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L'Assommoir

by Émile Zola · English · Gutenberg #8558 · 517,516 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: L'Assommoir

Author: Émile Zola


        
Release date: July 1, 2005 [eBook #8558]
                Most recently updated: July 5, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8558

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK L'ASSOMMOIR ***




L'ASSOMMOIR

By Émile Zola




CHAPTER I
GERVAISE


Gervaise had waited and watched for Lantier until two in the morning.
Then chilled and shivering, she turned from the window and threw
herself across the bed, where she fell into a feverish doze with her
cheeks wet with tears. For the last week when they came out of the
Veau a Deux Tetes, where they ate, he had sent her off to bed with the
children and had not appeared until late into the night and always
with a story that he had been looking for work.

This very night, while she was watching for his return, she fancied
she saw him enter the ballroom of the Grand-Balcon, whose ten windows
blazing with lights illuminated, as with a sheet of fire, the black
lines of the outer boulevards. She caught a glimpse of Adele, a pretty
brunette who dined at their restaurant and who was walking a few steps
behind him, with her hands swinging as if she had just dropped his
arm, rather than pass before the bright light of the globes over the
door in his company.

When Gervaise awoke about five o'clock, stiff and sore, she burst into
wild sobs, for Lantier had not come in. For the first time he had
slept out. She sat on the edge of the bed, half shrouded in the canopy
of faded chintz that hung from the arrow fastened to the ceiling by a
string. Slowly, with her eyes suffused with tears, she looked around
this miserable _chambre garnie_, whose furniture consisted of a
chestnut bureau of which one drawer was absent, three straw chairs
and a greasy table on which was a broken-handled pitcher.

Another bedstead--an iron one--had been brought in for the children.
This stood in front of the bureau and filled up two thirds of the
room.

A trunk belonging to Gervaise and Lantier stood in the corner wide
open, showing its empty sides, while at the bottom a man's old hat lay
among soiled shirts and hose. Along the walls and on the backs of the
chairs hung a ragged shawl, a pair of muddy pantaloons and a dress or
two--all too bad for the old-clothes man to buy. In the middle of the
mantel between two mismated tin candlesticks was a bundle of pawn
tickets from the Mont-de-Piete. These tickets were of a delicate shade
of rose.

The room was the best in the hotel--the first floor looking out on the
boulevard.

Meanwhile side by side on the same pillow the two children lay calmly
sleeping. Claude, who was eight years old, was breathing calmly and
regularly with his little hands outside of the coverings, while
Etienne, only four, smiled with one arm under his brother's neck.

When their mother's eyes fell on them she had a new paroxysm of sobs
and pressed her handkerchief to her mouth to stifle them. Then with
bare feet, not stopping to put on her slippers which had fallen off,
she ran to the window out of which she leaned as she had done half the
night and inspected the sidewalks as far as she could see.

The hotel was on the Boulevard de la Chapelle, at the left of the
Barriere Poissonniers. It was a two-story building, painted a deep red
up to the first floor, and had disjointed weather-stained blinds.

Above a lantern with glass sides was a sign between the two windows:

HOTEL BONCŒUR
KEPT BY
MARSOULLIER

in large yellow letters, partially obliterated by the dampness.
Gervaise, who was prevented by the lantern from seeing as she desired,
leaned out still farther, with her handkerchief on her lips. She
looked to the right toward the Boulevard de Rochechouart, where
groups of butchers stood with their bloody frocks before their
establishments, and the fresh breeze brought in whiffs, a strong
animal smell--the smell of slaughtered cattle.

She looked to the left, following the ribbonlike avenue, past the
Hospital de Lariboisière, then building. Slowly, from one end to the
other of the horizon, did she follow the wall, from behind which in
the nightime she had heard strange groans and cries, as if some fell
murder were being perpetrated. She looked at it with horror, as if in
some dark corner--dark with dampness and filth--she should distinguish
Lantier--Lantier lying dead with his throat cut.

When she gazed beyond this gray and interminable wall she saw a great
light, a golden mist waving and shimmering with the dawn of a new
Parisian day. But it was to the Barriere Poissonniers that her eyes
persistently returned, watching dully the uninterrupted flow of men
and cattle, wagons and sheep, which came down from Montmartre and
from La Chapelle. There were scattered flocks dashed like waves on
the sidewalk by some sudden detention and an endless succession of
laborers going to their work with their tools over their shoulders
and their loaves of bread under their arms.

Suddenly Gervaise thought she distinguished Lantier amid this crowd,
and she leaned eagerly forward at the risk of falling from the window.
With a fresh pang of disappointment she pressed her handkerchief to
her lips to restrain her sobs.

A fresh, youthful voice caused her to turn around.

"Lantier has not come in then?"

"No, Monsieur Coupeau," she answered, trying to smile.

The speaker was a tinsmith who occupied a tiny room at the top of the
house. His bag of tools was over his shoulder; he had seen the key in
the door and entered with the familiarity of a friend.

"You know," he continued, "that I am working nowadays at the hospital.
What a May this is! The air positively stings one this morning."

As he spoke he looked closely at Gervaise; he saw her eyes were red
with tears and then, glancing at the bed, discovered that it had not
been disturbed. He shook his head and, going toward the couch where
the children lay with their rosy cherub faces, he said in a lower
voice:

"You think your husband ought to have been with you, madame. But don't
be troubled; he is busy with politics. He went on like a mad man the
other day when they were voting for Eugène Sue. Perhaps he passed the
night with his friends abusing that reprobate Bonaparte."

"No, no," she murmured with an effort. "You think nothing of that kind.
I know where Lantier is only too well. We have our sorrows like the
rest of the world!"

Coupeau gave a knowing wink and departed, having offered to bring her
some milk if she did not care to go out; she was a good woman, he told
her and might count on him any time when she was in trouble.

As soon as Gervaise was alone she returned to the window.

From the Barriere the lowing of the cattle and the bleating of the
sheep still came on the keen, fresh morning air. Among the crowd she
recognized the locksmiths by their blue frocks, the masons by their
white overalls, the painters by their coats, from under which hung
their blouses. This crowd was cheerless. All of neutral tints--grays
and blues predominating, with never a dash of color. Occasionally a
workman stopped and lighted his pipe, while his companions passed on.
There was no laughing, no talking, but they strode on steadily with
cadaverous faces toward that Paris which quickly swallowed them up.

At the two corners of La Rue des Poissonniers were two wineshops,
where the shutters had just been taken down. Here some of the workmen
lingered, crowding into the shop, spitting, coughing and drinking
glasses of brandy and water. Gervaise was watching the place on the
left of the street, where she thought she had seen Lantier go in, when
a stout woman, bareheaded and wearing a large apron, called to her
from the pavement,

"You are up early, Madame Lantier!"

Gervaise leaned out.

"Ah, is it you, Madame Boche! Yes, I am up early, for I have much to
do today."

"Is that so? Well, things don't get done by themselves, that's sure!"

And a conversation ensued between the window and the sidewalk. Mme
Boche was the concierge of the house wherein the restaurant Veau a
Deux Tetes occupied the _rez-de-chaussee_.

Many times Gervaise had waited for Lantier in the room of this woman
rather than face the men who were eating. The concierge said she had
just been round the corner to arouse a lazy fellow who had promised to
do some work and then went on to speak of one of her lodgers who had
come in the night before with some woman and had made such a noise
that every one was disturbed until after three o'clock.

As she gabbled, however, she examined Gervaise with considerable
curiosity and seemed, in fact, to have come out under the window for
that express purpose.

"Is Monsieur Lantier still asleep?" she asked suddenly.

"Yes, he is asleep," answered Gervaise with flushing cheeks.

Madame saw the tears come to her eyes and, satisfied with her
discovery, was turning away when she suddenly stopped and called out:

"You are going to the lavatory this morning, are you not? All right
then, I have some things to wash, and I will keep a place for you next
to me, and we can have a little talk!"

Then as if moved by sudden compassion, she added:

"Poor child, don't stay at that window any longer. You are purple with
cold and will surely make yourself sick!"

But Gervaise did not move. She remained in the same spot for two
mortal hours, until the clock struck eight. The shops were now
all open. The procession in blouses had long ceased, and only an
occasional one hurried along. At the wineshops, however, there was
the same crowd of men drinking, spitting and coughing. The workmen in
the street had given place to the workwomen. Milliners' apprentices,
florists, burnishers, who with thin shawls drawn closely around them
came in bands of three or four, talking eagerly, with gay laughs
and quick glances. Occasionally one solitary figure was seen, a
pale-faced, serious woman, who walked rapidly, neither looking to
the right nor to the left.

Then came the clerks, blowing on their fingers to warm them, eating a
roll as they walked; young men, lean and tall, with clothing they had
outgrown and with eyes heavy with sleep; old men, who moved along with
measured steps, occasionally pulling out their watches, but able, from
many years' practice, to time their movements almost to a second.

The boulevards at last were comparatively quiet. The inhabitants were
sunning themselves. Women with untidy hair and soiled petticoats were
nursing their babies in the open air, and an occasional dirty-faced
brat fell into the gutter or rolled over with shrieks of pain or joy.

Gervaise felt faint and ill; all hope was gone. It seemed to her that
all was over and that Lantier would come no more. She looked from the
dingy slaughterhouses, black with their dirt and loathsome odor, on to
the new and staring hospital and into the rooms consecrated to disease
and death. As yet the windows were not in, and there was nothing to
impede her view of the large, empty wards. The sun shone directly in
her face and blinded her.

She was sitting on a chair with her arms dropping drearily at her side
but not weeping, when Lantier quietly opened the door and walked in.

"You have come!" she cried, ready to throw herself on his neck.

"Yes, I have come," he answered, "and what of it? Don't begin any
of your nonsense now!" And he pushed her aside. Then with an angry
gesture he tossed his felt hat on the bureau.

He was a small, dark fellow, handsome and well made, with a delicate
mustache which he twisted in his fingers mechanically as he spoke.
He wore an old coat, buttoned tightly at the waist, and spoke with
a strongly marked Provencal accent.

Gervaise had dropped upon her chair again and uttered disjointed
phrases of lamentation.

"I have not closed my eyes--I thought you were killed! Where have you
been all night? I feel as if I were going mad! Tell me, Auguste, where
have you been?"

"Oh, I had business," he answered with an indifferent shrug of his
shoulders. "At eight o'clock I had an engagement with that friend,
you know, who is thinking of starting a manufactory of hats. I was
detained, and I preferred stopping there. But you know I don't like
to be watched and catechized. Just let me alone, will you?"

His wife began to sob. Their voices and Lantier's noisy movements as
he pushed the chairs about woke the children. They started up, half
naked with tumbled hair, and hearing their mother cry, they followed
her example, rending the air with their shrieks.

"Well, this is lovely music!" cried Lantier furiously. "I warn you,
if you don't all stop, that out of this door I go, and you won't see
me again in a hurry! Will you hold your tongue? Good-by then; I'll
go back where I came from."

He snatched up his hat, but Gervaise rushed toward him, crying:

"No! No!"

And she soothed the children and stifled their cries with kisses and
laid them tenderly back in their bed, and they were soon happy and
merrily playing together. Meanwhile the father, not even taking off
his boots, threw himself on the bed with a weary air. His face was
white from exhaustion and a sleepless night; he did not close his
eyes but looked around the room.

"A nice-looking place, this!" he muttered.

Then examining Gervaise, he said half aloud and half to himself:

"So! You have given up washing yourself, it seems!"

Gervaise was only twenty-two. She was tall and slender with delicate
features, already worn by hardships and anxieties. With her hair
uncombed and shoes down at the heel, shivering in her white sack, on
which was much dust and many stains from the furniture and wall where
it had hung, she looked at least ten years older from the hours of
suspense and tears she had passed.

Lantier's word startled her from her resignation and timidity.

"Are you not ashamed?" she said with considerable animation. "You know
very well that I do all I can. It is not my fault that we came here.
I should like to see you with two children in a place where you can't
get a drop of hot water. We ought as soon as we reached Paris to have
settled ourselves at once in a home; that was what you promised."

"Pshaw," he muttered; "You had as much good as I had out of our
savings. You ate the fatted calf with me--and it is not worth while
to make a row about it now!"

She did not heed his word but continued:

"There is no need of giving up either. I saw Madame Fauconnier, the
laundress in La Rue Neuve. She will take me Monday. If you go in with
your friend we shall be afloat again in six months. We must find some
kind of a hole where we can live cheaply while we work. That is the
thing to do now. Work! Work!"

Lantier turned his face to the wall with a shrug of disgust which
enraged his wife, who resumed:

"Yes, I know very well that you don't like to work. You would like to
wear fine clothes and walk about the streets all day. You don't like
my looks since you took all my dresses to the pawnbrokers. No, no,
Auguste, I did not intend to speak to you about it, but I know very
well where you spent the night. I saw you go into the Grand-Balcon
with that streetwalker Adele. You have made a charming choice. She
wears fine clothes and is clean. Yes, and she has reason to be,
certainly; there is not a man in that restaurant who does not know
her far better than an honest girl should be known!"

Lantier leaped from the bed. His eyes were as black as night and his
face deadly pale.

"Yes," repeated his wife, "I mean what I say. Madame Boche will not
keep her or her sister in the house any longer, because there are
always a crowd of men hanging on the staircase."

Lantier lifted both fists, and then conquering a violent desire to
beat her, he seized her in his arms, shook her violently and threw her
on the bed where the children were. They at once began to cry again
while he stood for a moment, and then, with the air of a man who
finally takes a resolution in regard to which he has hesitated, he
said:

"You do not know what you have done, Gervaise. You are wrong--as you
will soon discover."

For a moment the voices of the children filled the room. Their mother,
lying on their narrow couch, held them both in her arms and said over
and over again in a monotonous voice:

"If you were not here, my poor darlings! If you were not here! If you
were not here!"

Lantier was lying flat on his back with his eyes fixed on the ceiling.
He was not listening; his attention was concentrated on some fixed
idea. He remained in this way for an hour and more, not sleeping, in
spite of his evident and intense fatigue. When he turned and, leaning
on his elbow, looked about the room again, he found that Gervaise had
arranged the chamber and made the children's bed. They were washed
and dressed. He watched her as she swept the room and dusted the
furniture.

The room was very dreary still, however, with its smoke-stained
ceiling and paper discolored by dampness and three chairs and
dilapidated bureau, whose greasy surface no dusting could clean.
Then while she washed herself and arranged her hair before the small
mirror, he seemed to examine her arms and shoulders, as if instituting
a comparison between herself and someone else. And he smiled a
disdainful little smile.

Gervaise was slightly, very slightly, lame, but her lameness was
perceptible, only on such days as she was very tired. This morning,
so weary was she from the watches of the night, that she could hardly
walk without support.

A profound silence reigned in the room; they did not speak to each
other. He seemed to be waiting for something. She, adopting an
unconcerned air, seemed to be in haste.

She made up a bundle of soiled linen that had been thrown into a
corner behind the trunk, and then he spoke:

"What are you doing? Are you going out?"

At first she did not reply. Then when he angrily repeated the question
she answered:

"Certainly I am. I am going to wash all these things. The children
cannot live in dirt."

He threw two or three handkerchiefs toward her, and after another long
silence he said:

"Have you any money?"

She quickly rose to her feet and turned toward him; in her hand she
held some of the soiled clothes.

"Money! Where should I get money unless I had stolen it? You know very
well that day before yesterday you got three francs on my black skirt.
We have breakfasted twice on that, and money goes fast. No, I have no
money. I have four sous for the lavatory. I cannot make money like
other women we know."

He did not reply to this allusion but rose from the bed and passed in
review the ragged garments hung around the room. He ended by taking
down the pantaloons and the shawl and, opening the bureau, took out a
sack and two chemises. All these he made into a bundle, which he threw
at Gervaise.

"Take them," he said, "and make haste back from the pawnbroker's."

"Would you not like me to take the children?" she asked. "Heavens! If
pawnbrokers would only make loans on children, what a good thing it
would be!"

She went to the Mont-de-Piete, and when she returned a half-hour later
she laid a silver five-franc piece on the mantelshelf and placed the
ticket with the others between the two candlesticks.

"This is what they gave me," she said coldly. "I wanted six francs,
but they would not give them. They always keep on the safe side there,
and yet there is always a crowd."

Lantier did not at once take up the money. He had sent her to the
Mont-de-Piete that he might not leave her without food or money, but
when he caught sight of part of a ham wrapped in paper on the table
with half a loaf of bread he slipped the silver piece into his vest
pocket.

"I did not dare go to the milk woman," explained Gervaise, "because
we owe her for eight days. But I shall be back early. You can get some
bread and some chops and have them ready. Don't forget the wine too."

He made no reply. Peace seemed to be made, but when Gervaise went to
the trunk to take out some of Lantier's clothing he called out:

"No--let that alone."

"What do you mean?" she said, turning round in surprise. "You can't
wear these things again until they are washed! Why shall I not take
them?"

And she looked at him with some anxiety. He angrily tore the things
from her hands and threw them back into the trunk.

"Confound you!" he muttered. "Will you never learn to obey? When I say
a thing I mean it--"

"But why?" she repeated, turning very pale and seized with a terrible
suspicion. "You do not need these shirts; you are not going away. Why
should I not take them?"

He hesitated a moment, uneasy under the earnest gaze she fixed upon
him. "Why? Why? Because," he said, "I am sick of hearing you say that
you wash and mend for me. Attend to your own affairs, and I will
attend to mine."

She entreated him, defended herself from the charge of ever having
complained, but he shut the trunk with a loud bang and then sat down
upon it, repeating that he was master at least of his own clothing.
Then to escape from her eyes, he threw himself again on the bed,
saying he was sleepy and that she made his head ache, and finally
slept or pretended to do so.

Gervaise hesitated; she was tempted to give up her plan of going to
the lavatory and thought she would sit down to her sewing. But at last
she was reassured by Lantier's regular breathing; she took her soap
and her ball of bluing and, going to the children, who were playing
on the floor with some old corks, she said in a low voice:

"Be very good and keep quiet. Papa is sleeping."

When she left the room there was not a sound except the stifled
laughter of the little ones. It was then after ten, and the sun was
shining brightly in at the window.

Gervaise, on reaching the boulevard, turned to the left and followed
the Rue de la Goutte-d'Or. As she passed Mme Fauconnier's shop she
nodded to the woman. The lavatory, whither she went, was in the middle
of this street, just where it begins to ascend. Over a large low
building towered three enormous reservoirs for water, huge cylinders
of zinc strongly made, and in the rear was the drying room, an
apartment with a very high ceiling and surrounded by blinds through
which the air passed. On the right of the reservoirs a steam engine
let off regular puffs of white smoke. Gervaise, habituated apparently
to puddles, did not lift her skirts but threaded her way through the
part of _eau de Javelle_ which encumbered the doorway. She knew
the mistress of the establishment, a delicate woman who sat in a
cabinet with glass doors, surrounded by soap and bluing and packages
of bicarbonate of soda.

As Gervaise passed the desk she asked for her brush and beater, which
she had left to be taken care of after her last wash. Then having
taken her number, she went in. It was an immense shed, as it were,
with a low ceiling--the beams and rafters unconcealed--and lighted by
large windows, through which the daylight streamed. A light gray mist
or steam pervaded the room, which was filled with a smell of soapsuds
and _eau de Javelle_ combined. Along the central aisle were tubs
on either side, and two rows of women with their arms bare to the
shoulders and their skirts tucked up stood showing their colored
stockings and stout laced shoes.

They rubbed and pounded furiously, straightening themselves
occasionally to utter a sentence and then applying themselves again
to their task, with the steam and perspiration pouring down their red
faces. There was a constant rush of water from the faucets, a great
splashing as the clothes were rinsed and pounding and banging of the
beaters, while amid all this noise the steam engine in the corner kept
up its regular puffing.

Gervaise went slowly up the aisle, looking to the right and the left.
She carried her bundle under her arm and limped more than usual, as
she was pushed and jarred by the energy of the women about her.

"Here! This way, my dear," cried Mme Boche, and when the young woman
had joined her at the very end where she stood, the concierge, without
stopping her furious rubbing, began to talk in a steady fashion.

"Yes, this is your place. I have kept it for you. I have not much to
do. Boche is never hard on his linen, and you, too, do not seem to
have much. Your package is quite small. We shall finish by noon, and
then we can get something to eat. I used to give my clothes to a woman
in La Rue Pelat, but bless my heart, she washed and pounded them all
away, and I made up my mind to wash myself. It is clear gain, you see,
and costs only the soap."

Gervaise opened her bundle and sorted the clothes, laying aside all
the colored pieces, and when Mme Boche advised her to try a little
soda she shook her head.

"No, no!" she said. "I know all about it!"

"You know?" answered Boche curiously. "You have washed then in your
own place before you came here?"

