In front of the leaping flames, the old man continued lower voice, ruminated over memories. Ah ! Of course, it wasn't just yesterday that he and his family were digging into the seam ! The family had been working for the Montsou Mining Company since it was founded ; and that dated back a long time, one hundred and six years ago already. His grandfather, Guillaume Maheu, a fifteen-year-old kid then, had found soft coal at Réquillart, the Company's first pit, a now abandoned old pit, there, near the Fauvelle sugar factory. The whole country knew it, as evidenced by the fact that the seam that was discovered was named the Guillaume seam, after his grandfather. He had not known him, he was said to be a big one, very strong, who died of old age at sixty. Then, his father, Nicolas Maheu known as le Rouge, barely forty years old, had stayed in Le Voreux, which was being excavated at the time : a rock avalanche, a complete flattening, his blood and bones swallowed by the rocks.