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L'Assommoir

by Émile Zola · English · Gutenberg #8600 · 890,204 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: L'Assommoir

Author: Émile Zola


        
Release date: April 27, 2006 [eBook #8600]
                Most recently updated: September 15, 2022

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8600

Credits: John Bickers, Dagny and David Widger


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




L'ASSOMMOIR

By Émile Zola


CONTENTS

 CHAPTER I.
 CHAPTER II.
 CHAPTER III.
 CHAPTER IV.
 CHAPTER V.
 CHAPTER VI.
 CHAPTER VII.
 CHAPTER VIII
 CHAPTER IX
 CHAPTER X
 CHAPTER XI
 CHAPTER XII
 CHAPTER XIII




CHAPTER I.


Gervaise had waited up for Lantier until two in the morning. Then,
shivering from having remained in a thin loose jacket, exposed to the
fresh air at the window, she had thrown herself across the bed, drowsy,
feverish, and her cheeks bathed in tears.

For a week past, on leaving the “Two-Headed Calf,” where they took
their meals, he had sent her home with the children and never
reappeared himself till late at night, alleging that he had been in
search of work. That evening, while watching for his return, she
thought she had seen him enter the dancing-hall of the “Grand-Balcony,”
the ten blazing windows of which lighted up with the glare of a
conflagration the dark expanse of the exterior Boulevards; and five or
six paces behind him, she had caught sight of little Adele, a
burnisher, who dined at the same restaurant, swinging her hands, as if
she had just quitted his arm so as not to pass together under the
dazzling light of the globes at the door.

When, towards five o’clock, Gervaise awoke, stiff and sore, she broke
forth into sobs. Lantier had not returned. For the first time he had
slept away from home. She remained seated on the edge of the bed, under
the strip of faded chintz, which hung from the rod fastened to the
ceiling by a piece of string. And slowly, with her eyes veiled by
tears, she glanced round the wretched lodging, furnished with a walnut
chest of drawers, minus one drawer, three rush-bottomed chairs, and a
little greasy table, on which stood a broken water-jug. There had been
added, for the children, an iron bedstead, which prevented any one
getting to the chest of drawers, and filled two-thirds of the room.
Gervaise’s and Lantier’s trunk, wide open, in one corner, displayed its
emptiness, and a man’s old hat right at the bottom almost buried
beneath some dirty shirts and socks; whilst, against the walls, above
the articles of furniture, hung a shawl full of holes, and a pair of
trousers begrimed with mud, the last rags which the dealers in
second-hand clothes declined to buy. In the centre of the mantel-piece,
lying between two odd zinc candle-sticks, was a bundle of pink
pawn-tickets. It was the best room of the hotel, the first floor room,
looking on to the Boulevard.

The two children were sleeping side by side, with their heads on the
same pillow. Claude, aged eight years, was breathing quietly, with his
little hands thrown outside the coverlet; while Etienne, only four
years old, was smiling, with one arm round his brother’s neck. And
bare-footed, without thinking to again put on the old shoes that had
fallen on the floor, she resumed her position at the window, her eyes
searching the pavements in the distance.

The hotel was situated on the Boulevard de la Chapelle, to the left of
the Barriere Poissonniere. It was a building of two stories high,
painted a red, of the color of wine dregs, up to the second floor, and
with shutters all rotted by the rain. Over a lamp with starred panes of
glass, one could manage to read, between the two windows, the words,
“Hotel Boncoeur, kept by Marsoullier,” painted in big yellow letters,
several pieces of which the moldering of the plaster had carried away.
The lamp preventing her seeing, Gervaise raised herself on tiptoe,
still holding the handkerchief to her lips. She looked to the right,
towards the Boulevard Rochechouart, where groups of butchers, in aprons
smeared with blood, were hanging about in front of the
slaughter-houses; and the fresh breeze wafted occasionally a stench of
slaughtered beasts. Looking to the left, she scanned a long avenue that
ended nearly in front of her, where the white mass of the Lariboisiere
Hospital was then in course of construction. Slowly, from one end of
the horizon to the other, she followed the octroi wall, behind which
she sometimes heard, during night time, the shrieks of persons being
murdered; and she searchingly looked into the remote angles, the dark
corners, black with humidity and filth, fearing to discern there
Lantier’s body, stabbed to death.

