Complete Works of Emile Zola (1659 page)

But among all this triumphant feeling of fraternity there was one man, a patriarch, the foreman of the blastfurnace, Morfain, who stood apart, silent and resentful, neither willing nor able to understand. He still lived like some prehistoric Cyclops in his cave among the rocks near the blast-furnace of which he still had charge. He lived there alone now, like a recluse who wished to have nothing to do with present times, having broken off all relations with the rising generation. When his daughter Ma Bleue had left him to share the lot of André Gourier, the Prince Charming of her dreams, he had begun to feel that these new times were getting the better of him. Then another love affair carried off his son Petit-Da, that splendid fellow, that vigorous giant, who had become desperately enamoured with the daughter of Caffiaux, the grocer and liquor dealer. She was Honorine, a little brunette, active and lively. Morfain had at first vehemently refused to consent to their marriage, for he was full of contempt for such a family of poisoners as the Caffiaux, disreputable people, and they equally treated with repugnance and disdain the idea of giving their daughter to a manual laborer. However, Caffiaux was the first to surrender; for he was always far-seeing, and keenly alive to his own interests. He had obtained, after closing his drinking-place, an excellent position in the general stores at La Crêcherie as chief superintendent, and old stories to his discredit were forgotten. From that time he professed his entire devotion to the cause of association, and would not obstinately persist in a refusal which might have been to his own disadvantage. Then Petit-Da resolved to act contrary to his father’s will, and to be married without his consent. A terrible quarrel took place between the two men; and ever after the foreman of the foundry, clinging to his rocks, lived but to work his furnace, an immovable and threatening ghost come out of long-past ages.

Years and years passed, but old Morfain seemed to grow no older. He continued to be the master and conqueror of fire — a giant with red hair, an eagle nose, and eyes of flame shining between cheeks that fire seemed to have dried up. His distorted mouth, which was never opened for speech, looked as if it retained marks of severe burning. Nothing appeared to interest him that was connected with other people, buried as he was in the savage isolation in which he entrenched himself when he found that his son and daughter were going the way of progress like others. Ma Bleue and Achille had had a charming little daughter, Léonie, who was growing in grace and sweetness. Petit-Da and Honorine had a fine boy called Raymond, an intelligent lad, now nearly old enough to be married. But the grandfather would not be softened; he would have nothing to do with these children; he would not even see them. As far as he was concerned they seemed to belong to another world; he did not care for them. On the contrary, now that all his human affections had been crushed, a sort of parental love that he had always felt for his blast-furnace seemed to increase. It was his giant child, a monster ever groaning with perpetual fires, which he took charge of day after day and hour after hour. The least derangement in this furnace, when the tappings lost their brilliancy, distressed him exceedingly. He would spend wakeful nights watching the
tuyères
to see that they worked properly, devoting himself to his furnace as a young man might have done to his love, in fiercest flames which did not seem to affect his seasoned skin. Luc, after having spoken of putting him on the retired list because of his great age, had not the heart to do so, foreseeing the terrible revolt, the inconsolable grief of this hero of painful labor, who was so proud of having his muscles consumed and burned up in his obscure task as the conqueror of fire. But the inevitable hour of his retirement came, for the evolution of progress could not be stayed, though Luc had the compassionate kindness to put off the inevitable.

But Morfain felt himself no longer in security. He knew that the learned labors of Jordan tended to replace the blast-furnace, so ponderous, slow, and barbarous, with its infernal fire so difficult to control, by the light, manageable batteries of electric furnaces. The idea that they would extinguish and demolish the colossus which he had never suffered to stop working for seven or eight years overwhelmed him. He informed himself, and became Uneasy as soon as he knew that Jordan had made his first step forward by burning coal as it came up out of the mine under the boilers of great machines, and then conducting electricity to La Crêcherie by means of cables without any loss whatever. But as the net cost of this improvement was still very high, it was not possible profitably to employ electric power to smelt iron. Morfain rejoiced in the inutility of the victory. For ten more years the unsuccessful experiments of Jordan were very gratifying to him; he was silently ironical, for he felt that fire would be able to defend itself, and would never suffer defeat from this new power, this mysterious lightning which made no flash. He wished for the defeat of the owner of La Crêcherie, for the destruction of his new appliances, which day by day were becoming improved more and more. And at last, on a sudden, the rumor grew worse. It was said that Jordan had at last realized his great idea. He had discovered how to transform the caloric energy contained in coal into electric energy without making it pass through mechanical energy — in other words, he could do it without a steam-engine, that costly and cumbersome intermediary. Thus the problem was solved; the net price of electricity could be lowered one-half; it could be employed to smelt iron ore. The means of producing this power were at once set to work; a battery of electric furnaces had been put up, and Morfain in despair walked round and round his blast-furnace, with a fierce, hard look as if he were going to die in its defence.