Gervaise, with her sleeves rolled up, showing her pretty, fair arms,
was soaping a child's shirt. She rubbed it and turned it, soaped and
rubbed it again. Before she answered she took up her beater and began
to use it, accenting each phrase or rather punctuating them with her
regular blows.

"Yes, yes, washed--I should think I had! Ever since I was ten years
old. We went to the riverside, where I came from. It was much nicer
than here. I wish you could see it--a pretty corner under the trees
by the running water. Do you know Plassans? Near Marseilles?"

"You are a strong one, anyhow!" cried Mme Boche, astonished at the
rapidity and strength of the woman. "Your arms are slender, but they
are like iron."

The conversation continued until all the linen was well beaten and
yet whole! Gervaise then took each piece separately, rinsed it, then
rubbed it with soap and brushed it. That is to say, she held the cloth
firmly with one hand and with the other moved the short brush from
her, pushing along a dirty foam which fell off into the water below.

As she brushed they talked.

"No, we are not married," said Gervaise. "I do not intend to lie about
it. Lantier is not so nice that a woman need be very anxious to be
his wife. If it were not for the children! I was fourteen and he was
eighteen when the first one was born. The other child did not come for
four years. I was not happy at home. Papa Macquart, for the merest
trifle, would beat me. I might have married, I suppose."

She dried her hands, which were red under the white soapsuds.

"The water is very hard in Paris," she said.

Mme Boche had finished her work long before, but she continued to
dabble in the water merely as an excuse to hear this story, which for
two weeks had excited her curiosity. Her mouth was open, and her eyes
were shining with satisfaction at having guessed so well.

"Oh yes, just as I knew," she said to herself, "but the little woman
talks too much! I was sure, though, there had been a quarrel."

Then aloud:

"He is not good to you then?"

"He was very good to me once," answered Gervaise, "but since we came
to Paris he has changed. His mother died last year and left him about
seventeen hundred francs. He wished to come to Paris, and as Father
Macquart was in the habit of hitting me in the face without any
warning, I said I would come, too, which we did, with the two
children. I meant to be a fine laundress, and he was to continue with
his trade as a hatter. We might have been very happy. But, you see,
Lantier is extravagant; he likes expensive things and thinks of his
amusement before anything else. He is not good for much, anyhow!

"We arrived at the Hotel Montmartre. We had dinners and carriages,
suppers and theaters, a watch for him, a silk dress for me--for he is
not selfish when he has money. You can easily imagine, therefore, at
the end of two months we were cleaned out. Then it was that we came
to Hotel Boncœur and that this life began." She checked herself with
a strange choking in the throat. Tears gathered in her eyes. She
finished brushing her linen.

"I must get my scalding water," she murmured.

But Mme Boche, much annoyed at this sudden interruption to the
long-desired confidence, called the boy.

"Charles," she said, "it would be very good of you if you would bring
a pail of hot water to Madame Lantier, as she is in a great hurry."
The boy brought a bucketful, and Gervaise paid him a sou. It was a sou
for each bucket. She turned the hot water into her tub and soaked her
linen once more and rubbed it with her hands while the steam hovered
round her blonde head like a cloud.

"Here, take some of this," said the concierge as she emptied into the
water that Gervaise was using the remains of a package of bicarbonate
of soda. She offered her also some _eau de Javelle_, but the
young woman refused. It was only good, she said, for grease spots
and wine stains.

"I thought him somewhat dissipated," said Mme Boche, referring to
Lantier without naming him.

Gervaise, leaning over her tub and her arms up to the elbows in the
soapsuds, nodded in acquiescence.

"Yes," continued the concierge, "I have seen many little things."
But she started back as Gervaise turned round with a pale face and
quivering lips.

"Oh, I know nothing," she continued. "He likes to laugh--that is
all--and those two girls who are with us, you know, Adele and
Virginie, like to laugh too, so they have their little jokes together,
but that is all there is of it, I am sure."

The young woman, with the perspiration standing on her brow and
her arms still dripping, looked her full in the face with earnest,
inquiring eyes.

Then the concierge became excited and struck her breast, exclaiming:

"I tell you I know nothing whatever, nothing more than I tell you!"

Then she added in a gentle voice, "But he has honest eyes, my dear.
He will marry you, child; I promise that he will marry you!"

Gervaise dried her forehead with her damp hand and shook her head.
The two women were silent for a moment; around them, too, it was very
quiet. The clock struck eleven. Many of the women were seated swinging
their feet, drinking their wine and eating their sausages, sandwiched
between slices of bread. An occasional economical housewife hurried
in with a small bundle under her arm, and a few sounds of the pounder
were still heard at intervals; sentences were smothered in the full
mouths, or a laugh was uttered, ending in a gurgling sound as the wine
was swallowed, while the great machine puffed steadily on. Not one
of the women, however, heard it; it was like the very respiration of
the lavatory--the eager breath that drove up among the rafters the
floating vapor that filled the room.

The heat gradually became intolerable. The sun shone in on the left
through the high windows, imparting to the vapor opaline tints--the
palest rose and tender blue, fading into soft grays. When the women
began to grumble the boy Charles went from one window to the other,
drawing down the heavy linen shades. Then he crossed to the other
side, the shady side, and opened the blinds. There was a general
exclamation of joy--a formidable explosion of gaiety.

All this time Gervaise was going on with her task and had just
completed the washing of her colored pieces, which she threw over a
trestle to drip; soon small pools of blue water stood on the floor.
Then she began to rinse the garments in cold water which ran from a
spigot near by.

"You have nearly finished," said Mme Boche. "I am waiting to help you
wring them."

"Oh, you are very good! It is not necessary though!" answered the
young woman as she swashed the garments through the clear water. "If
I had sheets I would not refuse your offer, however."

Nevertheless, she accepted the aid of the concierge. They took up a
brown woolen skirt, badly faded, from which poured out a yellow stream
as the two women wrung it together.

Suddenly Mme Boche cried out:

"Look! There comes big Virginie! She is actually coming here to wash
her rags tied up in a handkerchief."

Gervaise looked up quickly. Virginie was a woman about her own age,
larger and taller than herself, a brunette and pretty in spite of the
elongated oval of her face. She wore an old black dress with flounces
and a red ribbon at her throat. Her hair was carefully arranged and
massed in a blue chenille net.

She hesitated a moment in the center aisle and half shut her eyes,
as if looking for something or somebody, but when she distinguished
Gervaise she went toward her with a haughty, insolent air and
supercilious smile and finally established herself only a short
distance from her.

"That is a new notion!" muttered Mme Boche in a low voice. "She was
never known before to rub out even a pair of cuffs. She is a lazy
creature, I do assure you. She never sews the buttons on her boots.
She is just like her sister, that minx of an Adele, who stays away
from the shop two days out of three. What is she rubbing now? A skirt,
is it? It is dirty enough, I am sure!"

It was clear that Mme Boche wished to please Gervaise. The truth was
she often took coffee with Adele and Virginie when the two sisters
were in funds. Gervaise did not reply but worked faster than before.
She was now preparing her bluing water in a small tub standing on
three legs. She dipped in her pieces, shook them about in the colored
water, which was almost a lake in hue, and then, wringing them, she
shook them out and threw them lightly over the high wooden bars.

While she did this she kept her back well turned on big Virginie. But
she felt that the girl was looking at her, and she heard an occasional
derisive sniff. Virginie, in fact, seemed to have come there to
provoke her, and when Gervaise turned around the two women fixed their
eyes on each other.

"Let her be," murmured Mme Boche. "She is not the one, now I tell
you!"

At this moment, as Gervaise was shaking her last piece of linen, she
heard laughing and talking at the door of the lavatory.

"Two children are here asking for their mother!" cried Charles.

All the women looked around, and Gervaise recognized Claude and
Etienne. As soon as they saw her they ran toward her, splashing
through the puddle's, their untied shoes half off and Claude, the
eldest, dragging his little brother by the hand.

The women as they passed uttered kindly exclamations of pity, for
the children were evidently frightened. They clutched their mother's
skirts and buried their pretty blond heads.

"Did Papa send you?" asked Gervaise.

But as she stooped to tie Etienne's shoes she saw on Claude's finger
the key of her room with its copper tag and number.

"Did you bring the key?" she exclaimed in great surprise. "And why,
pray?"

The child looked down on the key hanging on his finger, which he had
apparently forgotten. This seemed to remind him of something, and he
said in a clear, shrill voice:

"Papa is gone!"

"He went to buy your breakfast, did he not? And he told you to come
and look for me here, I suppose?"

Claude looked at his brother and hesitated. Then he exclaimed:

"Papa has gone, I say. He jumped from the bed, put his things in
his trunk, and then he carried his trunk downstairs and put it on
a carriage. We saw him--he has gone!"

Gervaise was kneeling, tying the boy's shoe. She rose slowly with a
very white face and with her hands pressed to either temple, as if she
were afraid of her head cracking open. She could say nothing but the
same words over and over again:

"Great God! Great God! Great God!"

Mme Boche, in her turn, interrogated the child eagerly, for she was
charmed at finding herself an actor, as it were, in this drama.

"Tell us all about it, my dear. He locked the door, did he? And then
he told you to bring the key here?" And then, lowering her voice, she
whispered in the child's ear:

"Was there a lady in the carriage?" she asked.

The child looked troubled for a moment but speedily began his story
again with a triumphant air.

"He jumped off the bed, put his things in the trunk, and he went
away."

Then as Mme Boche made no attempt to detain him, he drew his brother
to the faucet, where the two amused themselves in making the water
run.

Gervaise could not weep. She felt as if she were stifling. She covered
her face with her hands and turned toward the wall. A sharp, nervous
trembling shook her from head to foot. An occasional sobbing sigh or,
rather, gasp escaped from her lips, while she pressed her clenched
hands more tightly on her eyes, as if to increase the darkness of the
abyss in which she felt herself to have fallen.

"Come! Come, my child!" muttered Mme Boche.

"If you knew! If you only knew all!" answered Gervaise. "Only this
very morning he made me carry my shawl and my chemises to the
Mont-de-Piete, and that was the money he had for the carriage."

And the tears rushed to her eyes. The recollection of her visit to the
pawnbroker's, of her hasty return with the money in her hand, seemed
to let loose the sobs that strangled her and was the one drop too
much. Tears streamed from her eyes and poured down her face. She did
not think of wiping them away.

"Be reasonable, child! Be quiet," whispered Mme Boche. "They are all
looking at you. Is it possible you can care so much for any man? You
love him still, although such a little while ago you pretended you did
not care for him, and you cry as if your heart would break! Oh lord,
what fools we women are!"

Then in a maternal tone she added:

"And such a pretty little woman as you are too. But now I may as
well tell you the whole, I suppose? Well then, you remember when
I was talking to you from the sidewalk and you were at your window?
I knew then that it was Lantier who came in with Adele. I did not see
his face, but I knew his coat, and Boche watched and saw him come
downstairs this morning. But he was with Adele, you understand. There
is another person who comes to see Virginie twice a week."

She stopped for a moment to take breath and then went on in a lower
tone still.

"Take care! She is laughing at you--the heartless little cat! I bet
all her washing is a sham. She has seen her sister and Lantier well
off and then came here to find out how you would take it."

Gervaise took her hands down from her face and looked around. When
she saw Virginie talking and laughing with two or three women a wild
tempest of rage shook her from head to foot. She stooped with her arms
extended, as if feeling for something, and moved along slowly for a
step or two, then snatched up a bucket of soapsuds and threw it at
Virginie.

"You devil! Be off with you!" cried Virginie, starting back. Only her
feet were wet.

All the women in the lavatory hurried to the scene of action. They
jumped up on the benches, some with a piece of bread in their hands,
others with a bit of soap, and a circle of spectators was soon formed.

"Yes, she is a devil!" repeated Virginie. "What has got into the
fool?" Gervaise stood motionless, her face convulsed and lips apart.
The other continued:

"She got tired of the country, it seems, but she left one leg behind
her, at all events."

The women laughed, and big Virginie, elated at her success, went on
in a louder and more triumphant tone:

"Come a little nearer, and I will soon settle you. You had better have
remained in the country. It is lucky for you that your dirty soapsuds
only went on my feet, for I would have taken you over my knees and
given you a good spanking if one drop had gone in my face. What is
the matter with her, anyway?" And big Virginie addressed her audience:
"Make her tell what I have done to her! Say! Fool, what harm have I
ever done to you?"

"You had best not talk so much," answered Gervaise almost inaudibly;
"you know very well where my husband was seen yesterday. Now be quiet
or harm will come to you. I will strangle you--quick as a wink."

"Her husband, she says! Her husband! The lady's husband! As if a
looking thing like that had a husband! Is it my fault if he has
deserted her? Does she think I have stolen him? Anyway, he was much
too good for her. But tell me, some of you, was his name on his
collar? Madame has lost her husband! She will pay a good reward,
I am sure, to anyone who will carry him back!"

The women all laughed. Gervaise, in a low, concentrated voice,
repeated:

"You know very well--you know very well! Your sister--yes, I will
strangle your sister!"

"Oh yes, I understand," answered Virginie. "Strangle her if you
choose. What do I care? And what are you staring at me for? Can't
I wash my clothes in peace? Come, I am sick of this stuff. Let me
alone!"

Big Virginie turned away, and after five or six angry blows with her
beater she began again:

"Yes, it is my sister, and the two adore each other. You should see
them bill and coo together. He has left you with these dirty-faced
imps, and you left three others behind you with three fathers! It was
your dear Lantier who told us all that. Ah, he had had quite enough
of you--he said so!"

"Miserable fool!" cried Gervaise, white with anger.

She turned and mechanically looked around on the floor; seeing
nothing, however, but the small tub of bluing water, she threw that
in Virginie's face.

"She has spoiled my dress!" cried Virginie, whose shoulder and one
hand were dyed a deep blue. "You just wait a moment!" she added as
she, in her turn, snatched up a tub and dashed its contents at
Gervaise. Then ensued a most formidable battle. The two women ran up
and down the room in eager haste, looking for full tubs, which they
quickly flung in the faces of each other, and each deluge was heralded
and accompanied by a shout.

"Is that enough? Will that cool you off?" cried Gervaise.

And from Virginie:

"Take that! It is good to have a bath once in your life!"

Finally the tubs and pails were all empty, and the two women began to
draw water from the faucets. They continued their mutual abuse while
the water was running, and presently it was Virginie who received
a bucketful in her face. The water ran down her back and over her
skirts. She was stunned and bewildered, when suddenly there came
another in her left ear, knocking her head nearly off her shoulders;
her comb fell and with it her abundant hair.

Gervaise was attacked about her legs. Her shoes were filled with
water, and she was drenched above her knees. Presently the two women
were deluged from head to foot; their garments stuck to them, and they
dripped like umbrellas which had been out in a heavy shower.

"What fun!" said one of the laundresses as she looked on at a safe
distance.

The whole lavatory were immensely amused, and the women applauded
as if at a theater. The floor was covered an inch deep with water,
through which the termagants splashed. Suddenly Virginie discovered
a bucket of scalding water standing a little apart; she caught it and
threw it upon Gervaise. There was an exclamation of horror from the
lookers-on. Gervaise escaped with only one foot slightly burned, but
exasperated by the pain, she threw a tub with all her strength at the
legs of her opponent. Virginie fell to the ground.

"She has broken her leg!" cried one of the spectators.

"She deserved it," answered another, "for the tall one tried to scald
her!"

"She was right, after all, if the blonde had taken away her man!"

Mme Boche rent the air with her exclamations, waving her arms
frantically high above her head. She had taken the precaution to place
herself behind a rampart of tubs, with Claude and Etienne clinging to
her skirts, weeping and sobbing in a paroxysm of terror and keeping up
a cry of "Mamma! Mamma!" When she saw Virginie prostrate on the ground
she rushed to Gervaise and tried to pull her away.

"Come with me!" she urged. "Do be sensible. You are growing so angry
that the Lord only knows what the end of all this will be!"

But Gervaise pushed her aside, and the old woman again took refuge
behind the tubs with the children. Virginie made a spring at the
throat of her adversary and actually tried to strangle her. Gervaise
shook her off and snatched at the long braid hanging from the girl's
head and pulled it as if she hoped to wrench it off, and the head
with it.

The battle began again, this time silent and wordless and literally
tooth and nail. Their extended hands with fingers stiffly crooked,
caught wildly at all in their way, scratching and tearing. The red
ribbon and the chenille net worn by the brunette were torn off; the
waist of her dress was ripped from throat to belt and showed the
white skin on the shoulder.

Gervaise had lost a sleeve, and her chemise was torn to her waist.
Strips of clothing lay in every direction. It was Gervaise who was
first wounded. Three long scratches from her mouth to her throat
bled profusely, and she fought with her eyes shut lest she should be
blinded. As yet Virginia showed no wound. Suddenly Gervaise seized
one of her earrings--pear-shaped, of yellow glass--she tore it out
and brought blood.

"They will kill each other! Separate them," cried several voices.

The women gathered around the combatants; the spectators were divided
into two parties--some exciting and encouraging Gervaise and Virginie
as if they had been dogs fighting, while others, more timid, trembled,
turned away their heads and said they were faint and sick. A general
battle threatened to take place, such was the excitement.

Mme Boche called to the boy in charge:

"Charles! Charles! Where on earth can he be?"

Finally she discovered him, calmly looking on with his arms folded. He
was a tall youth with a big neck. He was laughing and hugely enjoying
the scene. It would be a capital joke, he thought, if the women tore
each other's clothes to rags and if they should be compelled to finish
their fight in a state of nudity.

"Are you there then?" cried Mme Boche when she saw him. "Come and help
us separate them, or you can do it yourself."

"No, thank you," he answered quietly. "I don't propose to have my own
eyes scratched out! I am not here for that. Let them alone! It will do
them no harm to let a little of their hot blood out!"

Mme Boche declared she would summon the police, but to this the
mistress of the lavatory, the delicate-looking woman with weak eyes,
strenuously objected.

"No, no, I will not. It would injure my house!" she said over and over
again.

Both women lay on the ground. Suddenly Virginie struggled up to her
knees. She had got possession of one of the beaters, which she
brandished. Her voice was hoarse and low as she muttered:

"This will be as good for you as for your dirty linen!"

Gervaise, in her turn, snatched another beater, which she held like a
club. Her voice also was hoarse and low.

"I will beat your skin," she muttered, "as I would my coarse towels."

They knelt in front of each other in utter silence for at least a
minute, with hair streaming, eyes glaring and distended nostrils. They
each drew a long breath.

Gervaise struck the first blow with her beater full on the shoulders
of her adversary and then threw herself over on the side to escape
Virginie's weapon, which touched her on the hip.

Thus started, they struck each other as laundresses strike their
linen, in measured cadence.

The women about them ceased to laugh; many went away, saying they were
faint. Those who remained watched the scene with a cruel light in
their eyes. Mme Boche had taken Claude and Etienne to the other end of
the room, whence came the dreary sound of their sobs which were heard
through the dull blows of the beaters.

Suddenly Gervaise uttered a shriek. Virginie had struck her just above
the elbow on her bare arm, and the flesh began to swell at once. She
rushed at Virginie; her face was so terrible that the spectators
thought she meant to kill her.

"Enough! Enough!" they cried.

With almost superhuman strength she seized Virginie by the waist, bent
her forward with her face to the brick floor and, notwithstanding her
struggles, lifted her skirts and showed the white and naked skin. Then
she brought her beater down as she had formerly done at Plassans under
the trees on the riverside, where her employer had washed the linen of
the garrison.

Each blow of the beater fell on the soft flesh with a dull thud,
leaving a scarlet mark.

"Oh! Oh!" murmured Charles with his eyes nearly starting from his
head.

The women were laughing again by this time, but soon the cry began
again of "Enough! Enough!"

Gervaise did not even hear. She seemed entirely absorbed, as if she
were fulfilling an appointed task, and she talked with strange, wild
gaiety, recalling one of the rhymes of her childhood:

    "Pan! Pan! Margot au lavoir,
    Pan! Pan! a coups de battoir;
    Pan! Pan! va laver son coeur,
    Pan! Pan! tout noir de douleur

"Take that for yourself and that for your sister and this for Lantier.
And now I shall begin all over again. That is for Lantier--that for
your sister--and this for yourself!

    "Pan! Pan! Margot au lavoir!
    Pan! Pan! a coups de battoir."

They tore Virginie from her hands. The tall brunette, weeping and
sobbing, scarlet with shame, rushed out of the room, leaving Gervaise
mistress of the field, who calmly arranged her dress somewhat and,
as her arm was stiff, begged Mme Boche to lift her bundle of linen
on her shoulder.

While the old woman obeyed she dilated on her emotions during the
scene that had just taken place.

"You ought to go to a doctor and see if something is not broken.
I heard a queer sound," she said.