She looked at the endless gray wall that surrounded the city with its
belt of desolation. When she raised her eyes higher, she became aware
of a bright burst of sunlight. The dull hum of the city’s awakening
already filled the air. Craning her neck to look at the Poissonniere
gate, she remained for a time watching the constant stream of men,
horses, and carts which flooded down from the heights of Montmartre and
La Chapelle, pouring between the two squat octroi lodges. It was like a
herd of plodding cattle, an endless throng widened by sudden stoppages
into eddies that spilled off the sidewalks into the street, a steady
procession of laborers on their way back to work with tools slung over
their back and a loaf of bread under their arm. This human inundation
kept pouring down into Paris to be constantly swallowed up. Gervaise
leaned further out at the risk of falling when she thought she
recognized Lantier among the throng. She pressed the handkerchief
tighter against her mouth, as though to push back the pain within her.

The sound of a young and cheerful voice caused her to leave the window.

“So the old man isn’t here, Madame Lantier?”

“Why, no, Monsieur Coupeau,” she replied, trying to smile.

Coupeau, a zinc-worker who occupied a ten franc room on the top floor,
having seen the door unlocked, had walked in as friends will do.

“You know,” he continued, “I’m now working over there in the hospital.
What beautiful May weather, isn’t it? The air is rather sharp this
morning.”

And he looked at Gervaise’s face, red with weeping. When he saw that
the bed had not been slept in, he shook his head gently; then he went
to the children’s couch where they were sleeping, looking as rosy as
cherubs, and, lowering his voice, he said,

“Come, the old man’s not been home, has he? Don’t worry yourself,
Madame Lantier. He’s very much occupied with politics. When they were
voting for Eugene Sue the other day, he was acting almost crazy. He has
very likely spent the night with some friends blackguarding crapulous
Bonaparte.”

“No, no,” she murmured with an effort. “You don’t think that. I know
where Lantier is. You see, we have our little troubles like the rest of
the world!”

Coupeau winked his eye, to indicate he was not a dupe of this
falsehood; and he went off, after offering to fetch her milk, if she
did not care to go out: she was a good and courageous woman, and might
count upon him on any day of trouble.

As soon as he was gone, Gervaise again returned to the window. At the
Barriere, the tramp of the drove still continued in the morning air:
locksmiths in short blue blouses, masons in white jackets, house
painters in overcoats over long smocks. From a distance the crowd
looked like a chalky smear of neutral hue composed chiefly of faded
blue and dingy gray. When one of the workers occasionally stopped to
light his pipe the others kept plodding past him, without sparing a
laugh or a word to a comrade. With cheeks gray as clay, their eyes were
continually drawn toward Paris which was swallowing them one by one.

At both corners of the Rue des Poissonniers however, some of the men
slackened their pace as they neared the doors of the two wine-dealers
who were taking down their shutters; and, before entering, they stood
on the edge of the pavement, looking sideways over Paris, with no
strength in their arms and already inclined for a day of idleness.
Inside various groups were already buying rounds of drinks, or just
standing around, forgetting their troubles, crowding up the place,
coughing, spitting, clearing their throats with sip after sip.

Gervaise was watching Pere Colombe’s wineshop to the left of the
street, where she thought she had seen Lantier, when a stout woman,
bareheaded and wearing an apron called to her from the middle of the
roadway:

“Hey, Madame Lantier, you’re up very early!”

Gervaise leaned out. “Why! It’s you, Madame Boche! Oh! I’ve got a lot
of work to-day!”

“Yes, things don’t do themselves, do they?”

The conversation continued between roadway and window. Madame Boche was
concierge of the building where the “Two-Headed Calf” was on the ground
floor. Gervaise had waited for Lantier more than once in the
concierge’s lodge, so as not to be alone at table with all the men who
ate at the restaurant. Madame Boche was going to a tailor who was late
in mending an overcoat for her husband. She mentioned one of her
tenants who had come in with a woman the night before and kept
everybody awake past three in the morning. She looked at Gervaise with
intense curiosity.

“Is Monsieur Lantier, then, still in bed?” she asked abruptly.

“Yes, he’s asleep,” replied Gervaise, who could not avoid blushing.

Madame Boche saw the tears come into her eyes; and, satisfied no doubt,
she turned to go, declaring men to be a cursed, lazy set. As she went
off, she called back:

“It’s this morning you go to the wash-house, isn’t it? I’ve something
to wash, too. I’ll keep you a place next to me, and we can chat
together.” Then, as if moved with sudden pity, she added:

“My poor little thing, you had far better not remain there; you’ll take
harm. You look quite blue with cold.”

