Then, suddenly, Étienne made up his mind. Perhaps he imagined he’d caught another glimpse of Catherine’s bright eyes, up there at the entry to the village. Or perhaps it was the wind of revolt beginning to blow from the direction of Le Voreux. He could not tell. He simply wanted to go down the mine again, to suffer and to struggle; and he thought angrily of those ‘people’ Bonnemort had told him about, and of the squat and sated deity to whom ten thousand starving men and women daily offered up their flesh without ever knowing who or what this god might be.