But Gervaise did not seem to hear her and paid no attention either to
the women who crowded around her with congratulations. She hastened
to the door where her children awaited her.

"Two hours!" said the mistress of the establishment, already installed
in her glass cabinet. "Two hours and two sous!"

Gervaise mechanically laid down the two sous, and then, limping
painfully under the weight of the wet linen which was slung over her
shoulder and dripped as she moved, with her injured arm and bleeding
cheek, she went away, dragging after her with her naked arm the
still-sobbing and tear-stained Etienne and Claude.

Behind her the lavatory resumed its wonted busy air, a little gayer
than usual from the excitement of the morning. The women had eaten
their bread and drunk their wine, and they splashed the water and used
their beaters with more energy than usual as they recalled the blows
dealt by Gervaise. They talked from alley to alley, leaning over their
tubs. Words and laughs were lost in the sound of running water. The
steam and mist were golden in the sun that came in through holes in
the curtain. The odor of soapsuds grew stronger and stronger.

When Gervaise entered the alley which led to the Hotel Boncœur her
tears choked her. It was a long, dark, narrow alley, with a gutter
on one side close to the wall, and the loathsome smell brought to her
mind the recollection of having passed through there with Lantier
a fortnight previous.

And what had that fortnight been? A succession of quarrels and
dissensions, the remembrance of which would be forevermore a regret
and bitterness.

Her room was empty, filled with the glowing sunlight from the open
window. This golden light rendered more apparent the blackened ceiling
and the walls with the shabby, dilapidated paper. There was not an
article beyond the furniture left in the room, except a woman's fichu
that seemed to have caught on a nail near the chimney. The children's
bed was pulled out into the center of the room; the bureau drawers
were wide open, displaying their emptiness. Lantier had washed and had
used the last of the pomade--two cents' worth on the back of a playing
card--the dirty water in which he had washed still stood in the basin.
He had forgotten nothing; the corner hitherto occupied by his trunk
now seemed to Gervaise a vast desert. Even the small mirror was gone.
With a presentiment of evil she turned hastily to the chimney. Yes,
she was right, Lantier had carried away the tickets. The pink papers
were no longer between the candlesticks!

She threw her bundle of linen into a chair and stood looking first at
one thing and then at another in a dull agony that no tears came to
relieve.

She had but one sou in the world. She heard a merry laugh from her
boys who, already consoled, were at the window. She went toward them
and, laying a hand on each of their heads, looked out on that scene
on which her weary eyes had dwelt so long that same morning.

Yes, it was on that street that she and her children would soon be
thrown, and she turned her hopeless, despairing eyes toward the outer
boulevards--looking from right to left, lingering at the two
extremities, seized by a feeling of terror, as if her life
thenceforward was to be spent between a slaughterhouse and a hospital.




CHAPTER II
GERVAISE AND COUPEAU


Three weeks later, about half-past eleven one fine sunny morning,
Gervaise and Coupeau, the tinworker, were eating some brandied fruit
at the Assommoir.

Coupeau, who was smoking outside, had seen her as she crossed the
street with her linen and compelled her to enter. Her huge basket
was on the floor, back of the little table where they sat.

Father Colombe's Tavern, known as the Assommoir, was on the corners
of the Rue des Poissonniers and of the Boulevard de Rochechouart.
The sign bore the one single word in long, blue letters:

DISTILLATION

And this word stretched from one end to the other. On either side of
the door stood tall oleanders in small casks, their leaves covered
thick with dust. The enormous counter with its rows of glasses, its
fountain and its pewter measures was on the left of the door, and the
huge room was ornamented by gigantic casks painted bright yellow and
highly varnished, hooped with shining copper. On high shelves were
bottles of liquors and jars of fruits; all sorts of flasks standing in
order concealed the wall and repeated their pale green or deep crimson
tints in the great mirror behind the counter.

The great feature of the house, however, was the distilling apparatus
which stood at the back of the room behind an oak railing on which the
tipsy workmen leaned as they stupidly watched the still with its long
neck and serpentine tubes descending to subterranean regions--a very
devil's kitchen.

At this early hour the Assommoir was nearly empty. A stout man in his
shirt sleeves--Father Colombe himself--was serving a little girl not
more than twelve years old with four cents' worth of liquor in a cup.

The sun streamed in at the door and lay on the floor, which was black
where the men had spat as they smoked. And from the counter, from the
casks, from all the room, rose an alcoholic emanation which seemed to
intoxicate the very particles of dust floating in the sunshine.

In the meantime Coupeau rolled a new cigarette. He was very neat and
clean, wearing a blouse and a little blue cloth cap and showing his
white teeth as he smiled.

The lower jaw was somewhat prominent and the nose slightly flat; he
had fine brown eyes and the face of a happy child and good-natured
animal. His hair was thick and curly. His complexion was delicate
still, for he was only twenty-six. Opposite him sat Gervaise in a
black gown, leaning slightly forward, finishing her fruit, which she
held by the stem.

They were near the street, at the first of the four tables arranged
in front of the counter. When Coupeau had lighted his cigar he placed
both elbows on the table and looked at the woman without speaking.
Her pretty face had that day something of the delicate transparency
of fine porcelain.

Then continuing something which they apparently had been previously
discussing, he said in a low voice:

"Then you say no, do you? Absolutely no?"

"Of course. No it must be, Monsieur Coupeau," answered Gervaise with
a smile. "Surely you do not intend to begin that again here! You
promised to be reasonable too. Had I known, I should certainly have
refused your treat."

He did not speak but gazed at her more intently than before with
tender boldness. He looked at her soft eyes and dewy lips, pale at the
corners but half parted, allowing one to see the rich crimson within.

She returned his look with a kind and affectionate smile. Finally she
said:

"You should not think of such a thing. It is folly! I am an old woman.
I have a boy eight years old. What should we do together?"

"Much as other people do, I suppose!" answered Coupeau with a wink.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"You know nothing about it, Monsieur Coupeau, but I have had some
experience. I have two mouths in the house, and they have excellent
appetites. How am I to bring up my children if I trifle away my time?
Then, too, my misfortune has taught me one great lesson, which is that
the less I have to do with men, the better!"

She then proceeded to explain all her reasons, calmly and without
anger. It was easy to see that her words were the result of grave
consideration.

Coupeau listened quietly, saying only at intervals:

"You are hurting my feelings. Yes, hurting my feelings."

"Yes, I see that," she answered, "and I am really very sorry for you.
If I had any idea of leading a different life from that which I follow
today it might as well be with you as with another. You have the look
of a good-natured man. But what is the use? I have now been with
Madame Fauconnier for a fortnight. The children are going to school,
and I am very happy, for I have plenty to do. Don't you see,
therefore, that it is best for us to remain as we are?"

And she stooped to pick up her basket.

"You are keeping me here to talk," she said, "and they are waiting for
me at my employer's. You will find some other woman, Monsieur Coupeau,
far prettier than I, who will not have two children to bring up!"

He looked at the clock and made her sit down again.

"Wait!" he cried. "It is still thirty-five minutes of eleven. I have
twenty-five minutes still, and don't be afraid of my familiarity, for
the table is between us! Do you dislike me so very much that you can't
stay and talk with me for five minutes?"

She put down her basket, unwilling to seem disobliging, and they
talked for some time in a friendly sort of way. She had breakfasted
before she left home, and he had swallowed his soup in the greatest
haste and laid in wait for her as she came out. Gervaise, as she
listened to him, watched from the windows--between the bottles of
brandied fruit--the movement of the crowd in the street, which at
this hour--that of the Parisian breakfast--was unusually lively.
Workmen hurried into the baker's and, coming out with a loaf under
their arms, they went into the Veau a Deux Tetes, three doors higher
up, to breakfast at six sous. Next the baker's was a shop where fried
potatoes and mussels with parsley were sold. A constant succession of
shopgirls carried off paper parcels of fried potatoes and cups filled
with mussels, and others bought bunches of radishes. When Gervaise
leaned a little more toward the window she saw still another shop,
also crowded, from which issued a steady stream of children holding
in their hands, wrapped in paper, a breaded cutlet or a sausage,
still warm.

A group formed around the door of the Assommoir.

"Say, Bibi-la-Grillade," asked a voice, "will you stand a drink all
around?"

Five workmen went in, and the same voice said:

"Father Colombe, be honest now. Give us honest glasses, and no
nutshells, if you please."

Presently three more workmen entered together, and finally a crowd
of blouses passed in between the dusty oleanders.

"You have no business to ask such questions," said Gervaise to
Coupeau; "of course I loved him. But after the manner in which he
deserted me--"

They were speaking of Lantier. Gervaise had never seen him again;
she supposed him to be living with Virginie's sister, with a friend
who was about to start a manufactory for hats.

At first she thought of committing suicide, of drowning herself,
but she had grown more reasonable and had really begun to trust that
things were all for the best. With Lantier she felt sure she never
could have done justice to the children, so extravagant were his
habits.

He might come, of course, and see Claude and Etienne. She would not
show him the door; only so far as she herself was concerned, he had
best not lay his finger on her. And she uttered these words in a tone
of determination, like a woman whose plan of life is clearly defined,
while Coupeau, who was by no means inclined to give her up lightly,
teased and questioned her in regard to Lantier with none too much
delicacy, it is true, but his teeth were so white and his face so
merry that the woman could not take offense. "Did you beat him?"
he asked finally. "Oh, you are none too amiable. You beat people
sometimes, I have heard."

She laughed gaily.

Yes, it was true she had whipped that great Virginie. That day she
could have strangled someone with a glad heart. And she laughed again,
because Coupeau told her that Virginie, in her humiliation, had left
the _Quartier_.

Gervaise's face, as she laughed, however, had a certain childish
sweetness. She extended her slender, dimpled hands, declaring she
would not hurt a fly. All she knew of blows was that she had received
a good many in her life. Then she began to talk of Plassans and of her
youth. She had never been indiscreet, nor was she fond of men. When
she had fallen in with Lantier she was only fourteen, and she regarded
him as her husband. Her only fault, she declared, was that she was too
amiable and allowed people to impose on her and that she got fond of
people too easily; were she to love another man, she should wish and
expect to live quietly and comfortably with him always, without any
nonsense.

And when Coupeau slyly asked her if she called her dear children
nonsense she gave him a little slap and said that she, of course,
was much like other women. But women were not like men, after all;
they had their homes to take care of and keep clean; she was like
her mother, who had been a slave to her brutal father for more than
twenty years!

"My very lameness--" she continued.

"Your lameness?" interrupted Coupeau gallantly. "Why, it is almost
nothing. No one would ever notice it!"

She shook her head. She knew very well that it was very evident, and
at forty it would be far worse, but she said softly, with a faint
smile, "You have a strange taste, to fall in love with a lame woman!"

He, with his elbows on the table, still coaxed and entreated, but she
continued to shake her head in the negative. She listened with her
eyes fixed on the street, seemingly fascinated by the surging crowd.

The shops were being swept; the last frying pan of potatoes was taken
from the stove; the pork merchant washed the plates his customers had
used and put his place in order. Groups of mechanics were hurrying out
from all the workshops, laughing and pushing each other like so many
schoolboys, making a great scuffling on the sidewalk with their
hobnailed shoes; while some, with their hands in their pockets,
smoked in a meditative fashion, looking up at the sun and winking
prodigiously. The sidewalks were crowded and the crowd constantly
added to by men who poured from the open door--men in blouses and
frocks, old jackets and coats, which showed all their defects in
the clear morning light.

The bells of the various manufactories were ringing loudly, but the
workmen did not hurry. They deliberately lighted their pipes and then
with rounded shoulders slouched along, dragging their feet after them.

Gervaise mechanically watched a group of three, one man much taller
than the other two, who seemed to be hesitating as to what they should
do next. Finally they came directly to the Assommoir.

"I know them," said Coupeau, "or rather I know the tall one. It is
Mes-Bottes, a comrade of mine."

The Assommoir was now crowded with boisterous men. Two glasses rang
with the energy with which they brought down their fists on the
counter. They stood in rows, with their hands crossed over their
stomachs or folded behind their backs, waiting their turn to be
served by Father Colombe.

"Hallo!" cried Mes-Bottes, giving Coupeau a rough slap on the
shoulders. "How fine you have got to be with your cigarettes and
your linen shirt bosom! Who is your friend that pays for all this?
I should like to make her acquaintance."

"Don't be so silly!" returned Coupeau angrily.

But the other gave a knowing wink.

"Ah, I understand. 'A word to the wise--'" And he turned round with
a fearful lurch to look at Gervaise, who shuddered and recoiled. The
tobacco smoke, the odor of humanity added to this air heavy with
alcohol, was oppressive, and she choked a little and coughed.

"Ah, what an awful thing it is to drink!" she said in a whisper to her
friend, to whom she then went on to say how years before she had drunk
anisette with her mother at Plassans and how it had made her so very
sick that ever since that day she had never been able to endure even
the smell of liquors.

"You see," she added as she held up her glass, "I have eaten, the
fruit, but I left the brandy, for it would make me ill."

Coupeau also failed to understand how a man could swallow glasses of
brandy and water, one after the other. Brandied fruit, now and again,
was not bad. As to absinthe and similar abominations, he never touched
them--not he, indeed. His comrades might laugh at him as much as they
pleased; he always remained on the other side of the door when they
came in to swallow perdition like that.

His father, who was a tinworker like himself, had fallen one day from
the roof of No. 25, in La Rue Coquenaud, and this recollection had
made him very prudent ever since. As for himself, when he passed
through that street and saw the place he would sooner drink the water
in the gutter than swallow a drop at the wineshop. He concluded with
the sentence:

"You see, in my trade a man needs a clear head and steady legs."

Gervaise had taken up her basket; she had not risen from her chair,
however, but held it on her knees with a dreary look in her eyes, as
if the words of the young mechanic had awakened in her mind strange
thoughts of a possible future.

She answered in a low, hesitating tone, without any apparent
connection:

"Heaven knows I am not ambitious. I do not ask for much in this world.
My idea would be to live a quiet life and always have enough to eat--a
clean place to live in--with a comfortable bed, a table and a chair or
two. Yes, I would like to bring my children up in that way and see
them good and industrious. I should not like to run the risk of being
beaten--no, that would not please me at all!"

She hesitated, as if to find something else to say, and then resumed:

"Yes, and at the end I should wish to die in my bed in my own home!"

She pushed back her chair and rose. Coupeau argued with her vehemently
and then gave an uneasy glance at the clock. They did not, however,
depart at once. She wished to look at the still and stood for some
minutes gazing with curiosity at the great copper machine. The
tinworker, who had followed her, explained to her how the thing
worked, pointing out with his finger the various parts of the machine,
and showed the enormous retort whence fell the clear stream of
alcohol. The still, with its intricate and endless coils of wire and
pipes, had a dreary aspect. Not a breath escaped from it, and hardly
a sound was heard. It was like some night task performed in daylight
by a melancholy, silent workman.

In the meantime Mes-Bottes, accompanied by his two comrades, had
lounged to the oak railing and leaned there until there was a corner
of the counter free. He laughed a tipsy laugh as he stood with his
eyes fixed on the machine.

"By thunder!" he muttered. "That is a jolly little thing!"

He went on to say that it held enough to keep their throats fresh for
a week. As for himself, he would like to hold the end of that pipe
between his teeth, and he would like to feel that liquor run down his
throat in a steady stream until it reached his heels.

The still did its work slowly but surely. There was not a glimmer on
its surface--no firelight reflected in its clean-colored sides. The
liquor dropped steadily and suggested a persevering stream which would
gradually invade the room, spread over the streets and boulevard and
finally deluge and inundate Paris itself.

Gervaise shuddered and drew back. She tried to smile, but her lips
quivered as she murmured:

"It frightens me--that machine! It makes me feel cold to see that
constant drip."

Then returning to the idea which had struck her as the acme of human
happiness, she said:

"Say, do you not think that would be very nice? To work and have
plenty to eat, to have a little home all to oneself, to bring up
children and then die in one's bed?"

"And not be beaten," added Coupeau gaily. "But I will promise never
to beat you, Madame Gervaise, if you will agree to what I ask. I will
promise also never to drink, because I love you too much! Come now,
say yes."

He lowered his voice and spoke with his lips close to her throat,
while she, holding her basket in front of her, was making a path
through the crowd of men.

But she did not say no or shake her head as she had done. She glanced
up at him with a half-tender smile and seemed to rejoice in the
assurance he gave that he did not drink.

It was clear that she would have said yes if she had not sworn never
to have anything more to do with men.

Finally they reached the door and went out of the place, leaving it
crowded to overflowing. The fumes of alcohol and the tipsy voices of
the men carousing went out into the street with them.

Mes-Bottes was heard accusing Father Colombe of cheating by not
filling his glasses more than half full, and he proposed to his
comrades to go in future to another place, where they could do
much better and get more for their money.

"Ah," said Gervaise, drawing a long breath when they stood on the
sidewalk, "here one can breathe again. Good-by, Monsieur Coupeau,
and many thanks for your politeness. I must hasten now!"

She moved on, but he took her hand and held it fast.

"Go a little way with me. It will not be much farther for you.
I must stop at my sister's before I go back to the shop."

She yielded to his entreaties, and they walked slowly on together.
He told her about his family. His mother, a tailoress, was the
housekeeper. Twice she had been obliged to give up her work on account
of trouble with her eyes. She was sixty-two on the third of the last
month. He was the youngest child. One of his sisters, Mme Lerat,
a widow, thirty-six years old, was a flower maker and lived at
Batignolles, in La Rue Des Moines. The other, who was thirty, had
married a chainmaker--a man by the name of Lorilleux. It was to their
rooms that he was now going. They lived in that great house on the
left. He ate his dinner every night with them; it was an economy for
them all. But he wanted to tell them now not to expect him that night,
as he was invited to dine with a friend.

Gervaise interrupted him suddenly:

"Did I hear your friend call you Cadet-Cassis?"

"Yes. That is a name they have given me, because when they drag me
into a wineshop it is cassis I always take. I had as lief be called
Cadet-Cassis as Mes-Bottes, any time."

"I do not think Cadet-Cassis so very bad," answered Gervaise, and she
asked him about his work. How long should he be employed on the new
hospital?

"Oh," he answered, "there was never any lack of work." He had always
more than he could do. He should remain in that shop at least a year,
for he had yards and yards of gutters to make.

"Do you know," he said, "when I am up there I can see the Hotel
Boncœur. Yesterday you were at the window, and I waved my hand,
but you did not see me."

They by this time had turned into La Rue de la Goutte-d'Or. He stopped
and looked up.

"There is the house," he said, "and I was born only a few doors
farther off. It is an enormous place."

Gervaise looked up and down the façade. It was indeed enormous. The
house was of five stories, with fifteen windows on each floor. The
blinds were black and with many of the slats broken, which gave an
indescribable air of ruin and desolation to the place. Four shops
occupied the _rez-de-chaussee_. On the right of the door was a
large room, occupied as a cookshop. On the left was a charcoal vender,
a thread-and-needle shop and an establishment for the manufacture of
umbrellas.

The house appeared all the higher for the reason that on either side
were two low buildings, squeezed close to it, and stood square, like
a block of granite roughly hewn, against the blue sky. Totally without
ornament, the house grimly suggested a prison.

Gervaise looked at the entrance, an immense doorway which rose to the
height of the second story and made a deep passage, at the end of
which was a large courtyard. In the center of this doorway, which was
paved like the street, ran a gutter full of pale rose-colored water.

"Come up," said Coupeau; "they won't eat you."

Gervaise preferred to wait for him in the street, but she consented
to go as far as the room of the concierge, which was within the porch,
on the left.

When she had reached this place she again looked up.

Within there were six floors, instead of five, and four regular
facades surrounded the vast square of the courtyard. The walls were
gray, covered with patches of leprous yellow, stained by the dripping
from the slate-covered roof. The wall had not even a molding to break
its dull uniformity--only the gutters ran across it. The windows had
neither shutters nor blinds but showed the panes of glass which were
greenish and full of bubbles. Some were open, and from them hung
checked mattresses and sheets to air. Lines were stretched in front
of others, on which the family wash was hung to dry--men's shirts,
women's chemises and children's breeches! There was a look as if the
dwellers under that roof found their quarters too small and were
oozing out at every crack and aperture.

For the convenience of each facade there was a narrow, high doorway,
from which a damp passage led to the rear, where were four staircases
with iron railings. These each had one of the first four letters of
the alphabet painted at the side.

The _rez-de-chaussee_ was divided into enormous workshops and lit
by windows black with dust. The forge of a locksmith blazed in one;
from another came the sound of a carpenter's plane, while near the
doorway a pink stream from a dyeing establishment poured into the
gutter. Pools of stagnant water stood in the courtyard, all littered
with shavings and fragments of charcoal. A few pale tufts of grass
struggled up between the flat stones, and the whole courtyard was
lit but dimly.