Still Luc did not at once give the order to put out the blast-furnace, for he wanted to make conclusive experiments with the electric battery. During nearly six months smelting by fire and electricity proceeded side by side, and it was a most painful time to the old master-founder, for he felt that the new power would end by destroying the giant under his charge which he so dearly loved. He saw it neglected by every one; no one came up to look at it. Curious, happy people crowded round those electric furnaces below, which took up so little space, and did their work, it was said, so well and so promptly. Morfain, full of violent rancor, would not even go down to look at these new inventions, which he treated as playthings fit only for children. Was it possible that the old method, of free, bright fire, which had given men the sovereignty of the earth, could ever be dethroned? They would come back to it — to those gigantic furnaces which had been blazing, and never going out, for ages. And in his solitude with a few men of his gang, as silent as himself, he was satisfied day after day to look down upon the shed under which the electric furnaces were operating, happy even at night when he lighted up the horizon with his brilliant tappings.

But at last a day came when Luc signed the death-warrant of the blast-furnace, having fully ascertained by experiments how much less onerously its work thenceforth could be done. It was settled that it should be allowed to go out, and that it should be demolished after it had been tapped for the last time. When Morfain was told this he said nothing, but received it passively, with a set face, which gave no indication of the tumult in his soul. Others were frightened by this unnatural calm. Ma Bleue went up to see her father, taking with her her grown daughter Léonie, while Petit-Da, with the same loving thought, took up his tall son Raymond. For once, as it had been in old times, the family was gathered together in the cave in the rocks, the gigantic father between his blue-eyed daughter and his giant son, who had come under the progressive influences of a later day; and there was also a lovable, little, beautiful granddaughter and a little grandson of great intelligence, incarnations of the ideas of a new generation, whose aim was human happiness. Their grandfather allowed them to kiss him and to caress him without repulsing them, which he had never done before. Though he had sworn he would never see them, he suffered them this time to cling around him. But he did not return their caresses. He seemed like some hero of the past whose interest in his race was dead. All this happened upon one dark and cold autumn day, about dusk, when a crêpe veil was falling from the heavens and spreading blackness over the earth. Then he rose, and broke his long silence by saying:

“I must go. They are waiting for me to superintend the last tapping.”

It was the last. They all followed him up to the blastfurnace. The men of the gang were there, half hidden in the darkness and awaiting his arrival. It was the usual work. The long bar was driven into the plug of fire-clay, the tap-hole was made larger, and finally the tumultuous outflow of molten metal ran along the trenches and entered the moulds.

Once more from those furrows of fire came an incessant outburst of sparks — blue sparks, bright and delicate, amid golden rockets, like blue corn-flowers among golden spikes of wheat. A blinding light in the dusk illuminated the blast-furnace, the neighboring buildings, the roofs of Beauclair in the distance, and the far horizon. Then all was extinguished, and darkness reigned. It was the end. The blast-furnace was no more.

Morfain, who had looked on without saying one word, stood in the dark like one of the great rocks of the vicinity that night had just rendered invisible.

“Father,” said Ma Bleue, softly, “now that there is no more work for you up here, won’t you come down to us? Your room has been ready this long while.”

‘Petit Da then said in his turn:

“Father, this means that you want rest, and your room is ready for you in our house. You must divide yourself, and give half to each of your children.”

