of designing a real-world application is that the infrastructure of
the application can start to dominate the project. In the smart home example,
the design of communication and cooperation strategies can take over the
project and detract from our goal of designing a home with learning
and reasoning, rather than support this goal. The ideas expressed and
topics covered in this book are a valuable step in designing mobile agents.
The emphases on agent cooperation and transparent cooperation facilitate the
design of complex and multi-agent systems, while the discussion of routing,
resource discovery, and distributed security offer potential enhancements to
such systems.
I ﬁnd the coverage of topics in this book timely and comprehensive. The
twelve chapters of the book present state of the art research, design methodol-
ogies and applications of mobile agents in the areas of networking and
distributed computing. These topics range from principles of applying mobile
agents for distributed coordination and communication to advanced mobile
agent models and algorithms to mobile agent security to important case studies
with implementation and performance evaluation.
I believe that this book will be valuable for researchers and practitioners
interested in intelligent agents and mobile computing. The book will provide
descriptions of cutting-edge research in technology in mobile agents and
distributed computing. It will also offer practical guidance for those who,
like me, want to see their ideas span the gap from concept to real-world
applications.
Diane J. Cook
Washington State University
Dr. Diane J. Cook is a Huie-Rogers Chair Professor in the School of Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science at Washington State University. Dr. Cook
received a B.S. degree in Math/Computer Science from Wheaton College in 1985,
a M.S. degree in Computer Science from the University of Illinois in 1987, and a
Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of Illinois in 1990.
Her research interests include artiﬁcial intelligence, machine learning, graph-
based relational data mining, smart environments, and robotics. Dr. Cook is
an IEEE Fellow.
x FOREWORD

PREFACE
A mobile agent is a speciﬁc form of mobile code and has the features of mobi-
lity, autonomy, adaptability, and collaboration. It provides a paradigm and a
powerful tool for implementing various applications in a computer networking
environment. Over the past decades, the mobile agent technology has attracted
a lot of attention from researchers and practitioners, thus leading to the devel-
opment of theories, algorithms, systems, and platforms. Mobile agents indeed
provide a means to complement and enhance existing technology in various
application areas, such as information retrieval, e-commerce, parallel/distributed
processing, network management, distributed data mining, event detection, and
data aggregation in wireless sensor networks, to name a few.
In this book we focus on networking and distributed computing applications,
and investigate how mobile agents can be used to simplify their development
and improve system performance. For example, a mobile agent can structure and
coordinate applications running in a networking and distributed computing
environment because the agent can reduce the number of times one site contacts
another and also help ﬁlter out non-useful information, thus reducing the con-
sumption of communication bandwidth. Taking advantage of being in a network
site and interacting with the site locally, a mobile agent allows us to design
algorithms that make use of up-to-date system state information for better
decision making. Moreover, a group of cooperating mobile agents can work
together for the purpose of exchanging information or engaging in cooperative
task-oriented behaviors. Agents can also support mobile computing by carrying
out tasks for a mobile user temporarily disconnected from the (wireless) network.
Criticisms about mobile agents in the past were mainly concerned with the
performance and security issues. However, with the advent of computer net-
works, mobile devices, and system dependability over the last decade, it is
promising now to revisit these challenges and develop sound solution meth-
odologies. Recent development in emerging areas like cloud computing and
social computing also provides new opportunities for exploring the mobile
agent technology.
This book is intended as a reference for researchers and practitioners and
industry professionals, as well as postgraduate and advanced undergraduate
students studying distributed computing, wireless networking, and agent tech-
nologies. It provides a clear and concise presentation of major concepts,
techniques, and results in designing and implementing mobile agents based on
networking and distributed computing systems and applications. The book
xi

consists of 12 chapters divided into four parts: (i) introduction, (ii) principles of
applying mobile agents, (iii) mobile agent based techniques and applications,
and (iv) system design and evaluation.
We gratefully acknowledge all the authors for their excellent contributions.
We also thank Wiley’s editorial and production team – Diana Gialo, Simone
Taylor, Christine Punzo, and particularly Shanmuga Priya – for their dedicated
professional service. It has been a real pleasure to work with them. Finally,
we thank our respective families for their tremendous support and cheerful
tolerance of our many hours spent at work. We owe them this book.
Jiannong Cao, Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Sajal K. Das, The University of Texas at Arlington
xii PREFACE

CONTRIBUTORS
NIGEL BEAN, University of Adelaide
PAOLO BELLAVISTA, University of Bologna
GIACOMO CABRI, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia
JIANNONG CAO, Hong Kong Polytechnic University
PANOS K. CHRYSANTHIS, University of Pittsburgh
ANTONIO CORRADI, University of Bologna
ANDRE COSTA, University of Melbourne
SAJAL K. DAS, University of Texas at Arlington
ANURAG DASGUPTA, University of Iowa
XINYU FENG, State Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology
at Nanjing University
PAOLO FLOCCHINI, University of Ottawa
SUKUMAR GHOSH, University of Iowa
CARLO GIANNELLI, University of Bologna
JIAN LU, State Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology
EVAGGELIA PITOURA, University of Ioannina
RAFFAELE QUITADAMO, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia
GEORGE SAMARAS, University of Cyprus
NICOLA SANTORO, Carleton University
LUÍS MOURA SILVA, University of Coimbra
YUDONG SUN, Oxford University
XIANBING WANG, National University of Singapore
CHENG-ZHONG XU, Wayne State University
PING YU, State Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology
xiii

1 Mobile Agents and Applications in
Networking and Distributed
Computing
JIANNONG CAO
Department of Computing, Hong Kong Polytechnic University
SAJAL K. DAS
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, The University
of Texas at Arlington, USA
1.1 INTRODUCTION
Agent technology has evolved from two research areas: artificial intelligence
and distributed computing. The purpose of AI research is to use intelligent
computing entities to simplify human operations. An agent is just a computer
program targeting that purpose [1]. Distributed computing, on the other hand,
allows a complex task to be better executed by cooperation of several distrib-
uted agents on interconnected computers. So, networking and distribution
bring out the true flavor of software agent technology in terms of agent
autonomy, coordination, reactivity, heterogeneity, brokerage, and mobility.
Mobile agents refer to self-contained and identifiable computer programs
that can move over the network and act on behalf of the user or another
entity [2]. They can execute at a host for a while before halting the execution
and migrating to another host and resuming execution there. They are able to
detect the environment and adapt dynamically to changes. Mobile agents are
widely used for handling disconnected operations in distributed, mobile, and
wireless networking environments [3–6]. Also, many applications, including
network diagnostic, e-commerce, entertainment and broadcasting, intrusion
detection, and home health care, are benefited from the use of mobile agents
[7, 8].
Mobile Agents in Networking and Distributed Computing, First Edition.
Edited by Jiannong Cao and Sajal K. Das.
r 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
3

The term mobile agent contains two separate and distinct concepts: mobility
and agency [9]. Some authors (e.g., [10]) classify a mobile agent as a special case
of an agent, while others (e.g., [11]) separate the agency from mobility. Despite
the differences in definition, most research on the mobile agent paradigm as
reported in the literature has two general goals: reduction of network traffic
and asynchronous interaction. Mobile agents can reduce the connecting
time and bandwidth consumption by processing the data at the source and
sending only the relevant results. By moving the agents to data-residing hosts,
they can reduce communication costs. On the other hand, mobile agents sup-
port asynchronous interaction. They can continue computations even if the
user that has started it, is no longer connected to the system. Mobile agents
have been proposed as an alternative to the client–server paradigm which
can be a more efficient and flexible mode of communication in certain appli-
cation areas (Figure 1.1). It has been recognized that mobile agents provide a
promising approach to dealing with dynamic, heterogeneous, and changing
environments, which is tendency of modern Internet applications.
A mobile agent has the following properties or capabilities [12, 13]:
Mobility Transport itself from host to host within a network. This is the
most distinguishing property from other kinds of agents. Note that a
moving agent will carry its identity, execution state, and program code so
that it can be authenticated and hence can resume its execution on the
destination site after the move. Mobility refers to a wide range of new
concepts. Migration is undoubtedly the most important of these concepts.
Migration allows an agent to move from one location to another. The
migration of a mobile agent requires the agent system to support execu-
tion stopping, state collection, data serialization and transfer, data
deserialization, and execution resuming. From this point of view, mobile
agents strongly rely on mobile code technology, which will be described in
detail later in this chapter.
Intelligence Interact with and learn from the environment and make
decisions. A most advanced agent should be able to decide its action
Client
Server Server
Client
Agent
Server
Client
Agent
Server
Client
Agent
Traditional Mobile agent-based
FIGURE 1.1 Mobile agent can reduce communication cost.
4 MOBILE AGENTS AND APPLICATIONS IN NETWORKING

