GERMINAL
"Oh, sir! they are not bad-hearted!"
The manager shook his head, while the tumult increased outside, and they could hear the faint crash of the stones against the house.
"I don't wish to be hard on them, I can even excuse them; one must be as foolish as they are to believe that we are anxious to injure them. But it is my duty to prevent disturbance. To think that there are police all along the roads, as I am told, and that I have not been able to see a single man since the morning!"
He interrupted himself, and drew back before Madame Grégoire, saying:
"Let me beg you, madam, do not stay here, come into the drawing-room."
But the cook, coming up from below in exasperation, kept them in the hall a few minutes longer. She declared that she could no longer accept any responsibility for the dinner, for she was expecting from the Marchiennes pastry-cook some vol-au-vent which she had ordered for four o'clock. The pastry-cook had evidently stayed on the road for fear of these bandits. Perhaps they had even pillaged his hampers. She saw the vol-au-vent blockaded behind a bush, besieged, going to swell the bellies of the three thousand wretches who were asking for bread. In any case, monsieur was warned; she would rather pitch her dinner into the fire if it was to be spoilt because of the revolt.
"Patience, patience," said M. Hennebeau. "Nothing is lost, the pastry-cook may come."
And as he turned toward Madame Grégoire, opening the drawing-room door himself, he was very surprised to observe, seated on the hall bench, a man whom he had not distinguished before in the deepening shade.
"What! you, Maigrat! what is it, then?"
Maigrat arose; his fat, pale face was changed by terror. He no longer possessed his usual calm stolidity; he humbly explained that he had slipped into the manager's house to ask for aid and protection should the brigands attack his shop.
"You see that I am threatened myself, and that I have no one," replied M. Hennebeau. "You would have done better to stay at home and guard your property."
"Oh! I have put up iron bars, and then I have left my wife."
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