Gervaise still obstinately remained at the window during two mortal
hours, till eight o’clock. Now all the shops had opened. Only a few
work men were still hurrying along.

The working girls now filled the boulevard: metal polishers, milliners,
flower sellers, shivering in their thin clothing. In small groups they
chattered gaily, laughing and glancing here and there. Occasionally
there would be one girl by herself, thin, pale, serious-faced, picking
her way along the city wall among the puddles and the filth.

After the working girls, the office clerks came past, breathing upon
their chilled fingers and munching penny rolls. Some of them are gaunt
young fellows in ill-fitting suits, their tired eyes still fogged from
sleep. Others are older men, stooped and tottering, with faces pale and
drawn from long hours of office work and glancing nervously at their
watches for fear of arriving late.

In time the Boulevards settle into their usual morning quiet. Old folks
come out to stroll in the sun. Tired young mothers in bedraggled skirts
cuddle babies in their arms or sit on a bench to change diapers.
Children run, squealing and laughing, pushing and shoving.

Then Gervaise felt herself choking, dizzy with anguish, all hopes gone;
it seemed to her that everything was ended, even time itself, and that
Lantier would return no more. Her eyes vacantly wandered from the old
slaughter-house, foul with butchery and with stench, to the new white
hospital which, through the yawning openings of its ranges of windows,
disclosed the naked wards, where death was preparing to mow. In front
of her on the other side of the octroi wall the bright heavens dazzled
her, with the rising sun which rose higher and higher over the vast
awaking city.

The young woman was seated on a chair, no longer crying, and with her
hands abandoned on her lap, when Lantier quietly entered the room.

“It’s you! It’s you!” she cried, rising to throw herself upon his neck.

“Yes, it’s me. What of it?” he replied. “You are not going to begin any
of your nonsense, I hope!”

He had pushed her aside. Then, with a gesture of ill-humor he threw his
black felt hat to the chest of drawers. He was a young fellow of
twenty-six years of age, short and very dark, with a handsome figure,
and slight moustaches which his hand was always mechanically twirling.
He wore a workman’s overalls and an old soiled overcoat, which he had
belted tightly at the waist, and he spoke with a strong Provencal
accent.

Gervaise, who had fallen back on her chair, gently complained, in short
sentences: “I’ve not had a wink of sleep. I feared some harm had
happened to you. Where have you been? Where did you spend the night?
For heaven’s sake! Don’t do it again, or I shall go crazy. Tell me
Auguste, where have you been?”

“Where I had business, of course,” he returned shrugging his shoulders.
“At eight o’clock, I was at La Glaciere, with my friend who is to start
a hat factory. We sat talking late, so I preferred to sleep there. Now,
you know, I don’t like being spied upon, so just shut up!”

The young woman recommenced sobbing. The loud voices and the rough
movements of Lantier, who upset the chairs, had awakened the children.
They sat up in bed, half naked, disentangling their hair with their
tiny hands, and, hearing their mother weep, they uttered terrible
screams, crying also with their scarcely open eyes.

“Ah! there’s the music!” shouted Lantier furiously. “I warn you, I’ll
take my hook! And it will be for good, this time. You won’t shut up?
Then, good morning! I’ll return to the place I’ve just come from.”

He had already taken his hat from off the chest of drawers. But
Gervaise threw herself before him, stammering: “No, no!”

And she hushed the little ones’ tears with her caresses, smoothed their
hair, and soothed them with soft words. The children, suddenly quieted,
laughing on their pillow, amused themselves by punching each other. The
father however, without even taking off his boots, had thrown himself
on the bed looking worn out, his face bearing signs of having been up
all night. He did not go to sleep, he lay with his eyes wide open,
looking round the room.

“It’s a mess here!” he muttered. And after observing Gervaise a moment,
he malignantly added: “Don’t you even wash yourself now?”

Gervaise was twenty-two, tall and slim with fine features, but she was
already beginning to show the strain of her hard life. She seemed to
have aged ten years from the hours of agonized weeping. Lantier’s mean
remark made her mad.

“You’re not fair,” she said spiritedly. “You well know I do all I can.
It’s not my fault we find ourselves here. I would like to see you, with
two children, in a room where there’s not even a stove to heat some
water. When we arrived in Paris, instead of squandering your money, you
should have made a home for us at once, as you promised.”