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the ball-room, a large hall only planked in the middle, being paved
with bricks round the sides. It was decorated with two garlands of
paper flowers which crossed one another, and were united in the
middle by a crown of the same flowers; while along the walls were
rows of gilt shields bearing the names of saints—St. Éloi, patron of
the iron-workers; St. Crispin, patron of the shoemakers; St. Barbara,
patron of the miners; the whole calendar of corporations. The ceiling
was so low that the three musicians on their platform, which was
about the size of a pulpit, knocked their heads against it. When it
became dark four petroleum lamps were fastened to the four
corners of the room.
On this Sunday there was dancing from five o'clock with the full
daylight through the windows, but it was not until towards seven
that the rooms began to fill. Outside, a gale was rising, blowing
great black showers of dust which blinded people and sleeted into
the frying-pans. Maheu, Étienne, and Pierron, having come in to sit
down, had found Chaval at the Bon-Joyeux dancing with Catherine,
while Philoméne by herself was looking on. Neither Levaque nor
Zacharie had reappeared. As there were no benches around the ball-
room, Catherine came after each dance to rest at her father's table.
They called Philoméne, but she preferred to stand up. The twilight
was coming on; the three musicians played furiously; one could only
see in the hall the movement of hips and breasts in the midst of a
confusion of arms. The appearance of the four lamps was greeted
noisily, and suddenly everything was lit up—the red faces, the
dishevelled hair sticking to the skin, the flying skirts spreading
abroad the strong odour of perspiring couples. Maheu pointed out
Mouquette to Étienne: she was as round and greasy as a bladder of
lard, revolving violently in the arms of a tall, lean lander. She had
been obliged to console herself and take a man.
At last, at eight o'clock, Maheude appeared with Estelle at her
breast, followed by Alzire, Henri, and Lénore. She had come there
straight to her husband without fear of missing him. They could sup
later on; as yet nobody was hungry, with their stomachs soaked in
coffee and thickened with beer. Other women came in, and they

whispered together when they saw, behind Maheude, the Levaque
woman enter with Bouteloup, who led in by the hand Achille and
Désirée, Philoméne's little ones. The two neighbours seemed to be
getting on well together, one turning round to chat with the other.
On the way there had been a great explanation, and Maheude had
resigned herself to Zacharie's marriage, in despair at the loss of her
eldest son's wages, but overcome by the thought that she could not
hold it back any longer without injustice. She was trying, therefore,
to put a good face on it, though with an anxious heart, as a
housekeeper who was asking herself how she could make both ends
meet now that the best part of her purse was going.
"Place yourself there, neighbour," she said, pointing to a table near
that where Maheu was drinking with Étienne and Pierron.
"Is not my husband with you?" asked the Levaque woman.
The others told her that he would soon come. They were all seated
together in a heap, Bouteloup and the youngsters so tightly
squeezed among the drinkers that the two tables only formed one.
There was a call for drinks. Seeing her mother and her children
Philoméne had decided to come near. She accepted a chair, and
seemed pleased to hear that she was at last to be married; then, as
they were looking for Zacharie, she replied in her soft voice:
"I am waiting for him; he is over there."
Maheu had exchanged a look with his wife. She had then consented?
He became serious and smoked in silence. He also felt anxiety for
the morrow in face of the ingratitude of these children, who got
married one by one leaving their parents in wretchedness.
The dancing still went on, and the end of a quadrille drowned the
ball-room in red dust; the walls cracked, a cornet produced shrill
whistling sounds like a locomotive in distress; and when the dancers
stopped they were smoking like horses.
"Do you remember?" said the Levaque woman, bending towards
Maheude's ear; "you talked of strangling Catherine if she did
anything foolish!"

Chaval brought Catherine back to the family table, and both of them
standing behind the father finished their glasses.
"Bah!" murmured Maheude, with an air of resignation, "one says
things like that—. But what quiets me is that she will not have a
child; I feel sure of that. You see if she is confined, and obliged to
marry, what shall we do for a living then?"
Now the cornet was whistling a polka, and as the deafening noise
began again, Maheu, in a low voice, communicated an idea to his
wife. Why should they not take a lodger? Étienne, for example, who
was looking out for quarters? They would have room since Zacharie
was going to leave them, and the money that they would lose in that
direction would be in part regained in the other. Maheude's face
brightened; certainly it was a good idea, it must be arranged. She
seemed to be saved from starvation once more, and her good
humour returned so quickly that she ordered a new round of drinks.
Étienne, meanwhile, was seeking to indoctrinate Pierron, to whom
he was explaining his plan of a Provident Fund. He had made him
promise to subscribe, when he was imprudent enough to reveal his
real aim.
"And if we go out on strike you can see how useful that fund will be.
We can snap our fingers at the Company, we shall have there a fund
to fight against them. Eh? don't you think so?"
Pierron lowered his eyes and grew pale; he stammered:
"I'll think over it. Good conduct, that's the best Provident Fund."
Then Maheu took possession of Étienne, and squarely, like a good
man, proposed to take him as a lodger. The young man accepted at
once, anxious to live in the settlement with the idea of being nearer
to his mates. The matter was settled in three words, Maheude
declaring that they would wait for the marriage of the children.
Just then, Zacharie at last came back, with Mouquet and Levaque.
The three brought in the odours of the Volcan, a breath of gin, a
musky acidity of ill-kept girls. They were very tipsy and seemed well

pleased with themselves, digging their elbows into each other and
grinning. When he knew that he was at last to be married Zacharie
began to laugh so loudly that he choked. Philoméne peacefully
declared that she would rather see him laugh than cry. As there
were no more chairs, Bouteloup had moved so as to give up half of
his to Levaque. And the latter, suddenly much affected by realizing
that the whole family party was there, once more had beer served
out.
"By the Lord! we don't amuse ourselves so often!" he roared.
They remained there till ten o'clock. Women continued to arrive,
either to join or to take away their men; bands of children followed
in rows, and the mothers no longer troubled themselves, pulling out
their long pale breasts, like sacks of oats, and smearing their chubby
babies with milk; while the little ones who were already able to walk,
gorged with beer and on all fours beneath the table, relieved
themselves without shame. It was a rising sea of beer, from Madame
Désir's disembowelled barrels, the beer enlarged every belly, flowing
from noses, eyes, and everywhere. So puffed out was the crowd that
every one had a shoulder or knee poking into his neighbour; all were
cheerful and merry in thus feeling each other's elbows. A continuous
laugh kept their mouths open from ear to ear. The heat was like an
oven; they were roasting and felt themselves at ease with glistening
skin, gilded in a thick smoke from the pipes; the only discomfort was
when one had to move away; from time to time a girl rose, went to
the other end, near the pump, lifted her clothes, and then came
back. Beneath the garlands of painted paper the dancers could no
longer see each other, they perspired so much; this encouraged the
trammers to tumble the putters over, catching them at random by
the hips. But where a girl tumbled with a man over her, the cornet
covered their fall with its furious music; the swirl of feet wrapped
them round as if the ball had collapsed upon them.
Someone who was passing warned Pierron that his daughter Lydie
was sleeping at the door, across the pavement. She had drunk her
share of the stolen bottle and was tipsy. He had to carry her away in

