AT THE GLASS FACTORY
I went to the door and looked out. The farm buildings were only fifty yards away from the factory.
Everything had been going on like this for two or three hundred years. It had continued because the
family and the workmen believed in it. The small unchanging glass factory was a part of their bit of
country, like the farmhouse and the fields and the old apple-trees and the forest. To destroy it
would be like pulling out the roots of some living thing from the ground.
I looked back at Jacques sitting at the table.
"How long can a factory like this go on against the big new places with modern machines?"
"We know that it cannot go on much longer," said Jacques. "It's a rich man's plaything, but now it
makes no money; it costs a lot. Perhaps you don't mind losing money, but you would not be losing so
much if more care had been taken in the past. A business like this needs a good head, a strong
centre. I never worked for your father. But Monsieur Duval who followed him was another like him. If
he had lived he would have made his home here in this house. He understood the workmen, and he would
have changed with the times."
"Tell me, it is Monsieur Paul's fault or mine?"
'Monsieur Paul is not at ease with the workmen. Everyone likes you, but you are not interested in
the factory. You do not care what happens to it. That was what we believed until you told us the
news this afternoon. We all believed that you were going to Paris just to amuse yourself but, as
Monsieur Paul said, you have done what we all thought to be impossible."
I looked out of the open door and saw Julie walking back to her little house near the entrance. Some
of the workmen called to her, and she shouted back to them.
"You weren't angry, Monsieur le Comte, at what I said?"
"No." I answered. "Thank you for saying it."
I went out and crossed the short distance to the main building. All round me there were men working
with the glass. It was very hot. Then I went into a smaller building where men were making little
bottles and pots of every shape and colour.
"Are you amusing yourself, Monsieur Jean?"
I looked up from the galss which I held in my hands and I saw Julie's broad smiling face.
"You leave all the hard work to Monsieur Paul," she said. "It has always been like that. Will you
come and see Andre now?"
She led the way to her house. There was a man lying there on a wooden bed near the fire.
"Here is Monsieur le Comte come to see you. Sit up and show that you are at least alive."
I saw that he was covered with dressings from his neck down to his arm. He smiled, but he looked
very weak and ill.
"How long will it be before you are well?" I asked.
"They won't tell me," he said. "I'm afraid that it may be a long time before I am able to work
again."
"That's all right," said Julie. "Monsieur Jean will see that you get paid. No one is going to be
out of work. We can all feel safe again. Those people in Paris won't stop us."
I looked round the room. The house was badly in need of repair.
She noticed me looking at the wet walls and the holes in the roof. "I do what I can," she said, "
but I know that you are short of money like the rest of us."
She brought me a cup of coffee. She did not give any to Andre because there was not enough. She had
not got the money to buy much coffee or sugar.
"Thank you, Julie," I said. She went with me to the door.
"He'll never work again." she said. "but it's no use telling him. It would only add to his troubles.
"
I got into my car and drove back to the chateau. I went up to my room and found the packet of
letters which I remembered seeing in Jean's bag.
Among them there was one with the name and addres of Carvalet on the back. I opened it and read it.
It was as I had feared: they were unable to renew the contract at the same prices as in the past.
What would Julie and all those men at the factory feel when they heard the truth? The works would be
silent, the houses unrepaired. They would watch Paul and me drive past to the chateau and say, "It
doesn't matter to them, but what about us?"