heart, after the fatal volley fired by the soldiers. Germinal.

MAHEU (VINCENT). See Bonnemort.

MAHEU (ZACHARIE), eldest child of Toussaint Maheu. He worked in
the Voreux pit along with his father, but was lazy and seized any
opportunity of pleasure. He was married to Philomene Levaque, by whom he
already had two children. The strike interested him very little, and
he spent most of his time playing _crosse_ with Mouquet. But when his
sister Catherine was entombed in the pit he was one of the first to come
forward to the rescue, and he worked day and night with frantic energy.
The ninth day, in his haste, he was imprudent enough to open his lamp,
and a sudden explosion of gas reduced him to a calcined, unrecognizable
mass. Germinal.

MAHEUDE (LA), wife of Toussaint Maheu. She was at first against the
miners' strike, but moved by the hardship of her lot and the poverty in
which she was forced to bring up her family, she ultimately urged her
husband to take an active part. Even after she had seen him killed by
the bullets of the soldiers, she was furious with those who talked of
submitting. But further tragedies broke her spirit; her son Zacharie was
killed in an attempt to rescue his sister, entombed at the bottom of the
Voreux pit. Out of charity the company allowed the afflicted woman to
go underground again, though she was past the usual age, and found
employment for her in the manipulation of a small ventilator. Germinal.

MAHOUDEAU, a sculptor. The son of a stonemason at Plassans, he attained
great success at the local art competitions, and came to Paris as the
_laureat_ of his town, with an allowance of eight hundred francs per
annum for four years. In the capital, however, he found his level,
failing in his competitions at the School of Arts, and merely spending
his allowance to no purpose; so that in order to live he was obliged at
the end of his term to enter the employment of a manufacturer of church
statues. Later, however, he met with Claude Lantier and other companions
from Plassans, and under their influence his ambitions revived. He
installed himself in a studio in Rue du Cherche-Midi, and there set
about the production of a colossal work entitled _La Vendangeuse_ (the
Vintage Girl), for which Madame Mathilde Jabouille served as model. For
a time Chaine, who also came from Plassans, lived with Mahoudeau, but
they quarrelled over Mathilde, and ultimately separated. After this
Mahoudeau lived alone, in c