his arms while Jeanlin and Bébert, who were more sober, followed
him behind, thinking it a great joke. This was the signal for
departure, and several families came out of the Bon-Joyeux, the
Maheus and the Levaques deciding to return to the settlement. At
the same moment Father Bonnemort and old Mouque also left
Montsou, walking in the same somnambulistic manner, preserving
the obstinate silence of their recollections. And they all went back
together, passing for the last time through the fair, where the frying-
pans were coagulating, and by the estaminets, from which the last
glasses were flowing in a stream towards the middle of the road.
The storm was still threatening, and sounds of laughter arose as
they left the lighted houses to lose themselves in the dark country
around. Panting breaths arose from the ripe wheat; many children
must have been made on that night. They arrived in confusion at the
settlement. Neither the Levaques nor the Maheus supped with
appetite, and the latter kept on dropping off to sleep while finishing
their morning's boiled beef.
Étienne had led away Chaval for one more drink at Rasseneur's.
"I am with you!" said Chaval, when his mate had explained the
matter of the Provident Fund. "Put it there! you're a fine fellow!"
The beginning of drunkenness was flaming in Étienne's eyes. He
exclaimed:
"Yes, let's join hands. As for me, you know I would give up
everything for the sake of justice, both drink and girls. There's only
one thing that warms my heart, and that is the thought that we are
going to sweep away these bourgeois."
CHAPTER III
Towards the middle of August, Étienne settled with the Maheus,
Zacharie having married and obtained from the Company a vacant

house in the settlement for Philoméne and the two children. During
the first days, the young man experienced some constraint in the
presence of Catherine. There was a constant intimacy, as he
everywhere replaced the elder brother, sharing Jeanlin's bed over
against the big sister's. Going to bed and getting up he had to dress
and undress near her, and see her take off and put on her garments.
When the last skirt fell from her, she appeared of pallid whiteness,
that transparent snow of anaemic blondes; and he experienced a
constant emotion in finding her, with hands and face already spoilt,
as white as if dipped in milk from her heels to her neck, where the
line of tan stood out sharply like a necklace of amber. He pretended
to turn away; but little by little he knew her: the feet at first which
his lowered eyes met; then a glimpse of a knee when she slid
beneath the coverlet; then her bosom with little rigid breasts as she
leant over the bowl in the morning. She would hasten without
looking at him, and in ten seconds was undressed and stretched
beside Alzire, with so supple and snake-like a movement that he had
scarcely taken off his shoes when she disappeared, turning her back
and only showing her heavy knot of hair.
She never had any reason to be angry with him. If a sort of
obsession made him watch her in spite of himself at the moment
when she lay down, he avoided all practical jokes or dangerous
pastimes. The parents were there, and besides he still had for her a
feeling, half of friendship and half of spite, which prevented him
from treating her as a girl to be desired, in the midst of the
abandonment of their now common life in dressing, at meals, during
work, where nothing of them remained secret, not even their most
intimate needs. All the modesty of the family had taken refuge in the
daily bath, for which the young girl now went upstairs alone, while
the men bathed below one after the other.
At the end of the first month, Étienne and Catherine seemed no
longer to see each other when in the evening, before extinguishing
the candle, they moved about the room, undressed. She had ceased
to hasten, and resumed her old custom of doing up her hair at the
edge of her bed, while her arms, raised in the air, lifted her chemise

to her thighs, and he, without his trousers, sometimes helped her,
looking for the hairpins that she had lost. Custom killed the shame of
being naked; they found it natural to be like this, for they were
doing no harm, and it was not their fault if there was only one room
for so many people. Sometimes, however, a trouble came over them
suddenly, at moments when they had no guilty thought. After some
nights when he had not seen her pale body, he suddenly saw her
white all over, with a whiteness which shook him with a shiver, which
obliged him to turn away for fear of yielding to the desire to take
her. On other evenings, without any apparent reason, she would be
overcome by a panic of modesty and hasten to slip between the
sheets as if she felt the hands of this lad seizing her. Then, when the
candle was out, they both knew that they were not sleeping but
were thinking of each other in spite of their weariness. This made
them restless and sulky all the following day; they liked best the
tranquil evenings when they could behave together like comrades.
Étienne only complained of Jeanlin, who slept curled up. Alzire slept
lightly, and Lénore and Henri were found in the morning, in each
other's arms, exactly as they had gone to sleep. In the dark house
there was no other sound than the snoring of Maheu and Maheude,
rolling out at regular intervals like a forge bellows. On the whole,
Étienne was better off than at Rasseneur's; the bed was tolerable
and the sheets were changed every month. He had better soup, too,
and only suffered from the rarity of meat. But they were all in the
same condition, and for forty-five francs he could not demand rabbit
to every meal. These forty-five francs helped the family and enabled
them to make both ends meet, though always leaving some small
debts and arrears; so the Maheus were grateful to their lodger; his
linen was washed and mended, his buttons sewn on, and his affairs
kept in order; in fact he felt all around him a woman's neatness and
care.
It was at this time that Étienne began to understand the ideas that
were buzzing in his brain. Up till then he had only felt an instinctive
revolt in the midst of the inarticulate fermentation among his mates.
All sorts of confused questions came before him: Why are some

miserable? why are others rich? why are the former beneath the
heel of the latter without hope of ever taking their place? And his
first stage was to understand his ignorance. A secret shame, a
hidden annoyance, gnawed him from that time; he knew nothing, he
dared not talk about these things which were working in him like a
passion—the equality of all men, and the equity which demanded a
fair division of the earth's wealth. He thus took to the methodless
study of those who in ignorance feel the fascination of knowledge.
He now kept up a regular correspondence with Pluchart, who was
better educated than himself and more advanced in the Socialist
movement. He had books sent to him, and his ill-digested reading
still further excited his brain, especially a medical book entitled
Hygiéne du Mineur, in which a Belgian doctor had summed up the
evils of which the people in coal mines were dying; without counting
treatises on political economy, incomprehensible in their technical
dryness, Anarchist pamphlets which upset his ideas, and old
numbers of newspapers which he preserved as irrefutable
arguments for possible discussions. Souvarine also lent him books,
and the work on Co-operative Societies had made him dream for a
month of a universal exchange association abolishing money and
basing the whole social life on work. The shame of his ignorance left
him, and a certain pride came to him now that he felt himself
thinking.
During these first months Étienne retained the ecstasy of a novice;
his heart was bursting with generous indignation against the
oppressors, and looking forward to the approaching triumph of the
oppressed. He had not yet manufactured a system, his reading had
been too vague. Rasseneur's practical demands were mixed up in his
mind with Souvarine's violent and destructive methods, and when he
came out of the Avantage, where he was to be found nearly every
day railing with them against the Company, he walked as if in a
dream, assisting at a radical regeneration of nations to be effected
without one broken window or a single drop of blood. The methods
of execution remained obscure; he preferred to think that things
would go very well, for he lost his head as soon as he tried to

formulate a programme of reconstruction. He even showed himself
full of illogical moderation; he often said that we must banish politics
from the social question, a phrase which he had read and which
seemed a useful one to repeat among the phlegmatic colliers with
whom he lived.
Every evening now, at the Maheus', they delayed half an hour before
going up to bed. Étienne always introduced the same subject. As his
nature became more refined he found himself wounded by the
promiscuity of the settlement. Were they beasts to be thus penned
together in the midst of the fields, so tightly packed that one could
not change one's shirt without exhibiting one's backside to the
neighbours? And how bad it was for health; and boys and girls were
forced to grow corrupt together.
"Lord!" replied Maheu, "if there were more money there would be
more comfort. All the same it's true enough that it's good for no one
to live piled up like that. It always ends with making the men drunk
and the girls big-bellied."
And the family began to talk, each having his say, while the
petroleum lamp vitiated the air of the room, already stinking of fried
onion. No, life was certainly not a joke. One had to work like a brute
at labour which was once a punishment for convicts; one left one's
skin there oftener than was one's turn, all that without even getting
meat on the table in the evening. No doubt one had one's feed; one
ate, indeed, but so little, just enough to suffer without dying,
overcome with debts and pursued as if one had stolen the bread.
When Sunday came one slept from weariness. The only pleasures
were to get drunk and to get a child with one's wife; then the beer
swelled the belly, and the child, later on, left you to go to the dogs.
No, it was certainly not a joke.
Then Maheude joined in.
"The bother is, you see, when you have to say to yourself that it
won't change. When you're young you think that happiness will
come some time, you hope for things; and then the wretchedness

