II
THE EMIGRANTS
Béjard, Saint-Fardier and Vera-Pinto had well chosen the moment to begin their traffic in white flesh, or, as De Zater called it, ivory. Much money was to be made in this filthy commerce. In their narrow offices a continual procession was constantly marching by. Saint-Fardier was in command, and made the hordes and tribes of poor devils run the gauntlet. It was he who sent out recruiters to beat the woods and drain the land.
Originating in Ireland, emigration swept over Russia, Germany, and then the north of France. Thousands of foreigners had already expatriated themselves before the Belgians were inoculated with the fever. The contagion first spread among the laborers of the Borinage and the district about Charleroi, coal-miners whose merciless subterranean slavery was unrelieved by death, fallen cyclops, torn between the intolerance of labor-leaders and the harshness of the capitalists, worn out by strikes and enforced idleness, and, when spared by the fire-damp, dispatched by a soldier's bullet.
And, after having depopulated the Walloon, the fever of expatriation consumed Flanders. Weavers of Ghent, their lungs clogged by the fine flues of thread,
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