“Listen!” Lantier exploded. “You cracked the nut with me; it doesn’t
become you to sneer at it now!”

Apparently not listening, Gervaise went on with her own thought. “If we
work hard we can get out of the hole we’re in. Madame Fauconnier, the
laundress on Rue Neuve, will start me on Monday. If you work with your
friend from La Glaciere, in six months we will be doing well. We’ll
have enough for decent clothes and a place we can call our own. But
we’ll have to stick with it and work hard.”

Lantier turned over towards the wall, looking greatly bored. Then
Gervaise lost her temper.

“Yes, that’s it, I know the love of work doesn’t trouble you much.
You’re bursting with ambition, you want to be dressed like a gentleman.
You don’t think me nice enough, do you, now that you’ve made me pawn
all my dresses? Listen, Auguste, I didn’t intend to speak of it, I
would have waited a bit longer, but I know where you spent the night; I
saw you enter the ‘Grand-Balcony’ with that trollop Adele. Ah! you
choose them well! She’s a nice one, she is! She does well to put on the
airs of a princess! She’s been the ridicule of every man who frequents
the restaurant.”

At a bound Lantier sprang from the bed. His eyes had become as black as
ink in his pale face. With this little man, rage blew like a tempest.

“Yes, yes, of every man who frequents the restaurant!” repeated the
young woman. “Madame Boche intends to give them notice, she and her
long stick of a sister, because they’ve always a string of men after
them on the staircase.”

Lantier raised his fists; then, resisting the desire of striking her,
he seized hold of her by the arms, shook her violently and sent her
sprawling upon the bed of the children, who recommenced crying. And he
lay down again, mumbling, like a man resolving on something that he
previously hesitated to do:

“You don’t know what you’ve done, Gervaise. You’ve made a big mistake;
you’ll see.”

For an instant the children continued sobbing. Their mother, who
remained bending over the bed, held them both in her embrace, and kept
repeating the same words in a monotonous tone of voice.

“Ah! if it weren’t for you! My poor little ones! If it weren’t for you!
If it weren’t for you!”

Stretched out quietly, his eyes raised to the faded strip of chintz,
Lantier no longer listened, but seemed to be buried in a fixed idea. He
remained thus for nearly an hour, without giving way to sleep, in spite
of the fatigue which weighed his eyelids down.

He finally turned toward Gervaise, his face set hard in determination.
She had gotten the children up and dressed and had almost finished
cleaning the room. The room looked, as always, dark and depressing with
its sooty black ceiling and paper peeling from the damp walls. The
dilapidated furniture was always streaked and dirty despite frequent
dustings. Gervaise, devouring her grief, trying to assume a look of
indifference, hurried over her work.

Lantier watched as she tidied her hair in front of the small mirror
hanging near the window. While she washed herself he looked at her bare
arms and shoulders. He seemed to be making comparisons in his mind as
his lips formed a grimace. Gervaise limped with her right leg, though
it was scarcely noticeable except when she was tired. To-day, exhausted
from remaining awake all night, she was supporting herself against the
wall and dragging her leg.

Neither one spoke, they had nothing more to say. Lantier seemed to be
waiting, while Gervaise kept busy and tried to keep her countenance
expressionless. Finally, while she was making a bundle of the dirty
clothes thrown in a corner, behind the trunk, he at length opened his
lips and asked:

“What are you doing there? Where are you going?”

She did not answer at first. Then, when he furiously repeated his
question, she made up her mind, and said:

“I suppose you can see for yourself. I’m going to wash all this. The
children can’t live in filth.”

He let her pick up two or three handkerchiefs. And, after a fresh
pause, he resumed: “Have you got any money?”

At these words she stood up and looked him full in the face, without
leaving go of the children’s dirty clothes, which she held in her hand.

“Money! And where do you think I can have stolen any? You know well
enough that I got three francs the day before yesterday on my black
skirt. We’ve lunched twice off it, and money goes quick at the
pork-butcher’s. No, you may be quite sure I’ve no money. I’ve four sous
for the wash-house. I don’t have an extra income like some women.”

He let this allusion pass. He had moved off the bed, and was passing in
review the few rags hanging about the room. He ended by taking up the
pair of trousers and the shawl, and searching the drawers, he added two
chemises and a woman’s loose jacket to the parcel; then, he threw the
whole bundle into Gervaise’s arms, saying:

“Here, go and pop this.”