begins always over again, and you get shut up in it. Now, I don't
wish harm to any one, but there are times when this injustice makes
me mad."
There was silence; they were all breathing with the vague discomfort
of this closed-in horizon. Father Bonnemort only, if he was there,
opened his eyes with surprise, for in his time people used not to
worry about things; they were born in the coal and they hammered
at the seam, without asking for more; while now there was an air
stirring which made the colliers ambitious.
"It don't do to spit at anything," he murmured. "A good glass is a
good glass. As to the masters, they're often rascals; but there
always will be masters, won't there? What's the use of racking your
brains over those things?"
Étienne at once became animated. What! The worker was to be
forbidden to think! Why! that was just it; things would change now
because the worker had begun to think. In the old man's time the
miner lived in the mine like a brute, like a machine for extracting
coal, always under the earth, with ears and eyes stopped to outward
events. So the rich, who governed, found it easy to sell him and buy
him, and to devour his flesh; he did not even know what was going
on. But now the miner was waking up down there, germinating in
the earth just as a grain germinates; and some fine day he would
spring up in the midst of the fields: yes, men would spring up, an
army of men who would re-establish justice. Is it not true that all
citizens are equal since the Revolution, because they vote together?
Why should the worker remain the slave of the master who pays
him? The big companies with their machines were crushing
everything, and one no longer had against them the ancient
guarantees when people of the same trade, united in a body, were
able to defend themselves. It was for that, by God, and for no other
reason, that all would burst up one day, thanks to education. One
had only to look into the settlement itself: the grandfathers could
not sign their names, the fathers could do so, and as for the sons,
they read and wrote like schoolmasters. Ah! it was springing up, it

was springing up, little by little, a rough harvest of men who would
ripen in the sun! From the moment when they were no longer each
of them stuck to his place for his whole existence, and when they
had the ambition to take a neighbour's place, why should they not
hit out with their fists and try for the mastery?
Maheu was shaken but remained full of doubts.
"As soon as you move they give you back your certificate," he said.
"The old man is right; it will always be the miner who gets all the
trouble, without a chance of a leg of mutton now and then as a
reward."
Maheude, who had been silent for a while, awoke as from a dream.
"But if what the priests tell is true, if the poor people in this world
become the rich ones in the next!"
A burst of laughter interrupted her; even the children shrugged their
shoulders, being incredulous in the open air, keeping a secret fear of
ghosts in the pit, but glad of the empty sky.
"Ah! bosh! the priests!" exclaimed Maheu. "If they believed that,
they'd eat less and work more, so as to reserve a better place for
themselves up there. No, when one's dead, one's dead."
Maheude sighed deeply.
"Oh, Lord, Lord!"
Then her hands fell on to her knees with a gesture of immense
dejection:
"Then if that's true, we are done for, we are."
They all looked at one another. Father Bonnemort spat into his
handkerchief, while Maheu sat with his extinguished pipe, which he
had forgotten, in his mouth. Alzire listened between Lénore and
Henri, who were sleeping on the edge of the table. But Catherine,
with her chin in her hand, never took her large clear eyes off Étienne
while he was protesting, declaring his faith, and opening out the
enchanting future of his social dream. Around them the settlement

was asleep; one only heard the stray cries of a child or the
complaints of a belated drunkard. In the parlour the clock ticked
slowly, and a damp freshness arose from the sanded floor in spite of
the stuffy air.
"Fine ideas!" said the young man; "why do you need a good God
and his paradise to make you happy? Haven't you got it in your own
power to make yourselves happy on earth?"
With his enthusiastic voice he spoke on and on. The closed horizon
was bursting out; a gap of light was opening in the sombre lives of
these poor people. The eternal wretchedness, beginning over and
over again, the brutalizing labour, the fate of a beast who gives his
wool and has his throat cut, all the misfortune disappeared, as
though swept away by a great flood of sunlight; and beneath the
dazzling gleam of fairyland justice descended from heaven. Since the
good God was dead, justice would assure the happiness of men, and
equality and brotherhood would reign. A new society would spring
up in a day just as in dreams, an immense town with the splendour
of a mirage, in which each citizen lived by his work, and took his
share in the common joys. The old rotten world had fallen to dust; a
young humanity purged from its crimes formed but a single nation of
workers, having for their motto: "To each according to his deserts,
and to each desert according to its performance." And this dream
grew continually larger and more beautiful and more seductive as it
mounted higher in the impossible.
At first Maheude refused to listen, possessed by a deep dread. No,
no, it was too beautiful; it would not do to embark upon these ideas,
for they made life seem abominable afterwards, and one would have
destroyed everything in the effort to be happy. When she saw
Maheu's eyes shine, and that he was troubled and won over, she
became restless, and exclaimed, interrupting Étienne:
"Don't listen, my man! You can see he's only telling us fairy-tales. Do
you think the bourgeois would ever consent to work as we do?"

But little by little the charm worked on her also. Her imagination was
aroused and she smiled at last, entering his marvellous world of
hope. It was so sweet to forget for a while the sad reality! When one
lives like the beasts with face bent towards the earth, one needs a
corner of falsehood where one can amuse oneself by regaling on the
things one will never possess. And what made her enthusiastic and
brought her into agreement with the young man was the idea of
justice.
"Now, there you're right!" she exclaimed. "When a thing's just I
don't mind being cut to pieces for it. And it's true enough! it would
be just for us to have a turn."
Then Maheu ventured to become excited.
"Blast it all! I am not rich, but I would give five francs to keep alive
to see that. What a hustling, eh? Will it be soon? And how can we
set about it?"
Étienne began talking again. The old social system was cracking; it
could not last more than a few months, he affirmed roundly. As to
the methods of execution, he spoke more vaguely, mixing up his
reading, and fearing before ignorant hearers to enter on
explanations where he might lose himself. All the systems had their
share in it, softened by the certainty of easy triumph, a universal
kiss which would bring to an end all class misunderstandings;
without taking count, however, of the thick-heads among the
masters and bourgeois whom it would perhaps be necessary to bring
to reason by force. And the Maheus looked as if they understood,
approving and accepting miraculous solutions with the blind faith of
new believers, like those Christians of the early days of the Church,
who awaited the coming of a perfect society on the dunghill of the
ancient world. Little Alzire picked up a few words, and imagined
happiness under the form of a very warm house, where children
could play and eat as long as they liked. Catherine, without moving,
her chin always resting in her hand, kept her eyes fixed on Étienne,
and when he stopped a slight shudder passed over her, and she was
quite pale as if she felt the cold.

But Maheude looked at the clock.
"Past nine! Can it be possible? We shall never get up to-morrow."
And the Maheus left the table with hearts ill at ease and in despair.
It seemed to them that they had just been rich and that they had
now suddenly fallen back into the mud. Father Bonnemort, who was
setting out for the pit, growled that those sort of stories wouldn't
make the soup better; while the others went upstairs in single file,
noticing the dampness of the walls and the pestiferous stuffiness of
the air. Upstairs, amid the heavy slumber of the settlement when
Catherine had got into bed last and blown out the candle, Étienne
heard her tossing feverishly before getting to sleep.
Often at these conversations the neighbours came in: Levaque, who
grew excited at the idea of a general sharing; Pierron, who prudently
went to bed as soon as they attacked the Company. At long intervals
Zacharie came in for a moment; but politics bored him, he preferred
to go off and drink a glass at the Avantage. As to Chaval, he would
go to extremes and wanted to draw blood. Nearly every evening he
passed an hour with the Maheus; in this assiduity there was a
certain unconfessed jealousy, the fear that he would be robbed of
Catherine. This girl, of whom he was already growing tired, had
become precious to him now that a man slept near her and could
take her at night.
Étienne's influence increased; he gradually revolutionized the
settlement. His propaganda was unseen, and all the more sure since
he was growing in the estimation of all. Maheude, notwithstanding
the caution of a prudent housekeeper, treated him with
consideration, as a young man who paid regularly and neither drank
nor gambled, with his nose always in a book; she spread abroad his
reputation among the neighbours as an educated lad, a reputation
which they abused by asking him to write their letters. He was a sort
of business man, charged with correspondence and consulted by
households in affairs of difficulty. Since September he had thus at
last been able to establish his famous Provident Fund, which was still
very precarious, only including the inhabitants of the settlement; but