In the shade near the water faucet three small hens were pecking
with the vain hope of finding a worm, and Gervaise looked about her,
amazed at the enormous place which seemed like a little world and as
interested in the house as if it were a living creature.

"Are you looking for anyone?" asked the concierge, coming to her door
considerably puzzled.

But the young woman explained that she was waiting for a friend and
then turned back toward the street. As Coupeau still delayed, she
returned to the courtyard, finding in it a strange fascination.

The house did not strike her as especially ugly. At some of the
windows were plants--a wallflower blooming in a pot--a caged canary,
who uttered an occasional warble, and several shaving mirrors caught
the light and shone like stars.

A cabinetmaker sang, accompanied by the regular whistling sounds
of his plane, while from the locksmith's quarters came a clatter
of hammers struck in cadence.

At almost all the open windows the laughing, dirty faces of merry
children were seen, and women sat with their calm faces in profile,
bending over their work. It was the quiet time--after the morning
labors were over and the men were gone to their work and the house
was comparatively quiet, disturbed only by the sounds of the various
trades. The same refrain repeated hour after hour has a soothing
effect, Gervaise thought.

To be sure, the courtyard was a little damp. Were she to live there,
she should certainly prefer a room on the sunny side.

She went in several steps and breathed that heavy odor of the homes of
the poor--an odor of old dust, of rancid dirt and grease--but as the
acridity of the smells from the dyehouse predominated, she decided it
to be far better than the Hotel Boncœur.

She selected a window--a window in the corner on the left, where there
was a small box planted with scarlet beans, whose slender tendrils
were beginning to wind round a little arbor of strings.

"I have made you wait too long, I am afraid," said Coupeau, whom she
suddenly heard at her side. "They make a great fuss when I do not dine
there, and she did not like it today, especially as my sister had
bought veal. You are looking at this house," he continued. "Think of
it--it is always lit from top to bottom. There are a hundred lodgers
in it. If I had any furniture I would have had a room in it long ago.
It would be very nice here, wouldn't it?"

"Yes," murmured Gervaise, "very nice indeed. At Plassans there were
not so many people in one whole street. Look up at that window on the
fifth floor--the window, I mean, where those beans are growing. See
how pretty that is!"

He, with his usual recklessness, declared he would hire that room
for her, and they would live there together.

She turned away with a laugh and begged him not to talk any more
nonsense. The house might stand or fall--they would never have a room
in it together.

But Coupeau, all the same, was not reproved when he held her hand
longer than was necessary in bidding her farewell when they reached
Mme Fauconnier's laundry.

For another month the kindly intercourse between Gervaise and Coupeau
continued on much the same footing. He thought her wonderfully
courageous, declared she was killing herself with hard work all day
and sitting up half the night to sew for the children. She was not
like the women he had known; she took life too seriously, by far!

She laughed and defended herself modestly. Unfortunately, she said,
she had not always been discreet. She alluded to her first confinement
when she was not more than fourteen and to the bottles of anisette she
had emptied with her mother, but she had learned much from experience,
she said. He was mistaken, however, in thinking she was persevering
and strong. She was, on the contrary, very weak and too easily
influenced, as she had discovered to her cost. Her dream had always
been to live in a respectable way among respectable people, because
bad company knocks the life out of a woman. She trembled when she
thought of the future and said she was like a sou thrown up in the
air, falling, heads up or down, according to chance, on the muddy
pavement. All she had seen, the bad example spread before her childish
eyes, had given her valuable lessons. But Coupeau laughed at these
gloomy notions and brought back her courage by attempting to put his
arm around her waist. She slapped his hands, and he cried out that
"for a weak woman, she managed to hurt a fellow considerably!"

As for himself, he was always as merry as a grig, and no fool, either.
He parted his hair carefully on one side, wore pretty cravats and
patent-leather shoes on Sunday and was as saucy as only a fine
Parisian workman can be.

They were of mutual use to each other at the Hotel Boncœur. Coupeau
went for her milk, did many little errands for her and carried home
her linen to her customers and often took the children out to walk.
Gervaise, to return these courtesies, went up to the tiny room where
he slept and in his absence looked over his clothes, sewed on buttons
and mended his garments. They grew to be very good and cordial
friends. He was to her a constant source of amusement. She listened
to the songs he sang and to their slang and nonsense, which as yet
had for her much of the charm of novelty. But he began to grow uneasy,
and his smiles were less frequent. He asked her whenever they met the
same question, "When shall it be?"

She answered invariably with a jest but passed her days in a fire
of indelicate allusions, however, which did not bring a flush to
her cheek. So long as he was not rough and brutal, she objected to
nothing, but one day she was very angry when he, in trying to steal
a kiss, tore out a lock of her hair.

About the last of June Coupeau became absolutely morose, and Gervaise
was so much disturbed by certain glances he gave her that she fairly
barricaded her door at night. Finally one Tuesday evening, when he had
sulked from the previous Sunday, he came to her door at eleven in the
evening. At first she refused to open it, but his voice was so gentle,
so sad even, that she pulled away the barrier she had pushed against
the door for her better protection. When he came in she was startled
and thought him ill; he was so deadly pale and his eyes were so
bright. No, he was not ill, he said, but things could not go on
like this; he could not sleep.

"Listen, Madame Gervaise," he exclaimed with tears in his eyes and a
strange choking sensation in his throat. "We must be married at once.
That is all there is to be said about it."

Gervaise was astonished and very grave.

"Oh, Monsieur Coupeau, I never dreamed of this, as you know very well,
and you must not take such a step lightly."

But he continued to insist; he was certainly fully determined. He had
come down to her then, without waiting until morning, merely because
he needed a good sleep. As soon as she said yes he would leave her.
But he would not go until he heard that word.

"I cannot say yes in such a hurry," remonstrated Gervaise. "I do not
choose to run the risk of your telling me at some future day that
I led you into this. You are making a great mistake, I assure you.
Suppose you should not see me for a week--you would forget me
entirely. Men sometimes marry for a fancy and in twenty-four hours
would gladly take it all back. Sit down here and let us talk a
little."

They sat in that dingy room lit only by one candle, which they forgot
to snuff, and discussed the expediency of their marriage until after
midnight, speaking very low, lest they should disturb the children,
who were asleep with weir heads on the same pillow.

And Gervaise pointed them out to Coupeau. That was an odd sort of
dowry to carry a man, surely! How could she venture to go to him with
such encumbrances? Then, too, she was troubled about another thing.
People would laugh at him. Her story was known; her lover had been
seen, and there would be no end of talk if she should marry now.

To all these good and excellent reasons Coupeau answered with a shrug
of his shoulders. What did he care for talk and gossip? He never
meddled with the affairs of others; why should they meddle with his?

Yes, she had children, to be sure, and he would look out for them with
her. He had never seen a woman in his life who was so good and so
courageous and patient. Besides, that had nothing to do with it! Had
she been ugly and lazy, with a dozen dirty children, he would have
wanted her and only her.

"Yes," he continued, tapping her on the knee, "you are the woman I
want, and none other. You have nothing to say against that, I
suppose?"

Gervaise melted by degrees. Her resolution forsook her, and a weakness
of her heart and her senses overwhelmed her in the face of this brutal
passion. She ventured only a timid objection or two. Her hands lay
loosely folded on her knees, while her face was very gentle and sweet.

Through the open window came the soft air of a fair June night; the
candle flickered in the wind; from the street came the sobs of a
child, the child of a drunken man who was lying just in front of the
door in the street. From a long distance the breeze brought the notes
of a violin playing at a restaurant for some late marriage festival--a
delicate strain it was, too, clear and sweet as musical glasses.

Coupeau, seeing that the young woman had exhausted all her arguments,
snatched her hands and drew her toward him. She was in one of those
moods which she so much distrusted, when she could refuse no one
anything. But the young man did not understand this, and he contented
himself with simply holding her hands closely in his.

"You say yes, do you not?" he asked.

"How you tease," she replied. "You wish it--well then, yes. Heaven
grant that the day will not come when you will be sorry for it."

He started up, lifting her from her feet, and kissed her loudly. He
glanced at the children.

"Hush!" he said. "We must not wake the boys. Good night."

And he went out of the room. Gervaise, trembling from head to foot,
sat for a full hour on the side of her bed without undressing. She was
profoundly touched and thought Coupeau very honest and very kind. The
tipsy man in the street uttered a groan like that of a wild beast, and
the notes of the violin had ceased.

The next evening Coupeau urged Gervaise to go with him to call on his
sister. But the young woman shrank with ardent fear from this visit to
the Lorilleuxs'. She saw perfectly well that her lover stood in dread
of these people.

He was in no way dependent on this sister, who was not the eldest
either. Mother Coupeau would gladly give her consent, for she had
never been known to contradict her son. In the family, however, the
Lorilleuxs were supposed to earn ten francs per day, and this gave
them great weight. Coupeau would never venture to marry unless they
agreed to accept his wife.

"I have told them about you," he said. "Gervaise--good heavens, what
a baby you are! Come there tonight with me; you will find my sister
a little stiff, and Lorilleux is none too amiable. The truth is they
are much vexed, because, you see, if I marry I shall no longer dine
with them--and that is their great economy. But that makes no odds;
they won't put you out of doors. Do what I ask, for it is absolutely
necessary."

These words frightened Gervaise nearly out of her wits. One Saturday
evening, however, she consented. Coupeau came for her at half-past
eight. She was all ready, wearing a black dress, a shawl with printed
palm leaves in yellow and a white cap with fluted ruffles. She had
saved seven francs for the shawl and two francs fifty centimes for
the cap; the dress was an old one, cleaned and made over.

"They expect you," said Coupeau as they walked along the street, "and
they have become accustomed to the idea of seeing me married. They are
really quite amiable tonight. Then, too, if you have never seen a gold
chain made you will be much amused in watching it. They have an order
for Monday."

"And have they gold in these rooms?" asked Gervaise.

"I should say so! It is on the walls, on the floors--everywhere!"

By this time they had reached the door and had entered the courtyard.
The Lorilleuxs lived on the sixth floor--staircase B. Coupeau told her
with a laugh to keep tight hold of the iron railing and not let it go.

She looked up, half shutting her eyes, and gasped as she saw the
height to which the staircase wound. The last gas burner, higher up,
looked like a star trembling in a black sky, while two others on
alternate floors cast long, slanting rays down the interminable
stairs.

"Aha!" cried the young man as they stopped a moment on the second
landing. "I smell onion soup; somebody has evidently been eating onion
soup about here, and it smells good too."

It is true. Staircase B, dirty and greasy, both steps and railing with
plastering knocked off and showing the laths beneath, was permeated
with the smell of cooking. From each landing ran narrow corridors,
and on either side were half-open doors painted yellow and black, with
finger marks about the lock and handles, and through the open window
came the damp, disgusting smell of sinks and sewers mingling with the
odor of onions.

Up to the sixth floor came the noises from the
_rez-de-chaussee_--the rattling of dishes being washed, the
scraping of saucepans, and all that sort of thing. On one floor
Gervaise saw through an open door on which were the words DESIGNER AND
DRAUGHTSMAN in large letters two men seated at a table covered with a
varnished cloth; they were disputing violently amid thick clouds of
smoke from their pipes. The second and third floors were the quietest.
Here through the open doors came the sound of a cradle rocking, the
wail of a baby, a woman's voice, the rattle of a spoon against a cup.
On one door she read a placard, MME GAUDRON, CARDER; on the next, M.
MADINIER, MANUFACTURER OF BOXES.

On the fourth there was a great quarrel going on--blows and
oaths--which did not prevent the neighbors opposite from playing cards
with their door wide open for the benefit of the air. When Gervaise
reached the fifth floor she was out of breath. Such innumerable stairs
were a novelty to her. These winding railings made her dizzy. One
family had taken possession of the landing; the father was washing
plates in a small earthen pan near the sink, while the mother was
scrubbing the baby before putting it to sleep. Coupeau laughingly bade
Gervaise keep up her courage, and at last they reached the top, and
she looked around to see whence came the clear, shrill voice which
she had heard above all other sounds ever since her foot touched the
first stair. It was a little old woman who sang as she worked, and her
work was dressing dolls at three cents apiece. Gervaise clung to the
railing, all out of breath, and looked down into the depths below--the
gas burner now looked like a star at the bottom of a deep well. The
smells, the turbulent life of this great house, seemed to rush over
her in one tremendous gust. She gasped and turned pale.

"We have not got there yet," said Coupeau; "we have much farther
to go." And he turned to the left and then to the right again. The
corridor stretched out before them, faintly lit by an occasional gas
burner; a succession of doors, like those of a prison or a convent,
continued to appear, nearly all wide open, showing the sordid
interiors. Finally they reached a corridor that was entirely dark.

"Here we are," said the tinworker. "Isn't it a journey? Look out
for three steps. Hold onto the wall."

And Gervaise moved cautiously for ten paces or more. She counted the
three steps, and then Coupeau pushed open a door without knocking.
A bright light streamed forth. They went in.

It was a long, narrow apartment, almost like a prolongation of the
corridor; a woolen curtain, faded and spotted, drawn on one side,
divided the room in two.

One compartment, the first, contained a bed pushed under the corner
of the mansard roof; a stove, still warm from the cooking of the
dinner; two chairs, a table and a wardrobe. To place this last piece
of furniture where it stood, between the bed and the door, had
necessitated sawing away a portion of the ceiling.

The second compartment was the workshop. At the back, a tiny forge
with bellows; on the right, a vice screwed against the wall under
an _etagere_, where were iron tools piled up; on the left, in front
of the window, was a small table covered with pincers, magnifying
glasses, tiny scales and shears--all dirty and greasy.

"We have come!" cried Coupeau, going as far as the woolen curtain.

But he was not answered immediately.

Gervaise, much agitated by the idea that she was entering a place
filled with gold, stood behind her friend and did not know whether
to speak or retreat.

The bright light which came from a lamp and also from a brazier of
charcoal in the forge added to her trouble. She saw Mme Lorilleux,
a small, dark woman, agile and strong, drawing with all the vigor
of her arms--assisted by a pair of pincers--a thread of black metal,
which she passed through the holes of a drawplate held by the vice.
Before the desk or table in front of the window sat Lorilleux, as
short as his wife, but with broader shoulders. He was managing a tiny
pair of pincers and doing some work so delicate that it was almost
imperceptible. It was he who first looked up and lifted his head with
its scanty yellow hair. His face was the color of old wax, was long
and had an expression of physical suffering.

"Ah, it is you, is it? Well! Well! But we are in a hurry, you
understand. We have an order to fill. Don't come into the workroom.
Remain in the chamber." And he returned to his work; his face was
reflected in a ball filled with water, through which the lamp sent
on his work a circle of the brightest possible light.

"Find chairs for yourselves," cried Mme Lorilleux. "This is the lady,
I suppose. Very well! Very well!"

She rolled up her wire and carried it to the forge, and then she
fanned the coals a little to quicken the heat.

Coupeau found two chairs and made Gervaise seat herself near the
curtain. The room was so narrow that he could not sit beside her, so
he placed his chair a little behind and leaned over her to give her
the information he deemed desirable.

Gervaise, astonished by the strange reception given her by these
people and uncomfortable under their sidelong glances, had a buzzing
in her ears which prevented her from hearing what was said.

She thought the woman very old looking for her thirty years and also
extremely untidy, with her hair tumbling over her shoulders and her
dirty camisole.

The husband, not more than a year older, seemed to Gervaise really
an old man with thin, compressed lips and bowed figure. He was in his
shirt sleeves, and his naked feet were thrust into slippers down at
the heel.

She was infinitely astonished at the smallness of the atelier, at the
blackened walls and at the terrible heat.

Tiny drops bedewed the waxed forehead of Lorilleux himself, while Mme
Lorilleux threw off her sack and stood in bare arms and chemise half
slipped off.

"And the gold?" asked Gervaise softly.

Her eager eyes searched the corners, hoping to discover amid all the
dirt something of the splendor of which she had dreamed.

But Coupeau laughed.

"Gold?" he said. "Look! Here it is--and here--and here again, at your
feet."

He pointed in succession to the fine thread with which his sister was
busy and at another package of wire hung against the wall near the
vice; then falling down on his hands and knees, he gathered up from
the floor, on the tip of his moistened finger, several tiny specks
which looked like needle points.

Gervaise cried out, "That surely is not gold! That black metal which
looks precisely like iron!"

Her lover laughed and explained to her the details of the manufacture
in which his brother-in-law was engaged. The wire was furnished them
in coils, just as it hung against the wall, and then they were obliged
to heat and reheat it half a dozen times during their manipulations,
lest it should break. Considerable strength and a vast deal of skill
were needed, and his sister had both. He had seen her draw out the
gold until it was like a hair. She would never let her husband do it
because he always had a cough.

All this time Lorilleux was watching Gervaise stealthily, and after
a violent fit of coughing he said with an air as if he were speaking
to himself:

"I make columns."

"Yes," said Coupeau in an explanatory voice, "there are four different
kinds of chains, and his style is called a column."

Lorilleux uttered a little grunt of satisfaction, all the time at
work, with the tiny pincers held between very dirty nails.

"Look here, Cadet-Cassis," he said. "This very morning I made a little
calculation. I began my work when I was only twelve years old. How
many yards do you think I have made up to this day?"

He lifted his pale face.

"Eight thousand! Do you understand? Eight thousand! Enough to twist
around the necks of all the women in this _Quartier_."

Gervaise returned to her chair, entirely disenchanted. She thought it
was all very ugly and uninteresting. She smiled in order to gratify
the Lorilleuxs, but she was annoyed and troubled at the profound
silence they preserved in regard to her marriage, on account of which
she had called there that evening. These people treated her as if she
were simply a spectator whose curiosity had induced Coupeau to bring
her to see their work.

They began to talk; it was about the lodgers in the house. Mme
Lorilleux asked her brother if he had not heard those Benard people
quarreling as he came upstairs. She said the husband always came home
tipsy. Then she spoke of the designer, who was overwhelmed with debts,
always smoking and always quarreling. The landlord was going to turn
out the Coquets, who owed three quarters now and who would put their
furnace out on the landing, which was very dangerous. Mlle Remanjon,
as she was going downstairs with a bundle of dolls, was just in time
to rescue one of the children from being burned alive.

Gervaise was beginning to find the place unendurable. The heat was
suffocating; the door could not be opened, because the slightest draft
gave Lorilleux a cold. As they ignored the marriage question utterly,
she pulled her lover's sleeve to signify her wish to depart. He
understood and was himself annoyed at this affectation of silence.

"We are going," he said coldly, "We do not care to interrupt your
work any longer."

He lingered a moment, hoping for a word or an allusion. Suddenly he
decided to begin the subject himself.

"We rely on you, Lorilleux. You will be my wife's witness," he said.

The man lifted his head in affected surprise, while his wife stood
still in the center of the workshop.

"Are you in earnest?" he murmured, and then continued as if
soliloquizing, "It is hard to know when this confounded Cadet-Cassis
is in earnest."

"We have no advice to give," interrupted his wife. "It is a foolish
notion, this marrying, and it never succeeds. Never--no--never."

She drawled out these last words, examining Gervaise from head to foot
as she spoke.

"My brother is free to do as he pleases, of course," she continued.
"Of course his family would have liked--But then people always plan,
and things turn out so different. Of course it is none of my business.
Had he brought me the lowest of the low, I should have said, 'Marry
her and let us live in peace!' He was very comfortable with us,
nevertheless. He has considerable flesh on his bones and does not look
as if he had been starved. His soup was always ready to the minute.
Tell me, Lorilleux, don't you think that my brother's friend looks
like Therese--you know whom I mean--that woman opposite, who died of
consumption?"

"She certainly does," answered the chainmaker contemplatively.

"And you have two children, madame? I said to my brother I could not
understand how he could marry a woman with two children. You must not
be angry if I think of his interests; it is only natural. You do not
look very strong. Say, Lorilleux, don't you think that Madame looks
delicate?"

This courteous pair made no allusion to her lameness, but Gervaise
felt it to be in their minds. She sat stiff and still before them, her
thin shawl with its yellow palm leaves wrapped closely about her, and
answered in monosyllables, as if before her judges. Coupeau, realizing
her sufferings, cried out:

"This is all nonsense you are talking! What I want to know is if the
day will suit you, July twenty-ninth."

"One day is the same as another to us," answered his sister severely.
"Lorilleux can do as he pleases in regard to being your witness. I
only ask for peace."

Gervaise, in her embarrassment, had been pushing about with her feet
some of the rubbish on the floor; then fearing she had done some harm,
she stooped to ascertain. Lorilleux hastily approached her with a lamp
and looked at her fingers with evident suspicion.