“Don’t you want me to pop the children as well?” asked she. “Eh! If
they lent on children, it would be a fine riddance!”

She went to the pawn-place, however. When she returned at the end of
half an hour, she laid a hundred sou piece on the mantel-shelf, and
added the ticket to the others, between the two candlesticks.

“That’s what they gave me,” said she. “I wanted six francs, but I
couldn’t manage it. Oh! they’ll never ruin themselves. And there’s
always such a crowd there!”

Lantier did not pick up the five franc piece directly. He would rather
that she got change, so as to leave her some of it. But he decided to
slip it into his waistcoat pocket, when he noticed a small piece of ham
wrapped up in paper, and the remains of a loaf on the chest of drawers.

“I didn’t dare go to the milkwoman’s, because we owe her a week,”
explained Gervaise. “But I shall be back early; you can get some bread
and some chops whilst I’m away, and then we’ll have lunch. Bring also a
bottle of wine.”

He did not say no. Their quarrel seemed to be forgotten. The young
woman was completing her bundle of dirty clothes. But when she went to
take Lantier’s shirts and socks from the bottom of the trunk, he called
to her to leave them alone.

“Leave my things, d’ye hear? I don’t want ’em touched!”

“What’s it you don’t want touched?” she asked, rising up. “I suppose
you don’t mean to put these filthy things on again, do you? They must
be washed.”

She studied his boyishly handsome face, now so rigid that it seemed
nothing could ever soften it. He angrily grabbed his things from her
and threw them back into the trunk, saying:

“Just obey me, for once! I tell you I won’t have ’em touched!”

“But why?” she asked, turning pale, a terrible suspicion crossing her
mind. “You don’t need your shirts now, you’re not going away. What can
it matter to you if I take them?”

He hesitated for an instant, embarrassed by the piercing glance she
fixed upon him. “Why—why—” stammered he, “because you go and tell
everyone that you keep me, that you wash and mend. Well! It worries me,
there! Attend to your own business and I’ll attend to mine, washerwomen
don’t work for dogs.”

She supplicated, she protested she had never complained; but he roughly
closed the trunk and sat down upon it, saying, “No!” to her face. He
could surely do as he liked with what belonged to him! Then, to escape
from the inquiring looks she leveled at him, he went and laid down on
the bed again, saying that he was sleepy, and requesting her not to
make his head ache with any more of her row. This time indeed, he
seemed to fall asleep. Gervaise, for a while, remained undecided. She
was tempted to kick the bundle of dirty clothes on one side, and to sit
down and sew. But Lantier’s regular breathing ended by reassuring her.
She took the ball of blue and the piece of soap remaining from her last
washing, and going up to the little ones who were quietly playing with
some old corks in front of the window, she kissed them, and said in a
low voice:

“Be very good, don’t make any noise; papa’s asleep.”

When she left the room, Claude’s and Etienne’s gentle laughter alone
disturbed the great silence beneath the blackened ceiling. It was ten
o’clock. A ray of sunshine entered by the half open window.

On the Boulevard, Gervaise turned to the left, and followed the Rue
Neuve de la Goutte-d’Or. As she passed Madame Fauconnier’s shop, she
slightly bowed her head. The wash-house she was bound for was situated
towards the middle of the street, at the part where the roadway
commenced to ascend.

The rounded, gray contours of the three large zinc wash tanks, studded
with rivets, rose above the flat-roofed building. Behind them was the
drying room, a high second story, closed in on all sides by
narrow-slatted lattices so that the air could circulate freely, and
through which laundry could be seen hanging on brass wires. The steam
engine’s smokestack exhaled puffs of white smoke to the right of the
water tanks.

Gervaise was used to puddles and did not bother to tuck her skirts up
before making her way through the doorway, which was cluttered with
jars of bleaching water. She was already acquainted with the mistress
of the wash-house, a delicate little woman with red, inflamed eyes, who
sat in a small glazed closet with account books in front of her, bars
of soap on shelves, balls of blue in glass bowls, and pounds of soda
done up in packets; and, as she passed, she asked for her beetle and
her scouring-brush, which she had left to be taken care of the last
time she had done her washing there. Then, after obtaining her number,
she entered the wash-house.

