44
NO RELATIONS.

precipitates the men down a hole two or three
hundred metres deep.    At the same time, the
attempt has been made also by this to avoid the
: sudden transitions to wliich pitmen are exposed,
" who, from a depth of two hundred mètres,
" where the temperature is warm and equal, pass
rapidly, when they are raised by the machine,
1, to an unequal temperature, and are liable to
! pleurisy and inflammation of the chest.
Being told that it was by this gallery that the
workmen would come out, with Mattia and
Capi I posted myself at its mouth; and a few
minutes after six had struck, I began to per-
ceive, in the gloomy depths of the tunnel, little
flickering sparks of light, which gradually grew
bigger. It wa£ the miners, who, lamp in hand,
., returned to the upper world, their work ended.
They came along slowly, walking heavily, as
if they were suffering in the knees, a thing that
I understood later on, when I had myself gone
up and down the stairs and ladders "which led
" to the iast level.    Their faces were as black as
chimney-sweeps, their clothes and hats covered
with coal-dust and splashes of wet mud.    In
'passing the lamp-shed, each man entered and
...hung his lamp upon a nail.
Observant as I was, I did not see Alexis come
out; aud if he had not flung his arms round my
neck, I should have let him pass without recog-
nition, so little did he resemble now, blackened
from head to foot, the comrade who once upon
a time raced about our garden-walks, his clean
shirt>sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and his
open collar allowing his white skin to be seen.
" It is Remi," he said, turning to a man about
forty, who was walking beside him, and who
ihad" a frank open face like Father Acquin's,
wliich was not astonishing, considering that
they were brothers.
I guessed that this was Uncle Gaspard.
" We have been expecting you this long time,"
he said to me good-naturedly.
" It's a long way from Paris to Varses."
" And your legs"are short," said he, laughing.
Capi, delighted to find Alexis again, showed
his joy by fastening bis teeth in the sleeve of
his jacket and tugging at him. During this
time I explained to Uncle Gaspard that Mattia
was my comrade and partner, a good lad whom
I had known formerly and had fallen in with
again, and who played the cornet like any-
thing.
" And there's Mr. Capi," said Uncle Gaspard.
"To-morrow will be Sunday: when you've
rested, you shall give us a performance. Alexis
says that that dog is cleverer than a school-mas-
ter or a play actor."
I felt just as much at home with her husband
.as I had felt ill at ease with Aunt Gaspard.
Decidedly he was a worthy brother of the
father.
"Talk away, lads: you must have plenty to
tell each other. For me, I am going to have a
little conversation with this young man who
plays the cornet so well."
We could have talked 'for a week ; it would
have been too short. Alexis wanted to know
all about my journey, and for my part I was
desperately anxious to iearn how he liked
his new life; so occupied were we in question-
ing each other, that neither troubled himself to
reply.
We walked slowly, and the home going pit-
men passed before us. They went in one long
file which took possession of the whole street,
all black with the same dust whicli covered the
ground with a deep layer. When we were near
his house, Uncle Gaspard turned to us:
' "Lads," said he, "you'll sup with us."
Never did any invitation give me greater
pleasure; for as I walked along I bad been ask-
ing myself if, arrived at the door, we should be
compelled to separate, the aunt's welcome not
having inspired me with .much hope.
" Here's Remi," said he, going into thehouse,
''and his friend."
' "I've seen them already."
"Very well, so much the better:   the  ac-
quaintance is 'made.    They are going to have
_ supper with us."
I was certainly very glad to sup with Alexis,
that is to say, to pass the evening with him;
but, to be truthful, I must say also that I was
very thankful for the supper. Since leaving
Paris we had only eaten in a chance fashion,—a
crust here, a bit "there; but it was seldom that
we had a regular meal, seated upon a chair,
with soup in a soup-plate. It is true that, with
what we had earned, we were rich enough to
pay for feasts in good inns; but we were com-
pelled to save on account of the "Prince's
Cow," and Mattia was such a good fellow that
he was nearly as happy as I was at the thought
of buying our cow.
