Upon the troops who had been called on to fire upon the
strikers, he called down the anger of God, predicting an hour of justice
in which fire would descend from heaven to exterminate the bourgeoisie.
He was finally removed by the Bishop as too compromising. Germinal.
RASSENEUR kept a tavern with the sign _A l'Avantage_ between the
settlement of the Deux-Cent-Quarante and the Voreux pit. He was formerly
a good workman, but as he was an excellent speaker, and placed himself
at the head of every strike, he was dismissed by the Mining Company.
His wife already held a licence, and when he was thrown out of work he
became an innkeeper himself. It was in his house that Etienne Lantier
found lodgings when he first came to Montsou, and Souvarine also lodged
there. Rasseneur's readiness of speech gave him great influence with the
miners, but a rivalry arose between him and Lantier, whose new theories
caught the popular ear. This jealousy caused him to take a side against
the strike, solely because it had been proposed by Lantier, and this
attitude made him very unpopular. But after the failure of the strike,
which he had all along predicted, the inconstancy of the crowd turned in
his favour and he soon regained his old popularity.
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