It was an immense shed, with large clear windows, and a flat ceiling,
showing the beams supported on cast-iron pillars. Pale rays of light
passed through the hot steam, which remained suspended like a milky
fog. Smoke arose from certain corners, spreading about and covering the
recesses with a bluish veil. A heavy moisture hung around, impregnated
with a soapy odor, a damp insipid smell, continuous though at moments
overpowered by the more potent fumes of the chemicals. Along the
washing-places, on either side of the central alley, were rows of
women, with bare arms and necks, and skirts tucked up, showing colored
stockings and heavy lace-up shoes. They were beating furiously,
laughing, leaning back to call out a word in the midst of the din, or
stooping over their tubs, all of them brutal, ungainly, foul of speech,
and soaked as though by a shower, with their flesh red and reeking.

All around the women continuously flowed a river from hot-water buckets
emptied with a sudden splash, cold-water faucets left dripping, soap
suds spattering, and the dripping from rinsed laundry which was hung
up. It splashed their feet and drained away across the sloping
flagstones. The din of the shouting and the rhythmic beating was joined
by the patter of steady dripping. It was slightly muffled by the
moisture-soaked ceiling. Meanwhile, the steam engine could be heard as
it puffed and snorted ceaselessly while cloaked in its white mist. The
dancing vibration of its flywheel seemed to regulate the volume of the
noisy turbulence.

Gervaise passed slowly along the alley, looking to the right and left,
carrying her laundry bundle under one arm, with one hip thrust high and
limping more than usual. She was jostled by several women in the
hubbub.

“This way, my dear!” cried Madame Boche, in her loud voice. Then, when
the young woman had joined her at the very end on the left, the
concierge, who was furiously rubbing a dirty sock, began to talk
incessantly, without leaving off her work. “Put your things there, I’ve
kept your place. Oh, I sha’n’t be long over what I’ve got. Boche
scarcely dirties his things at all. And you, you won’t be long either,
will you? Your bundle’s quite a little one. Before twelve o’clock we
shall have finished, and we can go off to lunch. I used to send my
things to a laundress in the Rue Poulet, but she destroyed everything
with her chlorine and her brushes; so now I do the washing myself. It’s
so much saved; it only costs the soap. I say, you should have put those
shirts to soak. Those little rascals of children, on my word! One would
think their bodies were covered with soot.”

Gervaise, having undone her bundle, was spreading out the little ones’
shirts, and as Madame Boche advised her to take a pailful of lye, she
answered, “Oh, no! warm water will do. I’m used to it.” She had sorted
her laundry with several colored pieces to one side. Then, after
filling her tub with four pails of cold water from the tap behind her,
she plunged her pile of whites into it.

“You’re used to it?” repeated Madame Boche. “You were a washerwoman in
your native place, weren’t you, my dear?”

Gervaise, with her sleeves pushed back, displayed the graceful arms of
a young blonde, as yet scarcely reddened at the elbows, and started
scrubbing her laundry. She spread a shirt out on the narrow rubbing
board which was water-bleached and eroded by years of use. She rubbed
soap into the shirt, turned it over, and soaped the other side. Before
replying to Madame Boche she grasped her beetle and began to pound away
so that her shouted phrases were punctuated with loud and rhythmic
thumps.

“Yes, yes, a washerwoman—When I was ten—That’s twelve years ago—We used
to go to the river—It smelt nicer there than it does here—You should
have seen, there was a nook under the trees, with clear running
water—You know, at Plassans—Don’t you know Plassans?—It’s near
Marseilles.”

“How you go at it!” exclaimed Madame Boche, amazed at the strength of
her blows. “You could flatten out a piece of iron with your little
lady-like arms.”

The conversation continued in a very high volume. At times, the
concierge, not catching what was said, was obliged to lean forward. All
the linen was beaten, and with a will! Gervaise plunged it into the tub
again, and then took it out once more, each article separately, to rub
it over with soap a second time and brush it. With one hand she held
the article firmly on the plank; with the other, which grasped the
short couch-grass brush, she extracted from the linen a dirty lather,
which fell in long drips. Then, in the slight noise caused by the
brush, the two women drew together, and conversed in a more intimate
way.

“No, we’re not married,” resumed Gervaise. “I don’t hide it. Lantier
isn’t so nice for any one to care to be his wife. If it weren’t for the
children! I was fourteen and he was eighteen when we had our first one.
It happened in the usual way, you know how it is. I wasn’t happy at
home. Old man Macquart would kick me in the tail whenever he felt like
it, for no reason at all. I had to have some fun outside. We might have
been married, but—I forget why—our parents wouldn’t consent.”