"Take care," he said. "Those small bits of gold stick to the shoes
sometimes and are carried off without your knowing it."

This was a matter of some importance, of course, for his employers
weighed what they entrusted to him. He showed the hare's-foot with
which he brushed the particles of gold from the table and the skin
spread on his knees to receive them. Twice each week the shop was
carefully brushed; all the rubbish was kept and burned, and the ashes
were examined, where were found each month twenty-five or thirty
francs of gold.

Mme Lorilleux did not take her eyes from the shoes of her guest.

"If Mademoiselle would be so kind," she murmured with an amiable
smile, "and would just look at her soles herself. There is no cause
for offense, I am sure!"

Gervaise, indignant and scarlet, reseated herself and held up her
shoes for examination. Coupeau opened the door with a gay good night,
and she followed him into the corridor after a word or two of polite
farewell.

The Lorilleuxs turned to their work at the end of their room where
the tiny forge still glittered. The woman with her chemise slipped off
her shoulder which was red with the reflection from the brazier, was
drawing out another wire, the muscles in her throat swelling with her
exertions.

The husband, stooping under the green light of the ball of water, was
again busy with his pincers, not stopping even to wipe the sweat from
his brow.

When Gervaise emerged from the narrow corridors on the sixth landing
she said with tears in her eyes:

"This certainly does not promise very well!"

Coupeau shook his head angrily. Lorilleux should pay for this evening!
Was there ever such a miser? To care if one carried off three grains
of gold in the dust on one's shoes. All the stories his sister told
were pure fictions and malice. His sister never meant him to marry;
his eating with them saved her at least four sous daily. But he did
not care whether they appeared on the twenty-ninth of July or not;
he could get along without them perfectly well.

But Gervaise, as she descended the staircase, felt her heart swell
with pain and fear. She did not like the strange shadows on the dimly
lit stairs. From behind the doors, now closed, came the heavy
breathing of sleepers who had gone to their beds on rising from the
table. A faint laugh was heard from one room, while a slender thread
of light filtered through the keyhole of the old lady who was still
busy with her dolls, cutting out the gauze dresses with squeaking
scissors. A child was crying on the next floor, and the smell from
the sinks was worse than ever and seemed something tangible amid this
silent darkness. Then in the courtyard, while Coupeau pulled the cord,
Gervaise turned and examined the house once more. It seemed enormous
as it stood black against the moonless sky. The gray facades rose tall
and spectral; the windows were all shut. No clothes fluttered in the
breeze; there was literally not the smallest look of life, except in
the few windows that were still lighted. From the damp corner of the
courtyard came the drip-drip of the fountain. Suddenly it seemed to
Gervaise as if the house were striding toward her and would crush her
to the earth. A moment later she smiled at her foolish fancy.

"Take care!" cried Coupeau.

And as she passed out of the courtyard she was compelled to jump over
a little sea which had run from the dyer's. This time the water was
blue, as blue as the summer sky, and the reflection of the lamps
carried by the concierge was like the stars themselves.




CHAPTER III
A MARRIAGE OF THE PEOPLE


Gervaise did not care for any great wedding. Why should they spend
their money so foolishly? Then, too, she felt a little ashamed and
did not care to parade their marriage before the whole _Quartier_.
But Coupeau objected. It would never do not to have some
festivities--a little drive and a supper, perhaps, at a restaurant;
he would ask for nothing more. He vowed that no one should drink too
much and finally obtained the young woman's consent and organized a
picnic at five francs per head at the Moulin d'Argent, Boulevard de
la Chapelle. He was a small wine merchant who had a garden back of
his restaurant. He made out a list. Among others appeared the names of
two of his comrades, Bibi-la-Grillade and Mes-Bottes. It was true that
Mes-Bottes crooked his elbow, but he was so deliciously funny that he
was always invited to picnics. Gervaise said she, in her turn, would
bring her employer, Mme Fauconnier--all told, there would be fifteen
at the table. That was quite enough.

Now as Coupeau was literally penniless, he borrowed fifty francs from
his employer. He first bought his wedding ring; it cost twelve francs
out of the shop, but his brother-in-law purchased it for him for nine
at the factory. He then ordered an overcoat, pantaloons and vest
from a tailor to whom he paid twenty-five francs on account. His
patent-leather shoes and his bolivar could last awhile longer. Then
he put aside his ten francs for the picnic, which was what he and
Gervaise must pay, and they had precisely six francs remaining, the
price of a Mass at the altar of the poor. He had no liking for those
black frocks, and it broke his heart to give these beloved francs
to them. But a marriage without a Mass, he had heard, was really
no marriage at all.

He went to the church to see if he could not drive a better bargain,
and for an hour he fought with a stout little priest in a dirty
soutane who, finally declaring that God could never bless such a
union, agreed that the Mass should cost only five francs. Thus Coupeau
had twenty sous in hand with which to begin the world!

Gervaise, in her turn, had made her preparations, had worked late
into the night and laid aside thirty francs. She had set her heart
on a silk mantelet marked thirteen francs, which she had seen in a
shopwindow. She paid for it and bought for ten francs from the husband
of a laundress who had died in Mme Fauconnier's house a delaine dress
of a deep blue, which she made over entirely. With the seven francs
that remained she bought a rose for her cap, a pair of white cotton
gloves and shoes for Claude. Fortunately both the boys had nice
blouses. She worked for four days mending and making; there was not
a hole or a rip in anything. At last the evening before the important
day arrived; Gervaise and Coupeau sat together and talked, happy that
matters were so nearly concluded. Their arrangements were all made.
They were to go to the mayor's office--the two sisters of Coupeau
declared they would remain at home, their presence not being necessary
there. Then Mother Coupeau began to weep, saying she wished to go
early and hide in a corner, and they promised to take her.

The hour fixed for the party to assemble at the Moulin d'Argent was
one o'clock sharp. From then they were to seek an appetite on the
Plaine-St-Denis and return by rail. Saturday morning, as he dressed,
Coupeau thought with some anxiety of his scanty funds; he supposed
he ought to offer a glass of wine and a slice of ham to his witnesses
while waiting for dinner; unexpected expenses might arise; no, it was
clear that twenty sous was not enough. He consequently, after taking
Claude and Etienne to Mlle Boche, who promised to appear with them at
dinner, ran to his brother-in-law and borrowed ten francs; he did it
with reluctance, and the words stuck in his throat, for he half
expected a refusal. Lorilleux grumbled and growled but finally lent
the money. But Coupeau heard his sister mutter under her breath,
"That is a good beginning."

The civil marriage was fixed for half-past ten. The day was clear and
the sun intensely hot. In order not to excite observation the bridal
pair, the mother and the four witnesses, separated--Gervaise walked
in front, having the arm of Lorilleux, while M. Madinier gave his
to Mamma Coupeau; on the opposite sidewalk were Coupeau, Boche and
Bibi-la-Grillade. These three wore black frock coats and walked with
their arms dangling from their rounded shoulders. Boche wore yellow
pantaloons. Bibi-la-Grillade's coat was buttoned to the chin, as he
had no vest, and a wisp of a cravat was tied around his neck.

M. Madinier was the only one who wore a dress coat, a superb coat
with square tails, and people stared as he passed with the stout Mamma
Coupeau in a green shawl and black bonnet with black ribbons. Gervaise
was very sweet and gentle, wearing her blue dress and her trim little
silk mantle. She listened graciously to Lorilleux, who, in spite of
the warmth of the day, was nearly lost in the ample folds of a loose
overcoat. Occasionally she would turn her head and glance across the
street with a little smile at Coupeau, who was none too comfortable
in his new clothes. They reached the mayor's office a half-hour too
early, and their turn was not reached until nearly eleven. They sat in
the corner of the office, stiff and uneasy, pushing back their chairs
a little out of politeness each time one of the clerks passed them,
and when the magistrate appeared they all rose respectfully. They were
bidden to sit down again, which they did, and were the spectators of
three marriages--the brides in white and the bridesmaids in pink and
blue, quite fine and stylish.

When their own turn came Bibi-la-Grillade had disappeared, and Boche
hunted him up in the square, where he had gone to smoke a pipe. All
the forms were so quickly completed that the party looked at each
other in dismay, feeling as if they had been defrauded of half the
ceremony. Gervaise listened with tears in her eyes, and the old lady
wept audibly.

Then they turned to the register and wrote their names in big, crooked
letters--all but the newly made husband, who, not being able to write,
contented himself with making a cross.

Then the clerk handed the certificate to Coupeau. He, admonished by
a touch of his wife's elbow, presented him with five sous.

It was quite a long walk from the mayor's office to the church. The
men stopped midway to take a glass of beer, and Gervaise and Mamma
Coupeau drank some cassis with water. There was not a particle of
shade, for the sun was directly above their heads. The beadle awaited
them in the empty church; he hurried them toward a small chapel,
asking them indignantly if they were not ashamed to mock at religion
by coming so late. A priest came toward them with an ashen face, faint
with hunger, preceded by a boy in a dirty surplice. He hurried through
the service, gabbling the Latin phrases with sidelong glances at the
bridal party. The bride and bridegroom knelt before the altar in
considerable embarrassment, not knowing when it was necessary to kneel
and when to stand and not always understanding the gestures made by
the clerk.

The witnesses thought it more convenient to stand all the time, while
Mamma Coupeau, overcome by her tears again, shed them on a prayer book
which she had borrowed from a neighbor.

It was high noon. The last Mass was said, and the church was noisy
with the movements of the sacristans, who were putting the chairs in
their places. The center altar was being prepared for some fete, for
the hammers were heard as the decorations were being nailed up. And in
the choking dust raised by the broom of the man who was sweeping the
corner of the small altar the priest laid his cold and withered hand
on the heads of Gervaise and Coupeau with a sulky air, as if he were
uniting them as a mere matter of business or to occupy the time
between the two Masses.

When the signatures were again affixed to the register in the vestry
and the party stood outside in the sunshine, they had a sensation as
if they had been driven at full speed and were glad to rest.

"I feel as if I had been at the dentist's. We had no time to cry out
before it was all over!"

"Yes," muttered Lorilleux, "they take less than five minutes to do
what can't be undone in all one's life! Poor Cadet-Cassis!"

Gervaise kissed her new mother with tears in her eyes but with smiling
lips. She answered the old woman gently:

"Do not be afraid. I will do my best to make him happy. If things turn
out ill it shall not be my fault."

The party went at once to the Moulin d'Argent. Coupeau now walked with
his wife some little distance in advance of the others. They whispered
and laughed together and seemed to see neither the people nor the
houses nor anything that was going on about them.

At the restaurant Coupeau ordered at once some bread and ham; then
seeing that Boche and Bibi-la-Grillade were really hungry, he ordered
more wine and more meat. His mother could eat nothing, and Gervaise,
who was dying of thirst, drank glass after glass of water barely
reddened with wine.

"This is my affair," said Coupeau, going to the counter where he paid
four francs, five sous.

The guests began to arrive. Mme Fauconnier, stout and handsome, was
the first. She wore a percale gown, ecru ground with bright figures,
a rose-colored cravat and a bonnet laden with flowers. Then came Mlle
Remanjon in her scanty black dress, which seemed so entirely a part
of herself that it was doubtful if she laid it aside at night. The
Gaudron household followed. The husband, enormously stout, looked as
if his vest would burst at the least movement, and his wife, who was
nearly as huge as himself, was dressed in a delicate shade of violet
which added to her apparent size.

"Ah," cried Mme Lerat as she entered, "we are going to have a
tremendous shower!" And she bade them all look out the window
to see how black the clouds were.

Mme Lerat, Coupeau's eldest sister, was a tall, thin woman, very
masculine in appearance and talking through her nose, wearing a
puce-colored dress that was much too loose for her. It was profusely
trimmed with fringe, which made her look like a lean dog just coming
out of the water. She brandished an umbrella as she talked, as if it
had been a walking stick. As she kissed Gervaise she said:

"You have no idea how the wind blows, and it is as hot as a blast
from a furnace!"

Everybody at once declared they had felt the storm coming all the
morning. Three days of extreme heat, someone said, always ended in
a gust.

"It will blow over," said Coupeau with an air of confidence, "but
I wish my sister would come, all the same."

Mme Lorilleux, in fact, was very late. Mme Lerat had called for her,
but she had not then begun to dress. "And," said the widow in her
brother's ear, "you never saw anything like the temper she was in!"

They waited another half-hour. The sky was growing blacker and
blacker. Clouds of dust were rising along the street, and down came
the rain. And it was in the first shower that Mme Lorilleux arrived,
out of temper and out of breath, struggling with her umbrella, which
she could not close.

"I had ten minds," she exclaimed, "to turn back. I wanted you to wait
until next Saturday. I knew it would rain today--I was certain of it!"

Coupeau tried to calm her, but she quickly snubbed him. Was it he, she
would like to know, who was to pay for her dress if it were spoiled?

She wore black silk, so tight that the buttonholes were burst out, and
it showed white on the shoulders,--while the skirt was so scant that
she could not take a long step.

The other women, however, looked at her silk with envy.

She took no notice of Gervaise, who sat by the side of her
mother-in-law. She called to Lorilleux and with his aid carefully
wiped every drop of rain from her dress with her handkerchief.

Meanwhile the shower ceased abruptly, but the storm was evidently not
over, for sharp flashes of lightning darted through the black clouds.

Suddenly the rain poured down again. The men stood in front of the
door with their hands in their pockets, dismally contemplating the
scene. The women crouched together with their hands over their eyes.
They were in such terror they could not talk; when the thunder was
heard farther off they all plucked up their spirits and became
impatient, but a fine rain was falling that looked interminable.

"What are we to do?" cried Mme Lorilleux crossly.

Then Mlle Remanjon timidly observed that the sun perhaps would soon
be out, and they might yet go into the country; upon this there was
one general shout of derision.

"Nice walking it would be! And how pleasant the grass would be to sit
upon!"

Something must be done, however, to get rid of the time until dinner.
Bibi-la-Grillade proposed cards; Mme Lerat suggested storytelling.
To each proposition a thousand objections were offered. Finally when
Lorilleux proposed that the party should visit the tomb of Abelard
and Heloise his wife's indignation burst forth.

She had dressed in her best only to be drenched in the rain and to
spend the day in a wineshop, it seemed! She had had enough of the
whole thing and she would go home. Coupeau and Lorilleux held the
door, she exclaiming violently:

"Let me go; I tell you I will go!"

Her husband having induced her to listen to reason, Coupeau went to
Gervaise, who was calmly conversing with her mother-in-law and Mme
Fauconnier.

"Have you nothing to propose?" he asked, not venturing to add any term
of endearment.

"No," she said with a smile, "but I am ready to do anything you wish.
I am very well suited as I am."

Her face was indeed as sunny as a morning in May. She spoke to
everyone kindly and sympathetically. During the storm she had sat
with her eyes riveted on the clouds, as if by the light of those
lurid flashes she was reading the solemn book of the future.

M. Madinier had proposed nothing; he stood leaning against the counter
with a pompous air; he spat upon the ground, wiped his mouth with the
back of his hand and rolled his eyes about.

"We could go to the Musee du Louvre, I suppose," and he smoothed his
chin while awaiting the effect of this proposition.

"There are antiquities there--statues, pictures, lots of things. It
is very instructive. Have any of you been there?" he asked.

They all looked at each other. Gervaise had never even heard of the
place, nor had Mme Fauconnier nor Boche. Coupeau thought he had been
there one Sunday, but he was not sure, but Mme Lorilleux, on whom
Madinier's air of importance had produced a profound impression,
approved of the idea. The day was wasted anyway; therefore, if a
little instruction could be got it would be well to try it. As
the rain was still falling, they borrowed old umbrellas of every
imaginable hue from the establishment and started forth for the
Musee du Louvre.

There were twelve of them, and they walked in couples, Mme Lorilleux
with Madinier, to whom she grumbled all the way.

"We know nothing about her," she said, "not even where he picked her
up. My husband has already lent them ten francs, and whoever heard of
a bride without a single relation? She said she had a sister in Paris.
Where is she today, I should like to know!"

She checked herself and pointed to Gervaise, whose lameness was very
perceptible as she descended the hill.

"Just look at her!" she muttered. "Wooden legs!"

This epithet was heard by Mme Fauconnier, who took up the cudgels for
Gervaise who, she said, was as neat as a pin and worked like a tiger.

The wedding party, coming out of La Rue St-Denis, crossed the
boulevard under their umbrellas amid the pouring rain, driving here
and there among the carriages. The drivers, as they pulled up their
horses, shouted to them to look out, with an oath. On the gray and
muddy sidewalk the procession was very conspicuous--the blue dress of
the bride, the canary-colored breeches of one of the men, Madinier's
square-tailed coat--all gave a carnivallike air to the group. But it
was the hats of the party that were the most amusing, for they were
of all heights, sizes and styles. The shopkeepers on the boulevard
crowded to their windows to enjoy the drollery of the sight.
The wedding procession, quite undisturbed by the observation it
excited, went gaily on. They stopped for a moment on the Place des
Victoires--the bride's shoestring was untied--she fastened it at the
foot of the statue of Louis XIV, her friends waiting as she did so.

Finally they reached the Louvre. Here Madinier politely asked
permission to take the head of the party; the place was so large,
he said, that it was a very easy thing to lose oneself; he knew the
prettiest rooms and the things best worth seeing, because he had
often been there with an artist, a very intelligent fellow, from
whom a great manufacturer of pasteboard boxes bought pictures.

The party entered the museum of Assyrian antiquities. They shivered
and walked about, examining the colossal statues, the gods in black
marble, strange beasts and monstrosities, half cats and half women.
This was not amusing, and an inscription in Phoenician characters
appalled them. Who on earth had ever read such stuff as that? It
was meaningless nonsense!

But Madinier shouted to them from the stairs, "Come on! That is
nothing! Much more interesting things up here, I assure you!"

The severe nudity of the great staircase cast a gloom over their
spirits; an usher in livery added to their awe, and it was with great
respect and on the tips of their toes they entered the French gallery.

How many statues! How many pictures! They wished they had all the
money they had cost.

In the Gallerie d'Apollon the floor excited their admiration; it was
smooth as glass; even the feet of the sofas were reflected in it.
Madinier bade them look at the ceiling and at its many beauties of
decoration, but they said they dared not look up. Then before entering
the Salon Carre he pointed to the window and said:

"That is the balcony where Charles IX fired on the people!"

With a magnificent gesture he ordered his party to stand still in the
center of the Salon Carre.

"There are only chefs-d'oeuvres here," he whispered as solemnly as if
he had been in a church.

They walked around the salon. Gervaise asked the meaning of one of
the pictures, the _Noces de Cana_; Coupeau stopped before _La
Joconde_, declaring that it was like one of his aunts.

Boche and Bibi-la-Grillade snickered and pushed each other at the
sight of the nude female figures, and the Gaudrons, husband and wife,
stood open-mouthed and deeply touched before Murillo's Virgin.

When they had been once around the room Madinier, who was quite
attentive to Mme Lorilleux on account of her silk gown, proposed
they should do it over again; it was well worth it, he said.

He never hesitated in replying to any question which she addressed
to him in her thirst for information, and when she stopped before
Titian's Mistress, whose yellow hair struck her as like her own, he
told her it was a mistress of Henri IV, who was the heroine of a play
then running at the Ambigu.

The wedding party finally entered the long gallery devoted to the
Italian and Flemish schools of art. The pictures were all meaningless
to them, and their heads were beginning to ache. They felt a thrill
of interest, however, in the copyists with their easels, who painted
without being disturbed by spectators. The artists scattered through
the rooms had heard that a primitive wedding party was making a tour
of the Louvre and hurried with laughing faces to enjoy the scene,
while the weary bride and bridegroom, accompanied by their friends,
clumsily moved about over the shining, resounding floors much like
cattle let loose and with quite as keen an appreciation of the
marvelous beauties about them.

The women vowed their backs were broken standing so long, and
Madinier, declaring he knew the way, said they would leave after he
had shown them a certain room to which he could go with his eyes shut.
But he was very much mistaken. Salon succeeded to salon, and finally
the party went up a flight of stairs and found themselves among
cannons and other instruments of war. Madinier, unwilling to confess
that he had lost himself, wandered distractedly about, declaring that
the doors had been changed. The party began to feel that they were
there for life, when suddenly to their great joy they heard the cry
of the janitors resounding from room to room.

"Time to close the doors!"

They meekly followed one of them, and when they were outside they
uttered a sigh of relief as they put up their umbrellas once more,
but one and all affected great pleasure at having been to the Louvre.

The clock struck four. There were two hours to dispose of before
dinner. The women would have liked to rest, but the men were more
energetic and proposed another walk, during which so tremendous a
shower fell that umbrellas were useless and dresses were irretrievably
ruined. Then M. Madinier suggested that they should ascend the column
on the Place Vendome.

