Produced by David S. Miller
TRANSLATED BYFITZWATER WRAY1919
All the days of the week are alike, from their beginning to their end.
At seven in the evening one hears the clock strike gently, and then theinstant tumult of the bell. I close the desk, wipe my pen, and put itdown. I take my hat and muffler, after a glance at the mirror—aglance which shows me the regular oval of my face, my glossy hair andfine mustache. (It is obvious that I am rather more than a workman.)I put out the light and descend from my little glass-partitionedoffice. I cross the boiler-house, myself in the grip of the thronging,echoing peal which has set it free. From among the dark and hurryingcrowd, which increases in the corridors and rolls down the stairwayslike a cloud, some passing voices cry to me, "Good-night, MonsieurSimon," or, with less familiarity, "Good-night, Monsieur Paulin." Ianswer here and there, and allow myself to be borne away by everybodyelse.
Outside, on the threshold of the porch which opens on the naked plainand its pallid horizons, one sees the squares and triangles of thefactory, like a huge black background of the stage, and the tallextinguished chimney, whose only crown now is the cloud of fallingnight. Confusedly, the dark flood carries me away. Along the wallwhich faces the porch, women are waiting, like a curtain of shadow,which yields glimpses of their pale and expressionless faces. With nodor word we recognize each other from the mass. Couples are formed bythe quick hooking of arms. All along the ghostly avenue one's eyesfollow the toilers' scrambling flight.
The avenue is a wan track cut across the open fields. Its course ismarked afar by lines of puny trees, sooty as snuffed candles; bytelegraph posts and their long spider-webs; by bushes or by fences,which are like the skeletons of bushes. There are a few houses. Upyonder a strip of sky still shows palely yellow above the meager suburbwhere creeps the muddy crowd detached from the factory. The west windsets quivering their overalls, blue or black or khaki, excites thewoolly tails that flutter from muffled necks, scatters some evil odors,attacks the sightless faces so deep-drowned beneath the sky.
There are taverns anon which catch the eye. Their doors are closed,but their windows and fanlights shine like gold. Between the tavernsrise the fronts of some old houses, tenantless and hollow; others, inruins, cut into this gloomy valley of the homes of men with notches ofsky. The iron-shod feet all around me on the hard road sound like theheavy rolling of drums, and then on the paved footpath like draggedchains. It is in vain that I walk with head bent—my own footsteps arelost in the rest, and I cannot hear them.
We hurry, as we do every evening. At that spot