he hoped to be able to obtain the adhesion of the miners at all the
pits, especially if the Company, which had remained passive,
continued not to interfere. He had been made secretary of the
association and he even received a small salary for the clerking. This
made him almost rich. If a married miner can with difficulty make
both ends meet, a sober lad who has no burdens can even manage
to save.
From this time a slow transformation took place in Étienne. Certain
instincts of refinement and comfort which had slept during his
poverty were now revealed. He began to buy cloth garments; he
also bought a pair of elegant boots; he became a big man. The
whole settlement grouped round him. The satisfaction of his self-love
was delicious; he became intoxicated with this first enjoyment of
popularity; to be at the head of others, to command, he who was so
young, and but the day before had been a mere labourer, this filled
him with pride, and enlarged his dream of an approaching revolution
in which he was to play a part. His face changed: he became serious
and put on airs, while his growing ambition inflamed his theories and
pushed him to ideas of violence.
But autumn was advancing, and the October cold had blighted the
little gardens of the settlement. Behind the thin lilacs the trammers
no longer tumbled the putters over on the shed, and only the winter
vegetables remained, the cabbages pearled with white frost, the
leeks and the salads. Once more the rains were beating down on the
red tiles and flowing down into the tubs beneath the gutters with the
sound of a torrent. In every house the stove piled up with coal was
never cold, and poisoned the close parlours. It was the season of
wretchedness beginning once more.
In October, on one of the first frosty nights, Étienne, feverish after
his conversation below, could not sleep. He had seen Catherine glide
beneath the coverlet and then blow out the candle. She also
appeared to be quite overcome, and tormented by one of those fits
of modesty which still made her hasten sometimes, and so
awkwardly that she only uncovered herself more. In the darkness

she lay as though dead; but he knew that she also was awake, and
he felt that she was thinking of him just as he was thinking of her:
this mute exchange of their beings had never before filled them with
such trouble. The minutes went by and neither he nor she moved,
only their breathing was embarrassed in spite of their efforts to
retain it. Twice over he was on the point of rising and taking her. It
was idiotic to have such a strong desire for each other and never to
satisfy it. Why should they thus sulk against what they desired? The
children were asleep, she was quite willing; he was certain that she
was waiting for him, stifling, and that she would close her arms
round him in silence with clenched teeth. Nearly an hour passed. He
did not go to take her, and she did not turn round for fear of calling
him. The more they lived side by side, the more a barrier was raised
of shames, repugnancies, delicacies of friendship, which they could
not explain even to themselves.
CHAPTER IV
"Listen," said Maheude to her man, "when you go to Montsou for the
pay, just bring me back a pound of coffee and a kilo of sugar."
He was sewing one of his shoes, in order to spare the cobbling.
"Good!" he murmured, without leaving his task.
"I should like you to go to the butcher's too. A bit of veal, eh? It's so
long since we saw it."
This time he raised his head.
"Do you think, then, that I've got thousands coming in? The
fortnight's pay is too little as it is, with their confounded idea of
always stopping work."
They were both silent. It was after breakfast, one Saturday, at the
end of October. The Company, under the pretext of the derangement

caused by payment, had on this day once more suspended output in
all their pits. Seized by panic at the growing industrial crisis, and not
wishing to augment their already considerable stock, they profited
by the smallest pretexts to force their ten thousand workers to rest.
"You know that Étienne is waiting for you at Rasseneur's," began
Maheude again. "Take him with you; he'll be more clever than you
are in clearing up matters if they haven't counted all your hours."
Maheu nodded approval.
"And just talk to those gentlemen about your father's affair. The
doctor's on good terms with the directors. It's true, isn't it, old un,
that the doctor's mistaken, and that you can still work?"
For ten days Father Bonnemort, with benumbed paws, as he said,
had remained nailed to his chair. She had to repeat her question,
and he growled:
"Sure enough, I can work. One isn't done for because one's legs are
bad. All that is just stories they make up, so as not to give the
hundred-and-eighty-franc pension."
Maheude thought of the old man's forty sous, which he would,
perhaps, never bring in any more, and she uttered a cry of anguish:
"My God! we shall soon be all dead if this goes on."
"When one is dead," said Maheu, "one doesn't get hungry."
He put some nails into his shoes, and decided to set out. The Deux-
Cent-Quarante settlement would not be paid till towards four o'clock.
The men did not hurry, therefore, but waited about, going off one by
one, beset by the women, who implored them to come back at once.
Many gave them commissions, to prevent them forgetting
themselves in public-houses.
At Rasseneur's Étienne had received news. Disquieting rumours were
flying about; it was said that the Company were more and more
discontented over the timbering. They were overwhelming the
workmen with fines, and a conflict appeared inevitable. That was,

however, only the avowed dispute; beneath it there were grave and
secret causes of complication.
Just as Étienne arrived, a comrade, who was drinking a glass on his
return from Montsou, was telling that an announcement had been
stuck up at the cashier's; but he did not quite know what was on the
announcement. A second entered, then a third, and each brought a
different story. It seemed certain, however, that the Company had
taken a resolution.
"What do you say about it, eh?" asked Étienne, sitting down near
Souvarine at a table where nothing was to be seen but a packet of
tobacco.
The engine-man did not hurry, but finished rolling his cigarette.
"I say that it was easy to foresee. They want to push you to
extremes."
He alone had a sufficiently keen intelligence to analyse the situation.
He explained it in his quiet way. The Company, suffering from the
crisis, had been forced to reduce their expenses if they were not to
succumb, and it was naturally the workers who would have to
tighten their bellies; under some pretext or another the Company
would nibble at their wages. For two months the coal had been
remaining at the surface of their pits, and nearly all the workshops
were resting. As the Company did not dare to rest in this way,
terrified at the ruinous inaction, they were meditating a middle
course, perhaps a strike, from which the miners would come out
crushed and worse paid. Then the new Provident Fund was
disturbing them, as it was a threat for the future, while a strike
would relieve them of it, by exhausting it when it was still small.
Rasseneur had seated himself beside Étienne, and both of them
were listening in consternation. They could talk aloud, because there
was no one there but Madame Rasseneur, seated at the counter.
"What an idea!" murmured the innkeeper; "what's the good of it?
The Company has no interest in a strike, nor the men either. It
would be best to come to an understanding."

This was very sensible. He was always on the side of reasonable
demands. Since the rapid popularity of his old lodger, he had even
exaggerated this system of possible progress, saying they would
obtain nothing if they wished to have everything at once. In his fat,
good-humoured nature, nourished on beer, a secret jealousy was
forming, increased by the desertion of his bar, into which the
workmen from the Voreux now came more rarely to drink and to
listen; and he thus sometimes even began to defend the Company,
forgetting the rancour of an old miner who had been turned off.
"Then you are against the strike?" cried Madame Rasseneur, without
leaving the counter.
And as he energetically replied, "Yes!" she made him hold his
tongue.
"Bah! you have no courage; let these gentlemen speak."
Étienne was meditating, with his eyes fixed on the glass which she
had served to him. At last he raised his head.
"I dare say it's all true what our mate tells us, and we must get
resigned to this strike if they force it on us. Pluchart has just written
me some very sensible things on this matter. He's against the strike
too, for the men would suffer as much as the masters, and it
wouldn't come to anything decisive. Only it seems to him a capital
chance to get our men to make up their minds to go into his big
machine. Here's his letter."
In fact, Pluchart, in despair at the suspicion which the International
aroused among the miners at Montsou, was hoping to see them
enter in a mass if they were forced to fight against the Company. In
spite of his efforts, Étienne had not been able to place a single
member's card, and he had given his best efforts to his Provident
Fund, which was much better received. But this fund was still so
small that it would be quickly exhausted, as Souvarine said, and the
strikers would then inevitably throw themselves into the Working
Men's Association so that their brothers in every country could come
to their aid.