"It is not a bad idea," cried the men. And the procession began the
ascent of the spiral staircase, which Boche said was so old that he
could feel it shake. This terrified the ladies, who uttered little
shrieks, but Coupeau said nothing; his arm was around his wife's
waist, and just as they emerged upon the platform he kissed her.

"Upon my word!" cried Mme Lorilleux, much scandalized.

Madinier again constituted himself master of ceremonies and pointed
out all the monuments, but Mme Fauconnier would not put her foot
outside the little door; she would not look down on that pavement for
all the world, she said, and the party soon tired of this amusement
and descended the stairs. At the foot Madinier wished to pay, but
Coupeau interfered and put into the hand of the guard twenty-four
sous--two for each person. It was now half-past five; they had just
time to get to the restaurant, but Coupeau proposed a glass of
vermouth first, and they entered a cabaret for that purpose.

When they returned to the Moulin d'Argent they found Mme Boche with
the two children, talking to Mamma Coupeau near the table, already
spread and waiting. When Gervaise saw Claude and Etienne she took
them both on her knees and kissed them lovingly.

"Have they been good?" she asked.

"I should think Coupeau would feel rather queer!" said Mme Lorilleux
as she looked on grimly.

Gervaise had been calm and smiling all day, but she had quietly
watched her husband with the Lorilleuxs. She thought Coupeau was
afraid of his sister--cowardly, in fact. The evening previous he had
said he did not care a sou for their opinion on any subject and that
they had the tongues of vipers, but now he was with them, he was like
a whipped hound, hung on their words and anticipated their wishes.
This troubled his wife, for it augured ill, she thought, for their
future happiness.

"We won't wait any longer for Mes-Bottes," cried Coupeau. "We are all
here but him, and his scent is good! Surely he can't be waiting for us
still at St-Denis!"

The guests, in good spirits once more, took their seats with a great
clatter of chairs.

Gervaise was between Lorilleux and Madinier, and Coupeau between Mme
Fauconnier and his sister Mme Lorilleux. The others seated themselves.

"No one has asked a blessing," said Boche as the ladies pulled the
tablecloth well over their skirts to protect them from spots.

But Mme Lorilleux frowned at this poor jest. The vermicelli soup,
which was cold and greasy, was eaten with noisy haste. Two
_garcons_ served them, wearing aprons of a very doubtful white
and greasy vests.

Through the four windows, open on the courtyard and its acacias,
streamed the light, soft and warm, after the storm. The trees, bathed
in the setting sun, imparted a cool, green tinge to the dingy room,
and the shadows of the waving branches and quivering leaves danced
over the cloth.

There were two fly-specked mirrors at either end of the room, which
indefinitely lengthened the table spread with thick china. Every time
the _garcons_ opened the door into the kitchen there came a strong
smell of burning fat.

"Don't let us all talk at once!" said Boche as a dead silence fell on
the room, broken by the abrupt entrance of Mes-Bottes.

"You are nice people!" he exclaimed. "I have been waiting for you
until I am wet through and have a fishpond in each pocket."

This struck the circle as the height of wit, and they all laughed
while he ordered the _garcon_ to and fro. He devoured three plates of
soup and enormous slices of bread. The head of the establishment came
and looked in in considerable anxiety; a laugh ran around the room.
Mes-Bottes recalled to their memories a day when he had eaten twelve
hard-boiled eggs and drunk twelve glasses of wine while the clock was
striking twelve.

There was a brief silence. A waiter placed on the table a rabbit stew
in a deep dish. Coupeau turned round.

"Say, boy, is that a gutter rabbit? It mews still."

And the low mewing of a cat seemed, indeed, to come from the dish.
This delicate joke was perpetrated by Coupeau in the throat, without
the smallest movement of his lips. This feat always met with such
success that he never ordered a meal anywhere without a rabbit stew.
The ladies wiped their eyes with their napkins because they laughed
so much.

Mme Fauconnier begged for the head--she adored the head--and Boche
asked especially for onions.

Mme Lerat compressed her lips and said morosely:

"Of course. I might have known that!"

Mme Lerat was a hard-working woman. No man had ever put his nose
within her door since her widowhood, and yet her instincts were
thoroughly bad; every word uttered by others bore to her ears a double
meaning, a coarse allusion sometimes so deeply veiled that no one but
herself could grasp its meaning.

Boche leaned over her with a sensual smile and entreated an
explanation. She shook her head.

"Of course," she repeated. "Onions! I knew it!"

Everybody was talking now, each of his own trade. Madinier declared
that boxmaking was an art, and he cited the New Year bonbon boxes as
wonders of luxury. Lorilleux talked of his chains, of their delicacy
and beauty. He said that in former times jewelers wore swords at their
sides. Coupeau described a weathercock made by one of his comrades out
of tin. Mme Lerat showed Bibi-la-Grillade how a rose stem was made by
rolling the handle of her knife between her bony fingers, and Mme
Fauconnier complained loudly of one of her apprentices who the night
before had badly scorched a pair of linen sheets.

"It is no use to talk!" cried Lorilleux, striking his fist on the
table. "Gold is gold!"

A profound silence followed the utterance of this truism, amid which
arose from the other end of the table the piping tones of Mlle
Remanjon's voice as she said:

"And then I sew on the skirt. I stick a pin in the head to hold on
the cap, and it is done. They sell for three cents."

She was describing her dolls to Mes-Bottes, whose jaws worked
steadily, like machinery.

He did not listen, but he nodded at intervals, with his eyes fixed
on the _garcons_ to see that they carried away no dishes that were
not emptied.

There had been veal cutlets and string beans served. As a _roti,_
two lean chickens on a bed of water cresses were brought in. The room
was growing very warm; the sun was lingering on the tops of the
acacias, but the room was growing dark. The men threw off their coats
and ate in their shirt sleeves.

"Mme Boche," cried Gervaise, "please don't let those children eat
so much."

But Mme Coupeau interposed and declared that for once in a while a
little fit of indigestion would do them no harm.

Mme Boche accused her husband of holding Mme Lerat's hand under the
table.

Madinier talked politics. He was a Republican, and Bibi-la-Grillade
and himself were soon in a hot discussion.

"Who cares," cried Coupeau, "whether we have a king, an emperor or
a president, so long as we earn our five francs per day!"

Lorilleux shook his head. He was born on the same day as the Comte de
Chambord, September 29, 1820, and this coincidence dwelt in his mind.
He seemed to feel that there was a certain connection between the
return of the king to France and his own personal fortunes. He did
not say distinctly what he expected, but it was clear that it was
something very agreeable.

The dessert was now on the table--a floating island flanked by two
plates of cheese and two of fruit. The floating island was a great
success. Mes-Bottes ate all the cheese and called for more bread. And
then as some of the custard was left in the dish, he pulled it toward
him and ate it as if it had been soup.

"How extraordinary!" said Madinier, filled with admiration.

The men rose to light their pipes and, as they passed Mes-Bottes,
asked him how he felt.

Bibi-la-Grillade lifted him from the floor, chair and all.

"Zounds!" he cried. "The fellow's weight has doubled!"

Coupeau declared his friend had only just begun his night's work,
that he would eat bread until dawn. The waiters, pale with fright,
disappeared. Boche went downstairs on a tour of inspection and
stated that the establishment was in a state of confusion, that the
proprietor, in consternation, had sent out to all the bakers in the
neighborhood, that the house, in fact, had an utterly ruined aspect.

"I should not like to take you to board," said Mme Gaudron.

"Let us have a punch," cried Mes-Bottes.

But Coupeau, seeing his wife's troubled face, interfered and said no
one should drink anything more. They had all had enough.

This declaration met with the approval of some of the party, but the
others sided with Mes-Bottes.

"Those who are thirsty are thirsty," he said. "No one need drink that
does not wish to do so, I am sure." And he added with a wink, "There
will be all the more for those who do!"

Then Coupeau said they would settle the account, and his friend could
do as he pleased afterward.

Alas! Mes-Bottes could produce only three francs; he had changed his
five-franc piece, and the remainder had melted away somehow on the
road from St-Denis. He handed over the three francs, and Coupeau,
greatly indignant, borrowed the other two from his brother-in-law,
who gave the money secretly, being afraid of his wife.

M. Madinier had taken a plate. The ladies each laid down their five
francs quietly and timidly, and then the men retreated to the other
end of the room and counted up the amount, and each man added to his
subscription five sous for the _garcon_.

But when M. Madinier sent for the proprietor the little assembly were
shocked at hearing him say that this was not all; there were "extras."

As this was received with exclamations of rage, he went into
explanations. He had furnished twenty-five liters of wine instead of
twenty, as he agreed. The floating island was an addition, on seeing
that the dessert was somewhat scanty, whereupon ensued a formidable
quarrel. Coupeau declared he would not pay a sou of the extras.

"There is your money," he said; "take it, and never again will one
of us step a foot under your roof!"

"I want six francs more," muttered the man.

The women gathered about in great indignation; not a centime would
they give, they declared.

Mme Fauconnier had had a wretched dinner; she said she could have had
a better one at home for forty sous. Such arrangements always turned
out badly, and Mme Gaudron declared aloud that if people wanted their
friends at their weddings they usually invited them out and out.

Gervaise took refuge with her mother-in-law in a distant window,
feeling heartily ashamed of the whole scene.

M. Madinier went downstairs with the man, and low mutterings of the
storm reached the party. At the end of a half-hour he reappeared,
having yielded to the extent of paying three francs, but no one was
satisfied, and they all began a discussion in regard to the extras.

The evening was spoiled, as was Mme Lerat's dress; there was no end
to the chapter of accidents.

"I know," cried Mme Lorilleux, "that the _garcon_ spilled gravy
from the chickens down my back." She twisted and turned herself
before the mirror until she succeeded in finding the spot.

"Yes, I knew it," she cried, "and he shall pay for it, as true as
I live. I wish I had remained at home!"

She left in a rage, and Lorilleux at her heels.

When Coupeau saw her go he was in actual consternation, and Gervaise
saw that it was best to make a move at once. Mme Boche had agreed to
keep the children with her for a day or two.

Coupeau and his wife hurried out in the hope of overtaking Mme
Lorilleux which they soon did. Lorilleux, with the kindly desire
of making all smooth said:

"We will go to your door with you."

"Your door, indeed!" cried his wife, and then pleasantly went on to
express her surprise that they did not postpone their marriage until
they had saved enough to buy a little furniture and move away from
that hole up under the roof.

"But I have given up that room," said her brother. "We shall have
the one Gervaise occupies; it is larger."

Mme Lorilleux forgot herself; she wheeled around suddenly.

"What!" she exclaimed. "You are going to live in Wooden Legs' room?"

Gervaise turned pale. This name she now heard for the first time,
and it was like a slap in the face. She heard much more in her
sister-in-law's exclamation than met the ear. That room to which
allusion was made was the one where she had lived with Lantier for a
whole month, where she had wept such bitter tears, but Coupeau did not
understand that; he was only wounded by the name applied to his wife.

"It is hardly wise of you," he said sullenly, "to nickname people
after that fashion, as perhaps you are not aware of what you are
called in your _Quartier_. Cow's-Tail is not a very nice name,
but they have given it to you on account of your hair. Why should
we not keep that room? It is a very good one."

Mme Lorilleux would not answer. Her dignity was sadly disturbed at
being called Cow's-Tail.

They walked on in silence until they reached the Hotel Boncœur, and
just as Coupeau gave the two women a push toward each other and bade
them kiss and be friends, a man who wished to pass them on the right
gave a violent lurch to the left and came between them.

"Look out!" cried Lorilleux. "It is Father Bazonge. He is pretty full
tonight."

Gervaise, in great terror, flew toward the door. Father Bazonge was
a man of fifty; his clothes were covered with mud where he had fallen
in the street.

"You need not be afraid," continued Lorilleux; "he will do you no
harm. He is a neighbor of ours--the third room on the left in our
corridor."

But Father Bazonge was talking to Gervaise. "I am not going to eat
you, little one," he said. "I have drunk too much, I know very well,
but when the work is done the machinery should be greased a little
now and then."

Gervaise retreated farther into the doorway and with difficulty kept
back a sob. She nervously entreated Coupeau to take the man away.

Bazonge staggered off, muttering as he did so:

"You won't mind it so much one of these days, my dear. I know
something about women. They make a great fuss, but they get used
to it all the same."




CHAPTER IV
A HAPPY HOME


Four years of hard and incessant toil followed this day. Gervaise and
Coupeau were wise and prudent. They worked hard and took a little
relaxation on Sundays. The wife worked twelve hours of the twenty-four
with Mme Fauconnier and yet found time to keep her own home like
waxwork. The husband was never known to be tipsy but brought home his
wages and smoked his pipe at his own window at night before going to
bed. They were the bright and shining lights, the good example of the
whole _Quartier_, and as they made jointly about nine francs per
day, it was easy to see they were putting by money.

But in the first few months of their married life they were obliged to
trim their sails closely and had some trouble to make both ends meet.
They took a great dislike to the Hotel Boncœur. They longed for a
home of their own with their own furniture. They estimated the cost
over and over again and decided that for three hundred and fifty
francs they could venture, but they had little hope of saving such a
sum in less than two years, when a stroke of good luck befell them.

An old gentleman in Plassans sent for Claude to place him at school.
He was a very eccentric old gentleman, fond of pictures and art.
Claude was a great expense to his mother, and when Etienne alone was
at home they saved the three hundred and fifty francs in seven months.
The day they purchased their furniture they took a long and happy walk
together, for it was an important step they had taken--important not
only in their own eyes but in those of the people around them.

For two months they had been looking for an apartment. They wished,
of all things, to take one in the old house where Mme Lorilleux
lived, but there was not one single room to be rented, and they were
compelled to relinquish the idea. Gervaise was reconciled to this more
easily, since she did not care to be thrown in any closer contact with
the Lorilleuxs. They looked further. It was essential that Gervaise
should be near her friend and employer Mme Fauconnier, and they
finally succeeded in their search and were indeed in wonderful luck,
for they obtained a large room with a kitchen and tiny bedroom just
opposite the establishment of the laundress. It was a small house,
two stories, with one steep staircase, and was divided into two
lodgings--the one on the right, the other on the left, while the
lower floor was occupied by a carriage maker.

Gervaise was delighted. It seemed to her that she was once more in the
country--no neighbors, no gossip, no interference--and from the place
where she stood and ironed all day at Mme Fauconnier's she could see
the windows of her own room.

They moved in the month of April. Gervaise was then near her
confinement, but it was she who cleaned and put in order her new home.
Every penny as of consequence, she said with pride, now that they
would soon have another other mouth to feed. She rubbed her furniture,
which was of old mahogany, good, but secondhand, until it shone like
glass and was quite brokenhearted when she discovered a scratch. She
held her breath if she knocked it when sweeping. The commode was her
especial pride; it was so dignified and stately. Her pet dream, which,
however, she kept to herself, was someday to have a clock to put
in the center of the marble slab. If there had not been a baby in
prospect she would have purchased this much-coveted article at once,
but she sighed and dismissed the thought.

Etienne's bed was placed in the tiny room, almost a closet, and there
was room for the cradle by its side. The kitchen was about as big as
one's hand and very dark, but by leaving the door open one could see
pretty well, and as Gervaise had no big dinners to get she managed
comfortably. The large room was her pride. In the morning the white
curtains of the alcove were drawn, and the bedroom was transformed
into a lovely dining room, with its table in the middle, the commode
and a wardrobe opposite each other. A tiny stove kept them warm in
cold weather for seven sous per day.

Coupeau ornamented the walls with several engravings--one of a marshal
of France on a spirited steed, with his baton in his hand. Above the
commode were the photographs of the family, arranged in two lines,
with an antique china _benitier_ between. On the corners of the
commode a bust of Pascal faced another of Beranger--one grave, the
other smiling. It was, indeed, a fair and pleasant home.

"How much do you think we pay here?" Gervaise would ask of each new
visitor.

And when too high an estimate was given she was charmed.

"One hundred and fifty francs--not a penny more," she would exclaim.
"Is it not wonderful?"

No small portion of the woman's satisfaction arose from an acacia
which grew in her courtyard, one of whose branches crossed her window,
and the scanty foliage was a whole wilderness to her.

Her baby was born one afternoon. She would not allow her husband to be
sent for, and when he came gaily into the room he was welcomed by his
pale wife, who whispered to him as he stooped over her:

"My dear, it is a girl."

"All right!" said the tinworker, jesting to hide his real emotion.
"I ordered a girl. You always do just what I want!"

He took up the child.

"Let us have a good look at you, young lady! The down on the top of
your head is pretty black, I think. Now you must never squall but be
as good and reasonable always as your papa and mamma."

Gervaise, with a faint smile and sad eyes, looked at her daughter. She
shook her head. She would have preferred a boy, because boys run less
risks in a place like Paris. The nurse took the baby from the father's
hands and told Gervaise she must not talk. Coupeau said he must go and
tell his mother and sister the news, but he was famished and must eat
something first. His wife was greatly disturbed at seeing him wait
upon himself, and she tossed about a little and complained that she
could not make him comfortable.

"You must be quiet," said the nurse again.

"It is lucky you are here, or she would be up and cutting my bread
for me," said Coupeau.

He finally set forth to announce the news to his family and returned
in an hour with them all.

The Lorilleuxs, under the influence of the prosperity of their brother
and his wife, had become extremely amiable toward them and only lifted
their eyebrows in a significant sort of way, as much as to say that
they could tell something if they pleased.

"You must not talk, you understand," said Coupeau, "but they would
come and take a peep at you, and I am going to make them some coffee."

He disappeared into the kitchen, and the women discussed the size of
the baby and whom it resembled. Meanwhile Coupeau was heard banging
round in the kitchen, and his wife nervously called out to him and
told him where the things were that he wanted, but her husband rose
superior to all difficulties and soon appeared with the smoking
coffeepot, and they all seated themselves around the table, except the
nurse, who drank a cup standing and then departed; all was going well,
and she was not needed. If she was wanted in the morning they could
send for her.

Gervaise lay with a faint smile on her lips. She only half heard what
was said by those about her. She had no strength to speak; it seemed
to her that she was dead. She heard the word baptism. Coupeau saw no
necessity for the ceremony and was quite sure, too, that the child
would take cold. In his opinion, the less one had to do with priests,
the better. His mother was horrified and called him a heathen, while
the Lorilleuxs claimed to be religious people also.

"It had better be on Sunday," said his sister in a decided tone, and
Gervaise consented with a little nod. Everybody kissed her and then
the baby, addressing it with tender epithets, as if it could
understand, and departed.

When Coupeau was alone with his wife he took her hand and held it
while he finished his pipe.

"I could not help their coming," he said, "but I am sure they have
given you the headache." And the rough, clumsy man kissed his wife
tenderly, moved by a great pity for all she had borne for his sake.

And Gervaise was very happy. She told him so and said her only anxiety
now was to be on her feet again as soon as possible, for they had
another mouth to feed. He soothed her and asked if she could not trust
him to look out for their little one.

In the morning when he went to his work he sent Mme Boche to spend the
day with his wife, who at night told him she never could consent to
lie still any longer and see a stranger going about her room, and the
next day she was up and would not be taken care of again. She had no
time for such nonsense! She said it would do for rich women but not
for her, and in another week she was at Mme Fauconnier's again at
work.

Mme Lorilleux, who was the baby's godmother, appeared on Saturday
evening with a cap and baptismal robe, which she had bought cheap
because they had lost their first freshness. The next day Lorilleux,
as godfather, gave Gervaise six pounds of sugar. They flattered
themselves they knew how to do things properly and that evening, at
the supper given by Coupeau, did not appear empty-handed. Lorilleux
came with a couple of bottles of wine under each arm, and his wife
brought a large custard which was a specialty of a certain restaurant.

Yes, they knew how to do things, these people, but they also liked
to tell of what they did, and they told everyone they saw in the next
month that they had spent twenty francs, which came to the ears of
Gervaise, who was none too well pleased.

It was at this supper that Gervaise became acquainted with her
neighbors on the other side of the house. These were Mme Goujet, a
widow, and her son. Up to this time they had exchanged a good morning
when they met on the stairs or in the street, but as Mme Goujet had
rendered some small services on the first day of her illness, Gervaise
invited them on the occasion of the baptism.

These people were from the _Department du Nond_. The mother
repaired laces, while the son, a blacksmith by trade, worked in
a factory.

They had lived in their present apartment for five years. Beneath the
peaceful calm of their lives lay a great sorrow. Goujet, the husband
and father, had killed a man in a fit of furious intoxication
and then, while in prison, had choked himself with his pocket
handkerchief. His widow and child left Lille after this and came to
Paris, with the weight of this tragedy on their hearts and heads, and
faced the future with indomitable courage and sweet patience. Perhaps
they were overproud and reserved, for they held themselves aloof
from those about them. Mme Goujet always wore mourning, and her pale,
serene face was encircled with nunlike bands of white. Goujet was a
colossus of twenty-three with a clear, fresh complexion and honest
eyes. At the manufactory he went by the name of the Gueule-d'Or on
account of his beautiful blond beard.