But the old master-founder made no answer. A great sigh came from him, and ended in a groan. Then he said:

“All right I will come down and see for myself.... But go away now.”

For two weeks more Morfain could not be persuaded to leave the blast-furnace. He watched it slowly cooling, as if he were watching a dying man. He stayed by it late at night. He examined it every evening to make sure whether it were still living or dead. And when he felt a little warmth he obstinately hoped and watched over it like one who will not consign the remains of a friend to nothingness. But then came the men who were to pull down the furnace, and one morning Morfain was seen to quit his cave among the rocks and go down to La Crêcherie straight towards the shed which let in sunlight through its windows, where the battery of electric furnaces was in operation. He walked with the firm step of an old man who knows himself to be defeated but yet does not give in.

It happened that Jordan and Luc were both there, and Petit-Da, who was busy superintending the working of the apparatus, assisted by his son Raymond, who was already a good electrician. The operation had still to be regulated day by day, and that was why Jordan would not quit the shed, since he desired to render perfect a method that had cost him many long years of research and experiment.

“Ah! my old Morfain,” cried he, joyfully. “So here you are, and at last you are reasonable!”

But with an unmoved face the old hero only answered: “Yes, Monsieur Jordan, I wished to see your machine.” Luc, rather uneasy, looked at him earnestly, for he had set a watch over him, owing to his having heard that he had been seen leaning over the mouth of the blast-furnace, still full of live coals, with the look of a man who was thinking of jumping into the frightful hell below him.

One of his gang had saved him from this death — from giving his body as a last token of affection to this monster. It seemed as if he wanted to perish by fire — the element he had loved and served faithfully for fifty years.

“That’s right, my good Morfain, to want to see all you can at your age,” said Luc, without taking his eyes off him. “Look at these pretty playthings.”

The battery of ten furnaces extended in a line — ten cubes of red bricks, two metres in height and one metre and a half in width. And all that could be seen above them was the armature of the powerful electrodes and thick cylinders of carbon to which were attached the cables that conducted electricity. The operation was very simple. An endless screw which was controlled by a button did duty for the ten furnaces, and conveyed the ore and emptied it into each of them. Another button established a current, the arc formed by which, of the extraordinary temperature of two thousand degrees, was capable of melting two hundred kilogrammes of metal in five minutes. All that was necessary was to turn a third button, when the door of platinum closing each furnace would open, and then a sort of rolling platform covered with fine sand began to start with ten pigs, each two hundred kilogrammes in weight, which were carried off to cool in the open air.

“
Well, my good Morfain,” said Jordan, with the delight of a happy child,
“
what have you got to say about that?”

Then he explained the rendering. Those “playthings” yonder smelted two hundred kilogrammes every five minutes, say two hundred and forty tons a day, when run for but ten hours.

This was a prodigious rendering, especially when the fact was taken into consideration that the old blast-furnace, burning day and night, never yielded one-third of such a product. For this reason the electric furnaces were rarely operated more than three or four hours; and then there was the advantage that they could be extinguished and relighted, according to requirements, in order to obtain from them the desired quantity of raw material. And how easy it all was, and how clean and simple! There was scarcely any dust, since the electrodes themselves furnished the carbon necessary for the carburization of the ore. Some gas, indeed, escaped, but there was so little slag that it was easily got rid of by daily cleaning. There was no longer any barbarous colossus, whose digestion occasioned so much disquietude; no longer any of those members with which it had been necessary to surround it, such as purifiers, heaters, and blast-engine; and no longer any continual current of water. The belly was no longer threatened with clogging or cooling. When a
tuyère
was operating badly, there was no longer any talk of demolishing everything in order to empty the monster while in full blast. A small army, consisting of feeders watching at the mouth and founders ramming the clay plug and roasting themselves in the flames of the tappings, was no longer on the alert to divide itself into day and night shifts. The battery of ten electric furnaces, fifteen metres in length by five in width, with its rolling platform, stood at ease in the great glazed shed that housed it. Three children would have sufficed to set it in operation — one at the button of the endless screw, another at the button of the electrodes, and a third at the button of the rolling platform.