"How much have you in the fund?" asked Rasseneur. "Hardly three
thousand francs," replied Étienne, "and you know that the directors
sent for me yesterday. Oh! they were very polite; they repeated that
they wouldn't prevent their men from forming a reserve fund. But I
quite understood that they wanted to control it. We are bound to
have a struggle over that."
The innkeeper was walking up and down, whistling contemptuously.
"Three thousand francs! what can you do with that! It wouldn't yield
six days' bread; and if we counted on foreigners, such as the people
in England, one might go to bed at once and turn up one's toes. No,
it was too foolish, this strike!"
Then for the first time bitter words passed between these two men
who usually agreed together at last, in their common hatred of
capital.
"We shall see! and you, what do you say about it?" repeated
Étienne, turning towards Souvarine.
The latter replied with his usual phrase of habitual contempt.
"A strike? Foolery!"
Then, in the midst of the angry silence, he added gently:
"On the whole, I shouldn't say no if it amuses you; it ruins the one
side and kills the other, and that is always so much cleared away.
Only in that way it will take quite a thousand years to renew the
world. Just begin by blowing up this prison in which you are all being
done to death!"
With his delicate hand he pointed out the Voreux, the buildings of
which could be seen through the open door. But an unforeseen
drama interrupted him: Poland, the big tame rabbit, which had
ventured outside, came bounding back, fleeing from the stones of a
band of trammers; and in her terror, with fallen ears and raised tail,
she took refuge against his legs, scratching and imploring him to
take her up. When he had placed her on his knees, he sheltered her

with both hands, and fell into that kind of dreamy somnolence into
which the caress of this soft warm fur always plunged him.
Almost at the same time Maheu came in. He would drink nothing, in
spite of the polite insistence of Madame Rasseneur, who sold her
beer as though she made a present of it. Étienne had risen, and
both of them set out for Montsou.
On pay-day at the Company's Yards, Montsou seemed to be in the
midst of a fete as on fine Sunday feast-days. Bands of miners arrived
from all the settlements. The cashier's office being very small, they
preferred to wait at the door, stationed in groups on the pavement,
barring the way in a crowd that was constantly renewed. Hucksters
profited by the occasion and installed themselves with their movable
stalls that sold even pottery and cooked meats. But it was especially
the estaminets and the bars which did a good trade, for the miners
before being paid went to the counters to get patience, and returned
to them to wet their pay as soon as they had it in their pockets. But
they were very sensible, except when they finished it at the Volcan.
As Maheu and Étienne advanced among the groups they felt that on
that day a deep exasperation was rising up. It was not the ordinary
indifference with which the money was taken and spent at the
publics. Fists were clenched and violent words were passing from
mouth to mouth.
"Is it true, then," asked Maheu of Chaval, whom he met before the
Estaminet Piquette, "that they've played the dirty trick?"
But Chaval contented himself by replying with a furious growl,
throwing a sidelong look on Étienne. Since the working had been
renewed he had hired himself on with others, more and more bitten
by envy against this comrade, the new-comer who posed as a boss
and whose boots, as he said, were licked by the whole settlement.
This was complicated by a lover's jealousy. He never took Catherine
to Réquillart now or behind the pit-bank without accusing her in
abominable language of sleeping with her mother's lodger; then,
seized by savage desire, he would stifle her with caresses.

Maheu asked him another question:
"Is it the Voreux's turn now?"
And when he turned his back after nodding affirmatively, both men
decided to enter the Yards.
The counting-house was a small rectangular room, divided in two by
a grating. On the forms along the wall five or six miners were
waiting; while the cashier assisted by a clerk was paying another
who stood before the wicket with his cap in his hand. Above the
form on the left, a yellow placard was stuck up, quite fresh against
the smoky grey of the plaster, and it was in front of this that the
men had been constantly passing all the morning. They entered two
or three at a time, stood in front of it, and then went away without a
word, shrugging their shoulders as if their backs were crushed.
Two colliers were just then standing in front of the announcement, a
young one with a square brutish head and a very thin old one, his
face dull with age. Neither of them could read; the young one spelt,
moving his lips, the old one contented himself with gazing stupidly.
Many came in thus to look, without understanding.
"Read us that there!" said Maheu, who was not very strong either in
reading, to his companion.
Then Étienne began to read him the announcement. It was a notice
from the Company to the miners of all the pits, informing them that
in consequence of the lack of care bestowed on the timbering, and
being weary of inflicting useless fines, the Company had resolved to
apply a new method of payment for the extraction of coal.
Henceforward they would pay for the timbering separately, by the
cubic metre of wood taken down and used, based on the quantity
necessary for good work. The price of the tub of coal extracted
would naturally be lowered, in the proportion of fifty centimes to
forty, according to the nature and distance of the cuttings, and a
somewhat obscure calculation endeavoured to show that this
diminution of ten centimes would be exactly compensated by the
price of the timbering. The Company added also that, wishing to

leave every one time to convince himself of the advantages
presented by this new scheme, they did not propose to apply it till
Monday, the 1st of December.
"Don't read so loud over there," shouted the cashier. "We can't hear
what we are saying."
Étienne finished reading without paying attention to this observation.
His voice trembled, and when he had reached the end they all
continued to gaze steadily at the placard. The old miner and the
young one looked as though they expected something more; then
they went away with depressed shoulders.
"Good God!" muttered Maheu.
He and his companions sat down absorbed, with lowered heads, and
while files of men continued to pass before the yellow paper they
made calculations. Were they being made fun of? They could never
make up with the timbering for the ten centimes taken off the tram.
At most they could only get to eight centimes, so the Company
would be robbing them of two centimes, without counting the time
taken by careful work. This, then, was what this disguised lowering
of wages really came to. The Company was economizing out of the
miners' pockets.
"Good Lord! Good Lord!" repeated Maheu, raising his head. "We
should be bloody fools if we took that."
But the wicket being free he went up to be paid. The heads only of
the workings presented themselves at the desk and then divided the
money between their men to save time.
"Maheu and associates," said the clerk, "Filonniére seam, cutting No.
7."
He searched through the lists which were prepared from the
inspection of the tickets on which the captains stated every day for
each stall the number of trams extracted. Then he repeated:
"Maheu and associates, Filonniére seam, cutting No. 7. One hundred
and thirty-five francs."

The cashier paid.
"Beg pardon, sir," stammered the pikeman in surprise. "Are you sure
you have not made a mistake?"
He looked at this small sum of money without picking it up, frozen
by a shudder which went to his heart. It was true he was expecting
bad payment, but it could not come to so little or he must have
calculated wrong. When he had given their shares to Zacharie,
Étienne, and the other mate who replaced Chaval, there would
remain at most fifty francs for himself, his father, Catherine, and
Jeanlin.
"No, no, I've made no mistake," replied the clerk. "There are two
Sundays and four rest days to be taken off; that makes nine days of
work." Maheu followed this calculation in a low voice: nine days gave
him about thirty francs, eighteen to Catherine, nine to Jeanlin. As to
Father Bonnemort, he only had three days. No matter, by adding the
ninety francs of Zacharie and the two mates, that would surely make
more.
"And don't forget the fines," added the clerk. "Twenty francs for
fines for defective timbering."
The pikeman made a gesture of despair. Twenty francs of fines, four
days of rest! That made out the account. To think that he had once
brought back a fortnight's pay of full a hundred and fifty francs when
Father Bonnemort was working and Zacharie had not yet set up
house for himself!
"Well, are you going to take it?" cried the cashier impatiently. "You
can see there's someone else waiting. If you don't want it, say so."
As Maheu decided to pick up the money with his large trembling
hand the clerk stopped him.
"Wait: I have your name here. Toussaint Maheu, is it not? The
general secretary wishes to speak to you. Go in, he is alone."
The dazed workman found himself in an office furnished with old
mahogany, upholstered with faded green rep. And he listened for

