Let us go and lunch with
him, and finish the whole business."
Before starting he had a few orders to give, so Mathieu went down to wait
for him in the factory yard. And there, during the ten minutes which he
spent walking about dreamily, all the distant past arose before his eyes.
He could see himself a mere clerk, crossing that courtyard every morning
on his arrival from Janville, with thirty sous for his lunch in his
pocket. The spot had remained much the same; there was the central
building, with its big clock, the workshops and the sheds, quite a little
town of gray structures, surmounted by two lofty chimneys, which were
ever smoking. True, his son had enlarged this city of toil; the stretch
of ground bordered by the Rue de la Federation and the Boulevard de
Grenelle had been utilized for the erection of other buildings. And
facing the quay there still stood the large brick house with dressings of
white stone, of which Constance had been so proud, and where, with the
mien of some queen of industry, she had received her friends in her
little salon hung with yellow silk. Eight hundred men now worked in the
place; the ground quivered with the ceaseless trepidation of machinery;
the establishment had grown to be the most important of its kind in
Paris, the one whence came the finest agricultural appliances, the most
powerful mechanical workers of the soil.
Pages:
706
707
708
709
710
711
712
713
714
715
716
717
718
719
720
721
722
723
724
725
726
727
728
729
730