Renounced by his family, without money, expelled from the French workshops as a foreigner who was regarded as a spy, he was dying of starvation when the Montsou Company had at last taken him on at a moment of pressure.
Renié par sa famille, sans argent, mis comme étranger a l'index des ateliers français qui voyaient en lui un espion, il mourait de faim, lorsque la Compagnie de Montsou l'avait enfin embauché, dans une heure de presse.