five minutes to the general secretary, a tall sallow gentleman, who
spoke to him over the papers of his bureau without rising. But the
buzzing in his ears prevented him from hearing. He understood
vaguely that the question of his father's retirement would be taken
into consideration with the pension of a hundred and fifty francs,
fifty years of age and forty years' service. Then it seemed to him
that the secretary's voice became harder. There was a reprimand; he
was accused of occupying himself with politics; an allusion was
made to his lodger and the Provident Fund; finally he was advised
not to compromise himself with these follies, he, who was one of the
best workmen in the mine. He wished to protest, but could only
pronounce words at random, twisting his cap between his feverish
fingers, and he retired, stuttering:
"Certainly, sir—I can assure you, sir——"
Outside, when he had found Étienne who waiting for him, he broke
out:
"Well, I am a bloody fool, I ought to have replied! Not enough
money to get bread, and insults as well! Yes, he has been talking
against you; he told me the settlement was being poisoned. And
what's to be done? Good God! bend one's back and say thank you.
He's right, that's the wisest plan."
Maheu fell silent, overcome at once by rage and fear. Étienne was
gloomily thinking. Once more they traversed the groups who blocked
the road. The exasperation was growing, the exasperation of a calm
race, the muttered warning of a storm, without violent gestures,
terrible to see above this solid mass. A few men understanding
accounts had made calculations, and the two centimes gained by the
Company over the wood were rumoured about, and excited the
hardest heads. But it was especially the rage over this disastrous
pay, the rebellion of hunger against the rest days and the fines.
Already there was not enough to eat, and what would happen if
wages were still further lowered? In the estaminets the anger grew
loud, and fury so dried their throats that the little money taken went
over the counters.
É

From Montsou to the settlement Étienne and Maheu never
exchanged a word. When the latter entered, Maheude, who was
alone with the children, noticed immediately that his hands were
empty.
"Well, you're a nice one!" she said. "Where's my coffee and my
sugar and the meat? A bit of veal wouldn't have ruined you."
He made no reply, stifled by the emotion he had been keeping back.
Then the coarse face of this man hardened to work in the mines
became swollen with despair, and large tears broke from his eyes
and fell in a warm rain. He had thrown himself into a chair, weeping
like a child, and throwing fifty francs on the table:
"Here," he stammered. "That's what I've brought you back. That's
our work for all of us."
Maheude looked at Étienne, and saw that he was silent and
overwhelmed. Then she also wept. How were nine people to live for
a fortnight on fifty francs? Her eldest son had left them, the old man
could no longer move his legs: it would soon mean death. Alzire
threw herself round her mother's neck, overcome on hearing her
weep. Estelle was howling, Lénore and Henri were sobbing.
And from the entire settlement there soon arose the same cry of
wretchedness. The men had come back, and each household was
lamenting the disaster of this bad pay. The doors opened, women
appeared, crying aloud outside, as if their complaints could not be
held beneath the ceilings of these small houses. A fine rain was
falling, but they did not feel it, they called one another from the
pavements, they showed one another in the hollow of their hands
the money they had received.
"Look! they've given him this. Do they want to make fools of
people?"
"As for me, see, I haven't got enough to pay for the fortnight's bread
with."
"And just count mine! I should have to sell my shifts!"

Maheude had come out like the others. A group had formed around
the Levaque woman, who was shouting loudest of all, for her
drunkard of a husband had not even turned up, and she knew that,
large or small, the pay would melt away at the Volcan. Philoméne
watched Maheu so that Zacharie should not get hold of the money.
Pierronne was the only one who seemed fairly calm, for that sneak
of a Pierron always arranged things, no one knew how, so as to
have more hours on the captain's ticket than his mates. But Mother
Brulé thought this cowardly of her son-in-law; she was among the
enraged, lean and erect in the midst of the group, with her fists
stretched towards Montsou.
"To think," she cried, without naming the Hennebeaus, "that this
morning I saw their servant go by in a carriage! Yes, the cook in a
carriage with two horses, going to Marchiennes to get fish, sure
enough!"
A clamour arose, and the abuse began again. That servant in a
white apron taken to the market of the neighbouring town in her
master's carriage aroused indignation. While the workers were dying
of hunger they must have their fish, at all costs! Perhaps they would
not always be able to eat their fish: the turn of the poor people
would come. And the ideas sown by Étienne sprang up and
expanded in this cry of revolt. It was impatience before the promised
age of gold, a haste to get a share of the happiness beyond this
horizon of misery, closed in like the grave. The injustice was
becoming too great; at last they would demand their rights, since
the bread was being taken out of their mouths. The women
especially would have liked at once to take by assault this ideal city
of progress, in which there was to be no more wretchedness. It was
almost night, and the rain increased while they were still filling the
settlement with their tears in the midst of the screaming helter-
skelter of the children.
That evening at the Avantage the strike was decided on. Rasseneur
no longer struggled against it, and Souvarine accepted it as a first
É

step. Étienne summed up the situation in a word: if the Company
really wanted a strike then the Company should have a strike.
CHAPTER V
A week passed, and work went on suspiciously and mournfully in
expectation of the conflict.
Among the Maheus the fortnight threatened to be more meagre than
ever. Maheude grew bitter, in spite of her moderation and good
sense. Her daughter Catherine, too, had taken it into her head to
stay out one night. On the following morning she came back so
weary and ill after this adventure that she was not able to go to the
pit; and she told with tears how it was not her fault, for Chaval had
kept her, threatening to beat her if she ran away. He was becoming
mad with jealousy, and wished to prevent her from returning to
Étienne's bed, where he well knew, he said, that the family made
her sleep. Maheude was furious, and, after forbidding her daughter
ever to see such a brute again, talked of going to Montsou to box his
ears. But, all the same, it was a day lost, and the girl, now that she
had this lover, preferred not to change him.
Two days after there was another incident. On Monday and Tuesday
Jeanlin, who was supposed to be quietly engaged on his task at the
Voreux, had escaped, to run away into the marshes and the forest of
Vandame with Bébert and Lydie. He had seduced them; no one
knew to what plunder or to what games of precocious children they
had all three given themselves up. He received a vigorous
punishment, a whipping which his mother applied to him on the
pavement outside before the terrified children of the settlement.
Who could have thought such a thing of children belonging to her,
who had cost so much since their birth, and who ought now to be
bringing something in? And in this cry there was the remembrance

of her own hard youth, of the hereditary misery which made of each
little one in the brood a bread-winner later on.
That morning, when the men and the girl set out for the pit,
Maheude sat up in her bed to say to Jeanlin:
"You know that if you begin that game again, you little beast, I'll
take the skin off your bottom!"
In Maheu's new stall the work was hard. This part of the Filonniére
seam was so thin that the pikemen, squeezed between the wall and
the roof, grazed their elbows at their work. It was, too, becoming
very damp; from hour to hour they feared a rush of water, one of
those sudden torrents which burst through rocks and carry away
men. The day before, as Étienne was violently driving in his pick and
drawing it out, he had received a jet of water in his face; but this
was only an alarm; the cutting simply became damper and more
unwholesome. Besides, he now thought nothing of possible
accidents; he forgot himself there with his mates, careless of peril.
They lived in fire-damp without even feeling its weight on their
eyelids, the spider's-web veil which it left on the eyelashes.
Sometimes when the flame of the lamps grew paler and bluer than
usual it attracted attention, and a miner would put his head against
the seam to listen to the low noise of the gas, a noise of air-bubbles
escaping from each crack. But the constant threat was of landslips;
for, besides the insufficiency of the timbering, always patched up too
quickly, the soil, soaked with water, would not hold.
Three times during the day Maheu had been obliged to add to the
planking. It was half-past two, and the men would soon have to
ascend. Lying on his side, Étienne was finishing the cutting of a
block, when a distant growl of thunder shook the whole mine.
"What's that, then?" he cried, putting down his axe to listen.
He had at first thought that the gallery was falling in behind his
back.
But Maheu had already glided along the slope of the cutting, saying:

"It's a fall! Quick, quick!"
All tumbled down and hastened, carried away by an impulse of
anxious fraternity. Their lamps danced at their wrists in the deathly
silence which had fallen; they rushed in single file along the
passages with bent backs, as though they were galloping on all
fours; and without slowing this gallop they asked each other
questions and threw brief replies. Where was it, then? In the
cuttings, perhaps. No, it came from below; no, from the haulage.
When they arrived at the chimney passage, they threw themselves
into it, tumbling one over the other without troubling about bruises.
Jeanlin, with skin still red from the whipping of the day before, had
not run away from the pit on this day. He was trotting with naked
feet behind his tram, closing the ventilation doors one by one; when
he was not afraid of meeting a captain he jumped on to the last
tram, which he was not allowed to do for fear he should go to sleep.
But his great amusement was, whenever the tram was shunted to
let another one pass, to go and join Bébert, who was holding the
reins in front. He would come up slyly without his lamp and
vigorously pinch his companion, inventing mischievous monkey
tricks, with his yellow hair, his large ears, his lean muzzle, lit up by
little green eyes shining in the darkness. With morbid precocity, he
seemed to have the obscure intelligence and the quick skill of a
human abortion which had returned to its animal ways.
In the afternoon, Mouque brought Bataille, whose turn it was, to the
trammers; and as the horse was snuffing in the shunting, Jeanlin,
who had glided up to Bébert, asked him:
"What's the matter with the old hack to stop short like that? He'll
break my legs."
Bébert could not reply; he had to hold in Bataille, who was growing
lively at the approach of the other tram. The horse had smelled from
afar his comrade, Trompette, for whom he had felt great tenderness
ever since the day when he had seen him disembarked in the pit.
One might say that it was the affectionate pity of an old philosopher

anxious to console a young friend by imparting to him his own
resignation and patience; for Trompette did not become reconciled,
drawing his trams without any taste for the work, standing with
lowered head blinded by the darkness, and for ever regretting the
sun. So every time that Bataille met him he put out his head
snorting, and moistened him with an encouraging caress.
"By God!" swore Bébert, "there they are, licking each other's skins
again!"
Then, when Trompette had passed, he replied, on the subject of
Bataille:
"Oh, he's a cunning old beast! When he stops like that it's because
he guesses there's something in the way, a stone or a hole, and he
takes care of himself; he doesn't want to break his bones. To-day I
don't know what was the matter with him down there after the door.
He pushed it, and stood stock-still. Did you see anything?"
"No," said Jeanlin. "There's water, I've got it up to my knees."
The tram set out again. And, on the following journey, when he had
opened the ventilation door with a blow from his head, Bataille again
refused to advance, neighing and trembling. At last he made up his
mind, and set off with a bound.
Jeanlin, who closed the door, had remained behind. He bent down
and looked at the mud through which he was paddling, then, raising
his lamp, he saw that the wood had given way beneath the continual
bleeding of a spring. Just then a pikeman, one Berloque, who was
called Chicot, had arrived from his cutting, in a hurry to go to his
wife who had just been confined. He also stopped and examined the
planking. And suddenly, as the boy was starting to rejoin his train, a
tremendous cracking sound was heard, and a landslip engulfed the
man and the child.
There was deep silence. A thick dust raised by the wind of the fall
passed through the passages. Blinded and choked, the miners came
from every part, even from the farthest stalls, with their dancing
lamps which feebly lighted up this gallop of black men at the bottom

of these molehills. When the first men tumbled against the landslip,
they shouted out and called their mates. A second band, come from
the cutting below, found themselves on the other side of the mass of
earth which stopped up the gallery. It was at once seen that the roof
had fallen in for a dozen metres at most. The damage was not
serious. But all hearts were contracted when a death-rattle was
heard from the ruins.
Bébert, leaving his tram, ran up, repeating:
"Jeanlin is underneath! Jeanlin is underneath!"
Maheu, at this very moment, had come out of the passage with
Zacharie and Étienne. He was seized with the fury of despair, and
could only utter oaths:
"My God! my God! my God!"
Catherine, Lydie, and Mouquette, who had also rushed up, began to
sob and shriek with terror in the midst of the fearful disorder, which
was increased by the darkness. The men tried to make them be
silent, but they shrieked louder as each groan was heard.
The captain, Richomme, had come up running, in despair that
neither Négrel, the engineer, nor Dansaert was at the pit. With his
ear pressed against the rocks he listened; and, at last, said those
sounds could not come from a child. A man must certainly be there.
Maheu had already called Jeanlin twenty times over. Not a breath
was heard. The little one must have been smashed up.
And still the groans continued monotonously. They spoke to the
agonized man, asking him his name. The groaning alone replied.
"Look sharp!" repeated Richomme, who had already organized a
rescue, "we can talk afterwards."
From each end the miners attacked the landslip with pick and
shovel. Chaval worked without a word beside Maheu and Étienne,
while Zacharie superintended the removal of the earth. The hour for
ascent had come, and no one had touched food; but they could not
go up for their soup while their mates were in peril. They realized,

however, that the settlement would be disturbed if no one came
back, and it was proposed to send off the women. But neither
Catherine nor Mouquette, nor even Lydie, would move, nailed to the
spot with a desire to know what had happened, and to help.
Levaque then accepted the commission of announcing the landslip
up above—a simple accident, which was being repaired. It was
nearly four o'clock; in less than an hour the men had done a day's
work; half the earth would have already been removed if more rocks
had not slid from the roof. Maheu persisted with such energy that he
refused, with a furious gesture, when another man approached to
relieve him for a moment.
"Gently!" said Richomme at last, "we are getting near. We must not
finish them off."
In fact the groaning was becoming more and more distinct. It was a
continuous rattling which guided the workers; and now it seemed to
be beneath their very picks. Suddenly it stopped.
In silence they all looked at one another, and shuddered as they felt
the coldness of death pass in the darkness. They dug on, soaked in
sweat, their muscles tense to breaking. They came upon a foot, and
then began to remove the earth with their hands, freeing the limbs
one by one. The head was not hurt. They turned their lamps on it,
and Chicot's name went round. He was quite warm, with his spinal
column broken by a rock.
"Wrap him up in a covering, and put him in a tram," ordered the
captain. "Now for the lad; look sharp."
Maheu gave a last blow, and an opening was made, communicating
with the men who were clearing away the soil from the other side.
They shouted out that they had just found Jeanlin, unconscious,
with both legs broken, still breathing. It was the father who took up
the little one in his arms, with clenched jaws constantly uttering "My
God!" to express his grief, while Catherine and the other women
again began to shriek.

A procession was quickly formed. Bébert had brought back Bataille,
who was harnessed to the trams. In the first lay Chicot's corpse,
supported by Étienne; in the second, Maheu was seated with
Jeanlin, still unconscious, on his knees, covered by a strip of wool
torn from the ventilation door. They started at a walking pace. On
each tram was a lamp like a red star. Then behind followed the row
of miners, some fifty shadows in single file. Now that they were
overcome by fatigue, they trailed their feet, slipping in the mud, with
the mournful melancholy of a flock stricken by an epidemic. It took
them nearly half an hour to reach the pit-eye. This procession
beneath the earth, in the midst of deep darkness, seemed never to
end through galleries which bifurcated and turned and unrolled.
At the pit-eye Richomme, who had gone on before, had ordered an
empty cage to be reserved. Pierron immediately loaded the two
trams. In the first Maheu remained with his wounded little one on
his knees, while in the other Étienne kept Chicot's corpse between
his arms to hold it up. When the men had piled themselves up in the
other decks the cage rose. It took two minutes. The rain from the
tubbing fell very cold, and the men looked up towards the air
impatient to see daylight.
Fortunately a trammer sent to Dr. Vanderhaghen's had found him
and brought him back. Jeanlin and the dead man were placed in the
captains' room, where, from year's end to year's end, a large fire
burnt. A row of buckets with warm water was ready for washing
feet; and, two mattresses having been spread on the floor, the man
and the child were placed on them. Maheu and Étienne alone
entered. Outside, putters, miners, and boys were running about,
forming groups and talking in a low voice.
As soon as the doctor had glanced at Chicot:
"Done for! You can wash him."
Two overseers undressed and then washed with a sponge this
corpse blackened with coal and still dirty with the sweat of work.

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