Gervaise took a great fancy to these people and when she first entered
their apartment and was charmed with the exquisite cleanliness of all
she saw. Mme Goujet opened the door into her son's room to show it
to her. It was as pretty and white as the chamber of a young girl.
A narrow iron bed, white curtains and quilt, a dressing table and
bookshelves made up the furniture. A few colored engravings were
pinned against the wall, and Mme Goujet said that her son was a good
deal of a boy still--he liked to look at pictures rather than read.
Gervaise sat for an hour with her neighbor, watching her at work with
her cushion, its numberless pins and the pretty lace.

The more she saw of her new friends the better Gervaise liked them.
They were frugal but not parsimonious. They were the admiration of
the neighborhood. Goujet was never seen with a hole or a spot on his
garments. He was very polite to all but a little diffident, in spite
of his height and broad shoulders. The girls in the street were much
amused to see him look away when they met him; he did not fancy their
ways--their forward boldness and loud laughs. One day he came home
tipsy. His mother uttered no word of reproach but brought out a
picture of his father which was piously preserved in her wardrobe. And
after that lesson Goujet drank no more liquor, though he conceived no
hatred for wine.

On Sunday he went out with his mother, who was his idol. He went to
her with all his troubles and with all his joys, as he had done when
little.

At first he took no interest in Gervaise, but after a while he began
to like her and treated her like a sister, with abrupt familiarity.

Cadet-Cassis, who was a thorough Parisian, thought Gueule-d'Or very
stupid. What was the sense of turning away from all the pretty girls
he met in the street? But this did not prevent the two young fellows
from liking each other very heartily.

For three years the lives of these people flowed tranquilly on
without an event. Gervaise had been elevated in the laundry where
she worked, had higher wages and decided to place Etienne at school.
Notwithstanding all her expenses of the household, they were able to
save twenty and thirty francs each month. When these savings amounted
to six hundred francs Gervaise could not rest, so tormented was she by
ambitious dreams. She wished to open a small establishment herself and
hire apprentices in her turn. She hesitated, naturally, to take the
definite steps and said they would look around for a shop that would
answer their purpose; their money in the savings bank was quietly
rolling up. She had bought her clock, the object of her ambition; it
was to be paid for in a year--so much each month. It was a wonderful
clock, rosewood with fluted columns and gilt moldings and pendulum.
She kept her bankbook under the glass shade, and often when she was
thinking of her shop she stood with her eyes fixed on the clock, as
if she were waiting for some especial and solemn moment.

The Coupeaus and the Goujets now went out on Sundays together. It was
an orderly party with a dinner at some quiet restaurant. The men drank
a glass or two of wine and came home with the ladies and counted up
and settled the expenditures of the day before they separated.
The Lorilleuxs were bitterly jealous of these new friends of their
brother's. They declared it had a very queer look to see him and his
wife always with strangers rather than with his own family, and Mme
Lorilleux began to say hateful things again of Gervaise. Mme Lerat,
on the contrary, took her part, while Mamma Coupeau tried to please
everyone.

The day that Nana--which was the pet name given to the little
girl--was three years old Coupeau, on coming in, found his wife in
a state of great excitement. She refused to give any explanation,
saying, in fact, there really was nothing the matter, but she finally
became so abstracted that she stood still with the plates in her hand
as she laid the table for dinner, and her husband insisted on an
explanation.

"If you must know," she said, "that little shop in La Rue de la
Goutte-d'Or is vacant. I heard so only an hour ago, and it struck
me all of a heap!"

It was a very nice shop in the very house of which they had so often
thought. There was the shop itself--a back room--and two others. They
were small, to be sure, but convenient and well arranged; only she
thought it dear--five hundred francs.

"You asked the price then?"

"Yes, I asked it just out of curiosity," she answered with an air of
indifference, "but it is too dear, decidedly too dear. It would be
unwise, I think, to take it."

But she could talk of nothing else the whole evening. She drew the
plan of the rooms on the margin of a newspaper, and as she talked she
measured the furniture, as if they were to move the next day. Then
Coupeau, seeing her great desire to have the place, declared he would
see the owner the next morning, for it was possible he would take less
than five hundred francs, but how would she like to live so near his
sister, whom she detested?

Gervaise was displeased at this and said she detested no one and even
defended the Lorilleuxs, declaring they were not so bad, after all.
And when Coupeau was asleep her busy brain was at work arranging the
rooms which as yet they had not decided to hire.

The next day when she was alone she lifted the shade from the clock
and opened her bankbook. Just to think that her shop and future
prosperity lay between those dirty leaves!

Before going to her work she consulted Mme Goujet, who approved of the
plan. With a husband like hers, who never drank, she could not fail
of success. At noon she called on her sister-in-law to ask her advice,
for she did not wish to have the air of concealing anything from the
family.

Mme Lorilleux was confounded. What, did Wooden Legs think of having
an establishment of her own? And with an envious heart she stammered
out that it would be very well, certainly, but when she had recovered
herself a little she began to talk of the dampness of the courtyard
and of the darkness of the _rez-de-chaussee_. Oh yes, it was a
capital place for rheumatism, but of course if her mind was made up
anything she could say would make no difference.

That night Gervaise told her husband that if he had thrown any
obstacles in the way of her taking the shop she believed she should
have fallen sick and died, so great was her longing. But before they
came to any decision they must see if a diminution of the rent could
be obtained.

"We can go tomorrow if you say so," was her husband's reply; "you can
call for me at six o'clock."

Coupeau was then completing the roof of a three-storied house and
was laying the very last sheets of zinc. It was May and a cloudless
evening. The sun was low in the horizon, and against the blue sky the
figure of Coupeau was clearly defined as he cut his zinc as quietly
as a tailor might have cut out a pair of breeches in his workshop. His
assistant, a lad of seventeen, was blowing up the furnace with a pair
of bellows, and at each puff a great cloud of sparks arose.

"Put in the irons, Zidore!" shouted Coupeau.

The boy thrust the irons among the coals which showed only a dull pink
in the sunlight and then went to work again with his bellows. Coupeau
took up his last sheet of zinc. It was to be placed on the edge of the
roof, near the gutter. Just at that spot the roof was very steep. The
man walked along in his list slippers much as if he had been at home,
whistling a popular melody. He allowed himself to slip a little and
caught at the chimney, calling to Zidore as he did so:

"Why in thunder don't you bring the irons? What are you staring at?"

But Zidore, quite undisturbed, continued to stare at a cloud of heavy
black smoke that was rising in the direction of Grenelle. He wondered
if it were a fire, but he crawled with the irons toward Coupeau, who
began to solder the zinc, supporting himself on the point of one foot
or by one finger, not rashly, but with calm deliberation and perfect
coolness. He knew what he could do and never lost his head. His pipe
was in his mouth, and he would occasionally turn to spit down into
the street below.

"Hallo, Madame Boche!" he cried as he suddenly caught sight of his
old friend crossing the street. "How are you today?"

She looked up, laughed, and a brisk conversation ensued between the
roof and the street. She stood with her hands under her apron and her
face turned up, while he, with one arm round a flue, leaned over the
side of the house.

"Have you seen my wife?" he asked.

"No indeed; is she anywhere round?"

"She is coming for me. Is everyone well with you?"

"Yes, all well, thanks. I am going to a butcher near here who sells
cheaper than up our way."

They raised their voices because a carriage was passing, and this
brought to a neighboring window a little old woman, who stood in
breathless horror, expecting to see the man fall from the roof in
another minute.

"Well, good night," cried Mme Boche. "I must not detain you from your
work."

Coupeau turned and took the iron Zidore held out to him. At the same
moment Mme Boche saw Gervaise coming toward her with little Nana
trotting at her side. She looked up to the roof to tell Coupeau, but
Gervaise closed her lips with an energetic signal, and then as she
reached the old concierge she said in a low voice that she was always
in deadly terror that her husband would fall. She never dared look at
him when he was in such places.

"It is not very agreeable, I admit," answered Mme Boche. "My man is
a tailor, and I am spared all this."

"At first," continued Gervaise, "I had not a moment's peace. I saw
him in my dreams on a litter, but now I have got accustomed to it
somewhat."

She looked up, keeping Nana behind her skirts, lest the child should
call out and startle her father, who was at that moment on the extreme
edge. She saw the soldering iron and the tiny flame that rose as he
carefully passed it along the edges of the zinc. Gervaise, pale with
suspense and fear, raised her hands mechanically with a gesture of
supplication. Coupeau ascended the steep roof with a slow step, then
glancing down, he beheld his wife.

"You are watching me, are you?" he cried gaily. "Ah, Madame Boche, is
she not a silly one? She was afraid to speak to me. Wait ten minutes,
will you?"

The two women stood on the sidewalk, having as much as they could do
to restrain Nana, who insisted on fishing in the gutter.

The old woman still stood at the window, looking up at the roof and
waiting.

"Just see her," said Mme Boche. "What is she looking at?"

Coupeau was heard lustily singing; with the aid of a pair of compasses
he had drawn some lines and now proceeded to cut a large fan; this he
adroitly, with his tools, folded into the shape of a pointed mushroom.
Zidore was again heating the irons. The sun was setting just behind
the house, and the whole western sky was flushed with rose, fading
to a soft violet, and against this sky the figures of the two men,
immeasurably exaggerated, stood clearly out, as well as the strange
form of the zinc which Coupeau was then manipulating.

"Zidore! The irons!"

But Zidore was not to be seen. His master, with an oath, shouted down
the scuttle window which was open near by and finally discovered him
two houses off. The boy was taking a walk, apparently, with his scanty
blond hair blowing all about his head.

"Do you think you are in the country?" cried Coupeau in a fury. "You
are another Beranger, perhaps--composing verses! Will you have the
kindness to give me my irons? Whoever heard the like? Give me my
irons, I say!"

The irons hissed as he applied them, and he called to Gervaise:

"I am coming!"

The chimney to which he had fitted this cap was in the center of the
roof. Gervaise stood watching him, soothed by his calm self-possession.
Nana clapped her little hands.

"Papa! Papa!" she cried. "Look!"

The father turned; his foot slipped; he rolled down the roof slowly,
unable to catch at anything.

"Good God!" he said in a choked voice, and he fell; his body turned
over twice and crashed into the middle of the street with the dull
thud of a bundle of wet linen.

Gervaise stood still. A shriek was frozen on her lips. Mme Boche
snatched Nana in her arms and hid her head that she might not see,
and the little old woman opposite, who seemed to have waited for this
scene in the drama, quietly closed her windows.

Four men bore Coupeau to a druggist's at the corner, where he lay for
an hour while a litter was sent for from the Hospital Lariboisière.
He was breathing still, but that was all. Gervaise knelt at his side,
hysterically sobbing. Every minute or two, in spite of the prohibition
of the druggist, she touched him to see if he were still warm. When
the litter arrived and they spoke of the hospital, she started up,
saying violently:

"No--no! Not to the hospital--to our own home."

In vain did they tell her that the expenses would be very great if
she nursed him at home.

"No--no!" she said. "I will show them the way. He is my husband,
is he not? And I will take care of him myself."

And Coupeau was carried home, and as the litter was borne through the
_Quartier_ the women crowded together and extolled Gervaise. She
was a little lame, to be sure, but she was very energetic, and she
would save her man.

Mme Boche took Nana home and then went about among her friends to tell
the story with interminable details.

"I saw him fall," she said. "It was all because of the child; he was
going to speak to her, when down he went. Good lord! I trust I may
never see such another sight."

For a week Coupeau's life hung on a thread. His family and his friends
expected to see him die from one hour to another. The physician, an
experienced physician whose every visit cost five francs, talked of
a lesion, and that word was in itself very terrifying to all but
Gervaise, who, pale from her vigils but calm and resolute, shrugged
her shoulders and would not allow herself to be discouraged. Her man's
leg was broken; that she knew very well, "but he need not die for
that!" And she watched at his side night and day, forgetting her
children and her home and everything but him.

On the ninth day, when the physician told her he would recover,
she dropped, half fainting, on a chair, and at night she slept for
a couple of hours with her head on the foot of his bed.

This accident to Coupeau brought all his family about him. His mother
spent the nights there, but she slept in her chair quite comfortably.
Mme Lerat came in every evening after work was over to make inquiries.

The Lorilleuxs at first came three or four times each day and brought
an armchair for Gervaise, but soon quarrels and discussions arose as
to the proper way of nursing the invalid, and Mme Lorilleux lost her
temper and declared that had Gervaise stayed at home and not gone to
pester her husband when he was at work the accident would not have
happened.

When she saw Coupeau out of danger Gervaise allowed his family to
approach him as they saw fit. His convalescence would be a matter of
months. This again was a ground of indignation for Mme Lorilleux.

"What nonsense it was," she said, "for Gervaise to take him home! Had
he gone to the hospital he would have recovered as quickly again."

And then she made a calculation of what these four months would cost:
First, there was the time lost, then the physician, the medicines,
the wines and finally the meat for beef tea. Yes, it would be a pretty
sum, to be sure! If they got through it on their savings they would
do well, but she believed that the end would be that they would find
themselves head over heels in debt, and they need expect no assistance
from his family, for none of them was rich enough to pay for sickness
at home!

One evening Mme Lorilleux was malicious enough to say:

"And your shop, when do you take it? The concierge is waiting to know
what you mean to do."

Gervaise gasped. She had utterly forgotten the shop. She saw the
delight of these people when they believed that this plan was given
up, and from that day they never lost an occasion of twitting her on
her dream that had toppled over like a house of cards, and she grew
morbid and fancied they were pleased at the accident to their brother
which had prevented the realization of their plans.

She tried to laugh and to show them she did not grudge the money that
had been expended in the restoration of her husband's health. She did
not withdraw all her savings from the bank at once, for she had a
vague hope that some miracle would intervene which would render the
sacrifice unnecessary.

Was it not a great comfort, she said to herself and to her enemies,
for as such she had begun to regard the Lorilleuxs, that she had this
money now to turn to in this emergency?

Her neighbors next door had been very kind and thoughtful to Gervaise
all through her trouble and the illness of her husband.

Mme Goujet never went out without coming to inquire if there was
anything she could do, any commission she could execute. She brought
innumerable bowls of soup and, even when Gervaise was particularly
busy, washed her dishes for her. Goujet filled her buckets every
morning with fresh water, and this was an economy of at least two
sous, and in the evening came to sit with Coupeau. He did not say
much, but his companionship cheered and comforted the invalid. He
was tender and compassionate and was thrilled by the sweetness of
Gervaise's voice when she spoke to her husband. Never had he seen such
a brave, good woman; he did not believe she sat in her chair fifteen
minutes in the whole day. She was never tired, never out of temper,
and the young man grew very fond of the poor woman as he watched her.

His mother had found a wife for him. A girl whose trade was the same
as her own, a lace mender, and as he did not wish to go contrary to
her desires he consented that the marriage should take place in
September.

But when Gervaise spoke of his future he shook his head.

"All women are not like you, Madame Coupeau," he said. "If they were
I should like ten wives."

At the end of two months Coupeau was on his feet again and could
move--with difficulty, of course--as far as the window, where he sat
with his leg on a chair. The poor fellow was sadly shaken by his
accident. He was no philosopher, and he swore from morning until
night. He said he knew every crack in the ceiling. When he was
installed in his armchair it was little better. How long, he asked
impatiently, was he expected to sit there swathed like a mummy? And
he cursed his ill luck. His accident was a cursed shame. If his head
had been disturbed by drink it would have been different, but he was
always sober, and this was the result. He saw no sense in the whole
thing!

"My father," he said, "broke his neck. I don't say he deserved it,
but I do say there was a reason for it. But I had not drunk a drop,
and yet over I went, just because I spoke to my child! If there be
a Father in heaven, as they say, who watches over us all, I must say
He manages things strangely enough sometimes!"

And as his strength returned his trade grew strangely distasteful to
him. It was a miserable business, he said, roaming along gutters like
a cat. In his opinion there should be a law which should compel every
houseowner to tin his own roof. He wished he knew some other trade he
could follow, something that was less dangerous.

For two months more Coupeau walked with a crutch and after a while
was able to get into the street and then to the outer boulevard, where
he sat on a bench in the sun. His gaiety returned; he laughed again
and enjoyed doing nothing. For the first time in his life he felt
thoroughly lazy, and indolence seemed to have taken possession of his
whole being. When he got rid of his crutches he sauntered about and
watched the buildings which were in the process of construction in the
vicinity, and he jested with the men and indulged himself in a general
abuse of work. Of course he intended to begin again as soon as he
was quite well, but at present the mere thought made him feel ill,
he said.

In the afternoons Coupeau often went to his sister's apartment;
she expressed a great deal of compassion for him and showed every
attention. When he was first married he had escaped from her
influence, thanks to his affection for his wife and hers for him.
Now he fell under her thumb again; they brought him back by declaring
that he lived in mortal terror of his wife. But the Lorilleuxs were
too wise to disparage her openly; on the contrary, they praised her
extravagantly, and he told his wife that they adored her and begged
her, in her turn, to be just to them.

The first quarrel in their home arose on the subject of Etienne.
Coupeau had been with his sister. He came in late and found the
children fretting for their dinner. He cuffed Etienne's ears, bade him
hold his tongue and scolded for an hour. He was sure he did not know
why he let that boy stay in the house; he was none of his; until that
day he had accepted the child as a matter of course.

Three days after this he gave the boy a kick, and it was not long
before the child, when he heard him coming, ran into the Goujets',
where there was always a corner at the table for him.

Gervaise had long since resumed her work. She no longer lifted the
globe of her clock to take out her bankbook; her savings were all
gone, and it was necessary to count the sous pretty closely, for there
were four mouths to feed, and they were all dependent on the work of
her two hands. When anyone found fault with Coupeau and blamed him
she always took his part.

"Think how much he has suffered," she said with tears in her eyes.
"Think of the shock to his nerves! Who can wonder that he is a little
sour? Wait awhile, though, until he is perfectly well, and you will
see that his temper will be as sweet as it ever was."

And if anyone ventured to observe that he seemed quite well and that
he ought to go to work she would exclaim:

"No indeed, not yet. It would never do." She did not want him down in
his bed again. She knew what the doctor had said, and she every day
begged him to take his own time. She even slipped a little silver,
into his vest pocket. All this Coupeau accepted as a matter of course.
He complained of all sorts of pains and aches to gain a little longer
period of indolence and at the end of six months had begun to look
upon himself as a confirmed invalid.

He almost daily dropped into a wineshop with a friend; it was a place
where he could chat a little, and where was the harm? Besides, whoever
heard of a glass of wine killing a man? But he swore to himself that
he would never touch anything but wine--not a drop of brandy should
pass his lips. Wine was good for one--prolonged one's life, aided
digestion--but brandy was a very different matter. Notwithstanding all
these wise resolutions, it came to pass more than once that he came
in, after visiting a dozen different cabarets, decidedly tipsy. On
these occasions Gervaise locked her doors and declared she was ill,
to prevent the Goujets from seeing her husband.

The poor woman was growing very sad. Every night and morning she
passed the shop for which she had so ardently longed. She made her
calculations over and over again until her brain was dizzy. Two
hundred and fifty francs for rent, one hundred and fifty for moving
and the apparatus she needed, one hundred francs to keep things going
until business began to come in. No, it could not be done under five
hundred francs.

She said nothing of this to anyone, deterred only by the fear of
seeming to regret the money she had spent for her husband during his
illness. She was pale and dispirited at the thought that she must work
five years at least before she could save that much money.

One evening Gervaise was alone. Goujet entered, took a chair in
silence and looked at her as he smoked his pipe. He seemed to be
revolving something in his mind. Suddenly he took his pipe from his
mouth.

"Madame Gervaise," he said, "will you allow me to lend you the money
you require?"

She was kneeling at a drawer, laying some towels in a neat pile. She
started up, red with surprise. He had seen her standing that very
morning for a good ten minutes, looking at the shop, so absorbed that
she had not seen him pass.

She refused his offer, however. No, she could never borrow money when
she did not know how she could return it, and when he insisted she
replied:

"But your marriage? This is the money you have saved for that."

"Don't worry on that account," he said with a heightened color. "I
shall not marry. It was an idea of my mother's, and I prefer to lend
you the money."

They looked away from each other. Their friendship had a certain
element of tenderness which each silently recognized.