She shook her hands, which were growing red in the white suds. “The
water’s awfully hard in Paris.”

Madame Boche was now washing only very slowly. She kept leaving off,
making her work last as long as she could, so as to remain there, to
listen to that story, which her curiosity had been hankering to know
for a fortnight past. Her mouth was half open in the midst of her big,
fat face; her eyes, which were almost at the top of her head, were
gleaming. She was thinking, with the satisfaction of having guessed
right.

“That’s it, the little one gossips too much. There’s been a row.”

Then, she observed out loud, “He isn’t nice, then?”

“Don’t mention it!” replied Gervaise. “He used to behave very well in
the country; but, since we’ve been in Paris, he’s been unbearable. I
must tell you that his mother died last year and left him some
money—about seventeen hundred francs. He would come to Paris, so, as
old Macquart was forever knocking me about without warning, I consented
to come away with him. We made the journey with two children. He was to
set me up as a laundress, and work himself at his trade of a hatter. We
should have been very happy; but, you see, Lantier’s ambitious and a
spendthrift, a fellow who only thinks of amusing himself. In short,
he’s not worth much. On arriving, we went to the Hotel Montmartre, in
the Rue Montmartre. And then there were dinners, and cabs, and the
theatre; a watch for himself and a silk dress for me, for he’s not
unkind when he’s got the money. You understand, he went in for
everything, and so well that at the end of two months we were cleaned
out. It was then that we came to live at the Hotel Boncoeur, and that
this horrible life began.”

She interrupted herself. A lump had suddenly risen in her throat, and
she could scarcely restrain her tears. She had finished brushing the
things.

“I must go and fetch my hot water,” she murmured.

But Madame Boche, greatly disappointed at this break off in the
disclosures, called to the wash-house boy, who was passing, “My little
Charles, kindly get madame a pail of hot water; she’s in a hurry.”

The youth took the bucket and brought it back filled. Gervaise paid
him; it was a sou the pailful. She poured the hot water into the tub,
and soaped the things a last time with her hands, leaning over them in
a mass of steam, which deposited small beads of grey vapor in her light
hair.

“Here put some soda in, I’ve got some by me,” said the concierge,
obligingly.

And she emptied into Gervaise’s tub what remained of a bag of soda
which she had brought with her. She also offered her some of the
chemical water, but the young woman declined it; it was only good for
grease and wine stains.

“I think he’s rather a loose fellow,” resumed Madame Boche, returning
to Lantier, but without naming him.

Gervaise, bent almost double, her hands all shriveled, and thrust in
amongst the clothes, merely tossed her head.

“Yes, yes,” continued the other, “I have noticed several little
things—” But she suddenly interrupted herself, as Gervaise jumped up,
with a pale face, and staring wildly at her. Then she exclaimed, “Oh,
no! I don’t know anything! He likes to laugh a bit, I think, that’s
all. For instance, you know the two girls who lodge at my place, Adele
and Virginie. Well, he larks about with ’em, but he just flirts for
sport.”

The young woman standing before her, her face covered with
perspiration, the water dripping from her arms, continued to stare at
her with a fixed and penetrating look. Then the concierge got excited,
giving herself a blow on the chest, and pledging her word of honor, she
cried:

“I know nothing, I mean it when I say so!”

Then calming herself, she added in a gentle voice, as if speaking to a
person on whom loud protestations would have no effect, “I think he has
a frank look about the eyes. He’ll marry you, my dear, I’m sure of it.”

Gervaise wiped her forehead with her wet hand. Shaking her head again,
she pulled another garment out of the water. Both of them kept silence
for a moment. The wash-house was quieting down, for eleven o’clock had
struck. Half of the washerwomen were perched on the edge of their tubs,
eating sausages between slices of bread and drinking from open bottles
of wine. Only housewives who had come to launder small bundles of
family linen were hurrying to finish.

Occasional beetle blows could still be heard amid the subdued laughter
and gossip half-choked by the greedy chewing of jawbones. The steam
engine never stopped. Its vibrant, snorting voice seemed to fill the
entire hall, though not one of the women even heard it. It was like the
breathing of the wash-house, its hot breath collecting under the
ceiling rafters in an eternal floating mist.