The delight of a grand feast was not to be
ours to-night. I sat down to table upon a chair,
but they gave us no soup. The mining com-
pany have, for the most part, established pro-
vision stores where their workmen buy at, net
cost all that is absolutely necessary for the
wants of life. The advantage of these stores is
plain to see; the miner gets good articles at low
prices; the amount of his purchases is deducted
from his fortnightly wages, and by this system
he is kept from a running credit with small shop-
keepers, who would ruin him. He does not get
into debt. Only,-like all good things, it has
its bad side. The pitmen's wives are not in the
habit of working while their husbands are down
in the mine. They tidy their bouses a little,
they visit one another, drink coffee or chocolate
that they get at the trlick-shop, they chatter,
they gossip; and when evening comes, when the
man leaves the mine to come home to his sup-
per, they have not had time to prepare a meal.
Then they rush off to the store and buy some
bacon.
It must be understood that this is not general,
or rather universal, but it happens frequently.
This was the reason we bad no soup; Aunt
Gaspard had been gossiping. For that matter,
it was a habit with her; and later ou I discov-
ered that her truck-bill was chiefly composed
of two items: on the one side, coffee and choco-
late; on the other, bacon. Uncle was an easy
man, who loved peace above all things: he ate
his bacon and did not complain; or, if he did
make a remark, it was done very quietly.
" If I don't take a drink," said he, lifting his
glass, " it is because I am a sober man. Do try
and let us have some soup to-morrow."
" And where am I to get tbe time?"
" Is it shorter above ground than under it?"
" And who'll mend your clothes then? Y'ou
destroy everything. "
Then, looking at his garments, soiled with
coal-dust and torn in places, he observed,—
"The fact is, we are dressed like princes, are
we not?"
Our supper did not last long.
"Lad," said Uncle Gaspard to me, "you'll
sleep with Alexis."
Then addressing Mattia,—
" And you, if you'll come into tbe bake-house,
we'll see about making you a good bed of straw
and hay."
The "evening, and a considerable portion of
the night, were not employed by Alexis and me
in sleeping.
Uncle Gaspard was a pick-man, which meant
that by means of his pickax he broke down the
coal in the seams. Alexis was his driver; that
is to say, he pushed and drove along the rails
iu the interior of the mine a wagon called a
benne, in which the brokeu coal was piled, from
the spot whence it was taken to the shaft.
Arrived at this shaft, the benne was hooked on
to a cable, which, drawn up by steam-power,
raised it to the surface.
Although so short a time a miner, Alexis was
already fond and proud of his mine. It was
the finest, the most remarkable in the whole
country; he invested his narration with all the
importance of a traveler newly arrived from an
unknown land and who finds attentive ears to
listen to him.
At first you proceeded along a gallery hol-
lowed in the rock, and after having walked
about ten minutes you came to a straight and
steep flight of steps. Then at the foot of this
stairway there was a wooden ladder, then an-
other stairway, then another ladder, and there
you were at the first level, a depth of fifty
mètres. To reach the second level at ninety
mètres, and the third at two hundred mètres,
you descended the same system of stairs and
ladders. It was on this last level that Alexis
worked, and to reach the scene of his operations
he had to travel three times the distance neces-
sary to be accomplished by those who ascend
the towers of Notre Dame in Paris.
But if the ascent and descent are easy in the
towers of Notre Dame, where the staircases are
regular and well lighted, such is not the case
in the mine, where the steps, cut out according
to the variations of the rock, are sometimes
short, sometimes long, sometimes broad, some-
times narrow. No other light is there than that
of the lamp carried in the hand, and under foot
is \a slippery mud, kept always damp by the
water that filters drop by drop through the
earth and often falls coldly upon one's face.