Gervaise accepted finally and went with Goujet to see his mother, whom
he had informed of his intentions. They found her somewhat sad, with
her serene, pale face bent over her work. She did not wish to thwart
her son, but she no longer approved of the plan, and she told Gervaise
why. With kind frankness she pointed out to her that Coupeau had
fallen into evil habits and was living on her labors and would in
all probability continue to do so. The truth was that Mme Goujet
had not forgiven Coupeau for refusing to read during all his long
convalescence; this and many other things had alienated her and her
son from him, but they had in no degree lost their interest in
Gervaise.

Finally it was agreed she should have five hundred francs and should
return the money by paying each month twenty francs on account.

"Well, well!" cried Coupeau as he heard of this financial transaction.
"We are in luck. There is no danger with us, to be sure, but if he
were dealing with knaves he might never see hide or hair of his cash
again!"

The next day the shop was taken, and Gervaise ran about with such
a light heart that there was a rumor that she had been cured of her
lameness by an operation.




CHAPTER V
AMBITIOUS DREAMS


The Boche couple, on the first of April, moved also and took the loge
of the great house in the Rue de la Goutte-d'Or. Things had turned out
very nicely for Gervaise who, having always got on very comfortably
with the concierge in the house in Rue Neuve, dreaded lest she should
fall into the power of some tyrant who would quarrel over every drop
of water that was spilled and a thousand other trifles like that. But
with Mme Boche all would go smoothly.

The day the lease was to be signed and Gervaise stood in her new home
her heart swelled with joy. She was finally to live in that house like
a small town, with its intersecting corridors instead of streets.

She felt a strange timidity--a dread of failure--when she found
herself face to face with her enterprise. The struggle for bread was a
terrible and an increasing one, and it seemed to her for a moment that
she had been guilty of a wild, foolhardy act, like throwing herself
into the jaws of a machine, for the planes in the cabinetmaker's shop
and the hammers in the locksmith's were dimly grasped by her as a part
of a great whole.

The water that ran past the door that day from the dyer's was pale
green. She smiled as she stepped over it, accepting this color as a
happy augury. She, with her husband, entered the loge, where Mme Boche
and the owner of the building, M. Marescot, were talking on business.

Gervaise, with a thrill of pain, heard Boche advise the landlord to
turn out the dressmaker on the third floor who was behindhand with her
rent. She wondered if she would ever be turned out and then wondered
again at the attitude assumed by these Boche people, who did not seem
to have ever seen her before. They had eyes and ears only for the
landlord, who shook hands with his new tenants but, when they spoke
of repairs, professed to be in such haste that morning that it would
be necessary to postpone the discussion. They reminded him of certain
verbal promises he had made, and finally he consented to examine the
premises.

The shop stood with its four bare walls and blackened ceiling. The
tenant who had been there had taken away his own counters and cases.
A furious discussion took place. M. Marescot said it was for them
to embellish the shop.

"That may be," said Gervaise gently, "but surely you cannot call
putting on a fresh paper, instead of this that hangs in strips, an
embellishment. Whitening the curbing, too, comes under, the head of
necessary repairs." She only required these two things.

Finally Marescot, with a desperate air, plunged his hands deep in his
pockets, shrugged his shoulders and gave his consent to the repairs on
the ceiling and to the paper, on condition that she would pay for half
the paper, and then he hurried away.

When he had departed Boche clapped Coupeau on the shoulder. "You may
thank me for that!" he cried and then went on to say that he was the
real master of the house, that he settled the whole business of the
establishment, and it was a nod and look from him that had influenced
M. Marescot. That evening Gervaise, considering themselves in debt to
Boche, sent him some wine.

In four days the shop should have been ready for them, but the repairs
hung on for three weeks. At first they intended simply to have the
paint scrubbed, but it was so shabby and worn that Gervaise repainted
at her own expense. Coupeau went every morning, not to work, but to
inspect operations, and Boche dropped the vest or pantaloons on which
he was working and gave the benefit of his advice, and the two men
spent the whole day smoking and spitting and arguing over each stroke
of the brush. Some days the painters did not appear at all; on others
they came and walked off in an hour's time, not to return again.

Poor Gervaise wrung her hands in despair. But finally, after two days
of energetic labor, the whole thing was done, and the men walked off
with their ladders, singing lustily.

Then came the moving, and finally Gervaise called herself settled in
her new home and was pleased as a child. As she came up the street
she could see her sign afar off:

  CLEAR STARCHER
  LACES AND EMBROIDERIES
  DONE UP WITH ESPECIAL CARE

The two first words were painted in large yellow letters on a pale blue
ground.

In the recessed window shut in at the back by muslin curtains lay
men's shirts, delicate handkerchiefs and cuffs; all these were on
blue paper, and Gervaise was charmed. When she entered the door all
was blue there; the paper represented a golden trellis and blue
morning-glories. In the center was a huge table draped with
blue-bordered cretonne to hide the trestles.

Gervaise seated herself and looked round, happy in the cleanliness of
all about her. Her first glance, however, was directed to her stove,
a sort of furnace whereon ten irons could be heated at once. It was a
source of constant anxiety lest her little apprentice should fill it
too full of coal and so injure it.

Behind the shop was her bedroom and her kitchen, from which a door
opened into the court. Nana's bed stood in a little room at the right,
and Etienne was compelled to share his with the baskets of soiled
clothes. It was all very well, except that the place was very damp
and that it was dark by three o'clock in the afternoon in winter.

The new shop created a great excitement in the neighborhood. Some
people declared that the Coupeaus were on the road to ruin; they
had, in fact, spent the whole five hundred francs and were penniless,
contrary to their intentions. The morning that Gervaise first took
down her shutters she had only six francs in the world, but she was
not troubled, and at the end of a week she told her husband after two
hours of abstruse calculations that they had taken in enough to cover
their expenses.

The Lorilleuxs were in a state of rage, and one morning when the
apprentice was emptying, on the sly, a bowl of starch which she had
burned in making, just as Mme Lorilleux was passing, she rushed in and
accused her sister-in-law of insulting her. After this all friendly
relations were at an end.

"It all looks very strange to me," sniffed Mme Lorilleux. "I can't
tell where the money comes from, but I have my suspicions." And she
went on to intimate that Gervaise and Goujet were altogether too
intimate. This was the groundwork of many fables; she said Wooden Legs
was so mild and sweet that she had deceived her to the extent that
she had consented to become Nana's godmother, which had been no small
expense, but now things were very different. If Gervaise were dying
and asked her for a glass of water she would not give it. She could
not stand such people. As to Nana, it was different; they would
always receive her. The child, of course, was not responsible for her
mother's crimes. Coupeau should take a more decided stand and not put
up with his wife's vile conduct.

Boche and his wife sat in judgment on the quarrel and gave as their
opinion that the Lorilleuxs were much to blame. They were good
tenants, of course. They paid regularly. "But," added Mme Boche, "I
never could abide jealousy. They are mean people and were never known
to offer a glass of wine to a friend."

Mother Coupeau visited her son and daughter successive days, listened
to the tales of each and said never a word in reply.

Gervaise lived a busy life and took no notice of all this foolish
gossip and strife. She greeted her friends with a smile from the door
of her shop, where she went for a breath of fresh air. All the people
in the neighborhood liked her and would have called her a great beauty
but for her lameness. She was twenty-eight and had grown plump. She
moved more slowly, and when she took a chair to wait for her irons
to heat she rose with reluctance. She was growing fond of good
living--that she herself admitted--but she did not regard it as a
fault. She worked hard and had a right to good food. Why should she
live on potato parings? Sometimes she worked all night when she had
a great deal of work on hand.

She did the washing for the whole house and for some Parisian ladies
and had several apprentices, besides two laundresses. She was making
money hand over fist, and her good luck would have turned a wiser head
than her own. But hers was not turned; she was gentle and sweet and
hated no one except her sister-in-law. She judged everybody kindly,
particularly after she had eaten a good breakfast. When people called
her good she laughed. Why should she not be good? She had seen all her
dreams realized. She remembered what she once said--that she wanted to
work hard, have plenty to eat, a home to herself, where she could
bring up her children, not be beaten and die in her bed! As to dying
in her bed, she added she wanted that still, but she would put it off
as long as possible, "if you please!" It was to Coupeau himself that
Gervaise was especially sweet. Never a cross or an impatient word had
he heard from her lips, and no one had ever known her complain of him
behind his back. He had finally resumed his trade, and as the shop
where he worked was at the other end of Paris, she gave him every
morning forty sous for his breakfast, his wine and tobacco. Two days
out of six, however, Coupeau would meet a friend, drink up his forty
sous and return to breakfast. Once, indeed, he sent a note, saying
that his account at the cabaret exceeded his forty sous. He was in
pledge, as it were; would his wife send the money? She laughed and
shrugged her shoulders. Where was the harm in her husband's amusing
himself a little? A woman must give a man a long rope if she wished
to live in peace and comfort. It was not far from words to blows--she
knew that very well.

The hot weather had come. One afternoon in June the ten irons were
heating on the stove; the door was open into the street, but not a
breath of air came in.

"What a melting day!" said Gervaise, who was stooping over a great
bowl of starch. She had rolled up her sleeves and taken off her sack
and stood in her chemise and white skirt; the soft hair in her neck
was curling on her white throat. She dipped each cuff in the starch,
the fronts of the shirts and the whole of the skirts. Then she rolled
up the pieces tightly and placed them neatly in a square basket after
having sprinkled with clear water all those portions which were not
starched.

"This basket is for you, Madame Putois," she said, "and you will have
to hurry, for they dry so fast in this weather."

Mine Putois was a thin little woman who looked cool and comfortable
in her tightly buttoned dress. She had not taken her cap off but stood
at the table, moving her irons to and fro with the regularity of an
automaton. Suddenly she exclaimed:

"Put on your sack, Clemence; there are three men looking in, and I
don't like such things."

Clemence grumbled and growled. What did she care what she liked? She
could not and would not roast to suit anybody.

"Clemence, put on your sack," said Gervaise. "Madame Putois is
right--it is not proper."

Clemence muttered but obeyed and consoled herself by giving the
apprentice, who was ironing hose and towels by her side, a little
push. Gervaise had a cap belonging to Mme Boche in her hand and was
ironing the crown with a round ball, when a tall, bony woman came in.
She was a laundress.

"You have come too soon, Madame Bijard!" cried Gervaise. "I said
tonight. It is very inconvenient for me to attend to you at this
hour." At the same time, however, Gervaise amiably laid down her work
and went for the dirty clothes, which she piled up in the back shop.
It took the two women nearly an hour to sort them and mark them with
a stitch of colored cotton.

At this moment Coupeau entered.

"By Jove!" he said. "The sun beats down on one's head like a hammer."
He caught at the table to sustain himself; he had been drinking; a
spider web had caught in his dark hair, where many a white thread
was apparent. His under jaw dropped a little, and his smile was good
natured but silly.

Gervaise asked her husband if he had seen the Lorilleuxs in rather
a severe tone; when he said no she smiled at him without a word of
reproach.

"You had best go and lie down," she said pleasantly. "We are very
busy, and you are in our way. Did I say thirty-two handkerchiefs,
Madame Bijard? Here are two more; that makes thirty-four."

But Coupeau was not sleepy, and he preferred to remain where he was.
Gervaise called Clemence and bade her to count the linen while she
made out the list. She glanced at each piece as she wrote. She knew
many of them by the color. That pillow slip belonged to Mme Boche
because it was stained with the pomade she always used, and so on
through the whole. Gervaise was seated with these piles of soiled
linen about her. Augustine, whose great delight was to fill up the
stove, had done so now, and it was red hot. Coupeau leaned toward
Gervaise.

"Kiss me," he said. "You are a good woman."

As he spoke he gave a sudden lurch and fell among the skirts.

"Do take care," said Gervaise impatiently. "You will get them all
mixed again." And she gave him a little push with her foot, whereat
all the other women cried out.

"He is not like most men," said Mme Putois; "they generally wish to
beat you when they come in like this."

Gervaise already regretted her momentary vexation and assisted her
husband to his feet and then turned her cheek to him with a smile,
but he put his arm round her and kissed her neck. She pushed him
aside with a laugh.

"You ought to be ashamed!" she said but yielded to his embrace, and
the long kiss they exchanged before these people, amid the sickening
odor of the soiled linen and the alcoholic fumes of his breath, was
the first downward step in the slow descent of their degradation.

Mme Bijard tied up the linen and staggered off under their weight
while Gervaise turned back to finish her cap. Alas! The stove and the
irons were alike red hot; she must wait a quarter of an hour before
she could touch the irons, and Gervaise covered the fire with a couple
of shovelfuls of cinders. She then hung a sheet before the window to
keep out the sun. Coupeau took a place in the corner, refusing to
budge an inch, and his wife and all her assistants went to work on
each side of the square table. Each woman had at her right a flat
brick on which to set her iron. In the center of the table a dish of
water with a rag and a brush in it and also a bunch of tall lilies
in a broken jar.

Mme Putois had attacked the basket of linen prepared by Gervaise, and
Augustine was ironing her towels, with her nose in the air, deeply
interested in a fly that was buzzing about. As to Clemence, she was
polishing off her thirty-fifth shirt; as she boasted of this great
feat Coupeau staggered toward her.

"Madame," she called, "please keep him away; he will bother me, and
I shall scorch my shirt."

"Let her be," said Gervaise without any especial energy. "We are in
a great hurry today!"

Well, that was not his fault; he did not mean to touch the girl;
he only wanted to see what she was about.

"Really," said his wife, looking up from her fluting iron, "I think
you had best go to bed."

He began to talk again.

"You need not make such a fuss, Clemence; it is only because these
women are here, and--"

But he could say no more; Gervaise quietly laid one hand on his mouth
and the other on his shoulder and pushed him toward his room. He
struggled a little and with a silly laugh asked if Clemence was not
coming too.

Gervaise undressed her husband and tucked him up in bed as if he had
been a child and then returned to her fluting irons in time to still
a grand dispute that was going on about an iron that had not been
properly cleaned.

In the profound silence that followed her appearance she could hear
her husband's thick voice:

"What a silly wife I've got! The idea of putting me to bed in broad
daylight!"

Suddenly he began to snore, and Gervaise uttered a sigh of relief.
She used her fluting iron for a minute and then said quietly:

"There is no need of being offended by anything a man does when he
is in this state. He is not an accountable being. He did not intend
to insult you. Clemence, you know what a tipsy man is--he respects
neither father nor mother."

She uttered these words in an indifferent, matter-of-fact way, not in
the least disturbed that he had forgotten the respect due to her and
to her roof and really seeing no harm in his conduct.

The work now went steadily on, and Gervaise calculated they would
be finished by eleven o'clock. The heat was intense; the smell of
charcoal deadened the air, while the branch of white lilies slowly
faded and filled the room with their sweetness.

The day after all this Coupeau had a frightful headache and did not
rise until late, too late to go to his work. About noon he began to
feel better, and toward evening was quite himself. His wife gave him
some silver and told him to go out and take the air, which meant with
him taking some wine.

One glass washed down another, but he came home as gay as a lark and
quite disgusted with the men he had seen who were drinking themselves
to death.

"Where is your lover?" he said to his wife as he entered the shop.
This was his favorite joke. "I never see him nowadays and must hunt
him up."

He meant Goujet, who came but rarely, lest the gossips in the
neighborhood should take it upon themselves to gabble. Once in about
ten days he made his appearance in the evening and installed himself
in a corner in the back shop with his pipe. He rarely spoke but
laughed at all Gervaise said.

On Saturday evenings the establishment was kept open half the night. A
lamp hung from the ceiling with the light thrown down by a shade. The
shutters were put up at the usual time, but as the nights were very
warm the door was left open, and as the hours wore on the women pulled
their jackets open a little more at the throat, and he sat in his
corner and looked on as if he were at a theater.

The silence of the street was broken by a passing carriage. Two
o'clock struck--no longer a sound from outside. At half-past two a
man hurried past the door, carrying with him a vision of flying arms,
piles of white linen and a glow of yellow light.

Goujet, wishing to save Etienne from Coupeau's rough treatment, had
taken him to the place where he was employed to blow the bellows, with
the prospect of becoming an apprentice as soon as he was old enough,
and Etienne thus became another tie between the clearstarcher and the
blacksmith.

All their little world laughed and told Gervaise that her friend
worshiped the very ground she trod upon. She colored and looked like
a girl of sixteen.

"Dear boy," she said to herself, "I know he loves me, but never has
he said or will he say a word of the kind to me!" And she was proud
of being loved in this way. When she was disturbed about anything her
first thought was to go to him. When by chance they were left alone
together they were never disturbed by wondering if their friendship
verged on love. There was no harm in such affection.

Nana was now six years old and a most troublesome little sprite. Her
mother took her every morning to a school in the Rue Polonceau, to
a certain Mlle Josse. Here she did all manner of mischief. She put
ashes into the teacher's snuffbox, pinned the skirts of her companions
together. Twice the young lady was sent home in disgrace and then
taken back again for the sake of the six francs each month. As soon as
school hours were over Nana revenged herself for the hours of enforced
quiet she had passed by making the most frightful din in the courtyard
and the shop.

She found able allies in Pauline and Victor Boche. The whole great
house resounded with the most extraordinary noises--the thumps of
children falling downstairs, little feet tearing up one staircase
and down another and bursting out on the sidewalk like a band of
pilfering, impudent sparrows.

Mme Gaudron alone had nine--dirty, unwashed and unkempt, their
stockings hanging over their shoes and the slits in their garments
showing the white skin beneath. Another woman on the fifth floor had
seven, and they came out in twos and threes from all the rooms. Nana
reigned over this band, among which there were some half grown and
others mere infants. Her prime ministers were Pauline and Victor;
to them she delegated a little of her authority while she played
mamma, undressed the youngest only to dress them again, cuffed them
and punished them at her own sweet will and with the most fantastic
disposition. The band pranced and waded through the gutter that ran
from the dyehouse and emerged with blue or green legs. Nana decorated
herself and the others with shavings from the cabinetmaker's, which
they stole from under the very noses of the workmen.

The courtyard belonged to all of these children, apparently, and
resounded with the clatter of their heels. Sometimes this courtyard,
however, was not enough for them, and they spread in every direction
to the infinite disgust of Mme Boche, who grumbled all in vain. Boche
declared that the children of the poor were as plentiful as mushrooms
on a dung heap, and his wife threatened them with her broom.

One day there was a terrible scene. Nana had invented a beautiful
game. She had stolen a wooden shoe belonging to Mme Boche; she bored
a hole in it and put in a string, by which she could draw it like a
cart. Victor filled it with apple parings, and they started forth in
a procession, Nana drawing the shoe in front, followed by the whole
flock, little and big, an imp about the height of a cigar box at the
end. They all sang a melancholy ditty full of "ahs" and "ohs." Nana
declared this to be always the custom at funerals.

"What on earth are they doing now?" murmured Mme Boche suspiciously,
and then she came to the door and peered out.

"Good heavens!" she cried. "It is my shoe they have got."

She slapped Nana, cuffed Pauline and shook Victor. Gervaise was
filling a bucket at the fountain, and when she saw Nana with her nose
bleeding she rushed toward the concierge and asked how she dared
strike her child.

The concierge replied that anyone who had a child like that had
best keep her under lock and key. The end of this was, of course,
a complete break between the old friends.

But, in fact, the quarrel had been growing for a month. Gervaise,
generous by nature and knowing the tastes of the Boche people, was
in the habit of making them constant presents--oranges, a little
hot soup, a cake or something of the kind. One evening, knowing that
the concierge would sell her soul for a good salad, she took her
the remains of a dish of beets and chicory. The next day she was
dumfounded at hearing from Mlle Remanjon how Mme Boche had thrown the
salad away, saying that she was not yet reduced to eating the leavings
of other people! From that day forth Gervaise sent her nothing more.
The Boches had learned to look on her little offerings as their right,
and they now felt themselves to be robbed by the Coupeaus.

It was not long before Gervaise realized she had made a mistake, for
when she was one day late with her October rent Mme Boche complained
to the proprietor, who came blustering to her shop with his hat on.
Of course, too, the Lorilleuxs extended the right hand of fellowship
at once to the Boche people.

There came a day, however, when Gervaise found it necessary to call on
the Lorilleuxs. It was on Mamma Coupeau's account, who was sixty-seven
years old, nearly blind and helpless. They must all unite in doing
something for her now. Gervaise thought it a burning shame that a
woman of her age, with three well-to-do children, should be allowed
for a moment to regard herself as friendless and forsaken. And as her
husband refused to speak to his sister, Gervaise said she would.

She entered the room like a whirlwind, without knocking. Everything
was just as it was on that night when she had been received by them
in a fashion which she had never forgotten or forgiven. "I have come,"
cried Gervaise, "and I dare say you wish to know why, particularly
as we are at daggers drawn. Well then, I have come on Mamma Coupeau's
account. I have come to ask if we are to allow her to beg her bread
fro

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