It is a long way to go down, two hundred
mètres ; but that was cot all. You had, by the
tunnels, to get to the different landing-places
and make your way to tbe work-place. Now,|the
complete development of the Truyère galleries
was from thirty-five to forty kilomètres. Of
course you were not obliged to traverse these
forty kilomètres, but tbe road sometimes was
very fatiguing ; for you walked in water, which,
filtering through the seams of the rock, makes
a rivulet in the middle of the path, and runs in
this fashion to the drains, where it is taken up
and thrown out by the pumping-machines.
When these galleries ran through the solid
rock they were merely subterranean passages,
but when they crossed unsound earth, which
was liable to fall in, they were propped up at
the sides with pine-trunks cut with an ax,
because the notches made by a saw entail a
speedy decay. Although these trunks were
disposed in such à way as to resist the weight
of the earth, this weight was frequently so
great that the wood bent and the galleries nar-
rowed and closed up so much that you could
only pass through them on hands and knees.
Upon these poles grew fungus and light feath-
ery tufts, whose snowy whitness contrasted
with the blackness of the earth: the fermenta-
tion going on in the trees sent out a peculiar
odor; and upon the fungus, on the unknown
plants, on the white moss, there were flies,
spiders, and moths, in no way resembling the
creatures of the same species to be seen in the
upper air. Rats also ran about everywhere,
and bats hung, head downwards, clinging to
the wood-work by their feet.
These galleries crossed one another, and here
and there, as in Paris, there were squares and
cross-roads. Some of these open spaces were
wide and handsome, like boulevards; some of
them were narrow and mean, like the streets in
the Quartier Saint-Marcel. Only, this subter-
ranean town was much worse lighted than other
towns are during the night, for there were
neither lanterns nor gas: only the lamps wliich
the miners carried with them. If light was
sometimes scanty, the noise would tell you that
you were not in tbe city of the dead. In the
workings you heard the reports of blasting-
powder, the smoke and smell of which the air-
current brought you; from tbe tunnels came
the rumbling of wagons; in tbe shafts the rub-
bing of the cages against the guiding-chains;
aud, above all, the roaring of the steam-engine
placed upon the second level. But the place
where the sight was most curious was in the
"risings;" that is to say, in the galleries cut
where the seams of coal ran slopingly. It was
a sight to see the pick-men toiling, half naked,
digging out the coal, lying upon their side or
doubled up upon their knees. From these "ris-
ings " the coal fell down to the huts, whence it
was wheeled to the lifting-shaft.
Such was the aspect of tae mine on ordinary
working-days; but there were also days of mis-
fortune. A fortnight after his arrival at Var-
ses, Alexis had witnessed one of these accidents,
and had himself very nearly fallen a victim to
it; it was an explosion of fire-damp. Fite-
damp is a gas which forms spontaneously in
coal-pits, and which explodes the instant it is
brought into contract with flame. Nothing is
more terrible than one of these explosions,
which destroy and shatter everything in their
way. You can compare it to nothing but the
blowing up of a powder-magazine. The mo-
ment the flame of a lamp or match comes near
the gas, fire bursts out instantaneously in all the
galleries; it destroys everything in the mine,
even to the ventilating and raising shafts, the
roofings of which it carries away." The tem-
perature rises sometimes so high that the coal in
the mine is all turned into coke.
Six weeks before, an explosion of fire-damp
had thus killed half a score of workmen, and
the widow of one of them had gone mad. I
divined that it was she whom I had met on my
arrival, seeking, with her child, "a pleasant
road."
Every precaution twas taken against these
dreadful accidents. Smoking was forbidden,
and the engineers in their rounds often made
the men breathe in their faces, that they might
find out if any one had broken the rule. It
was also on this account that they used Davy
lamps,—so named after the great English
philosopher who had invented them. These
lamps are surrounded by a metallic gauze, fine
enough not to let the flames penetrate its
meshes; so that if the lamp be carried in an ex-
plosive atmosphere the gas is consumed in the