The heat was becoming intolerable. Through the tall windows on the left
sunlight was streaming in, touching the steamy vapors with opalescent
tints of soft pinks and grayish blues. Charles went from window to
window, letting down the heavy canvas awnings. Then he crossed to the
shady side to open the ventilators. He was applauded by cries and hand
clapping and a rough sort of gaiety spread around. Soon even the last
of the beetle-pounding stopped.

With full mouths, the washerwomen could only make gestures. It became
so quiet that the grating sound of the fireman shoveling coal into the
engine’s firebox could be heard at regular intervals from far at the
other end.

Gervaise was washing her colored things in the hot water thick with
lather, which she had kept for the purpose. When she had finished, she
drew a trestle towards her and hung across it all the different
articles; the drippings from which made bluish puddles on the floor;
and she commenced rinsing. Behind her, the cold water tap was set
running into a vast tub fixed to the ground, and across which were two
wooden bars whereon to lay the clothes. High up in the air were two
other bars for the things to finish dripping on.

“We’re almost finished, and not a bad job,” said Madame Boche. “I’ll
wait and help you wring all that.”

“Oh! it’s not worth while; I’m much obliged though,” replied the young
woman, who was kneading with her hands and sousing the colored things
in some clean water. “If I’d any sheets, it would be another thing.”

But she had, however, to accept the concierge’s assistance. They were
wringing between them, one at each end, a woolen skirt of a washed-out
chestnut color, from which dribbled a yellowish water, when Madame
Boche exclaimed:

“Why, there’s tall Virginie! What has she come here to wash, when all
her wardrobe that isn’t on her would go into a pocket handkerchief?”

Gervaise jerked her head up. Virginie was a girl of her own age, taller
than she was, dark and pretty in spite of her face being rather long
and narrow. She had on an old black dress with flounces, and a red
ribbon round her neck; and her hair was done up carefully, the chignon
being enclosed in a blue silk net. She stood an instant in the middle
of the central alley, screwing up her eyes as though seeking someone;
then, when she caught sight of Gervaise, she passed close to her,
erect, insolent, and with a swinging gait, and took a place in the same
row, five tubs away from her.

“There’s a freak for you!” continued Madame Boche in a lower tone of
voice. “She never does any laundry, not even a pair of cuffs. A
seamstress who doesn’t even sew on a loose button! She’s just like her
sister, the brass burnisher, that hussy Adele, who stays away from her
job two days out of three. Nobody knows who their folks are or how they
make a living. Though, if I wanted to talk . . . What on earth is she
scrubbing there? A filthy petticoat. I’ll wager it’s seen some lovely
sights, that petticoat!”

Madame Boche was evidently trying to make herself agreeable to
Gervaise. The truth was she often took a cup of coffee with Adele and
Virginia, when the girls had any money. Gervaise did not answer, but
hurried over her work with feverish hands. She had just prepared her
blue in a little tub that stood on three legs. She dipped in the linen
things, and shook them an instant at the bottom of the colored water,
the reflection of which had a pinky tinge; and after wringing them
lightly, she spread them out on the wooden bars up above. During the
time she was occupied with this work, she made a point of turning her
back on Virginie. But she heard her chuckles; she could feel her
sidelong glances. Virginie appeared only to have come there to provoke
her. At one moment, Gervaise having turned around, they both stared
into each other’s faces.

“Leave her alone,” whispered Madame Boche. “You’re not going to pull
each other’s hair out, I hope. When I tell you there’s nothing to it!
It isn’t her, anyhow!”

At this moment, as the young woman was hanging up the last article of
clothing, there was a sound of laughter at the door of the wash-house.

“Here are two brats who want their mamma!” cried Charles.

All the women leant forward. Gervaise recognized Claude and Etienne. As
soon as they caught sight of her, they ran to her through the puddles,
the heels of their unlaced shoes resounding on the flagstones. Claude,
the eldest, held his little brother by the hand. The women, as they
passed them, uttered little exclamations of affection as they noticed
their frightened though smiling faces. And they stood there, in front
of their mother, without leaving go of each other’s hands, and holding
their fair heads erect.

“Has papa sent you?” asked Gervaise.

But as she stooped to tie the laces of Etienne’s shoes, she saw the key
of their room on one of Claude’s fingers, with the brass number hanging
from it.

“Why, you’ve brought the key!” she said, greatly surprised. “What’s
that for?”

The child, seeing the key which he had forgotten on his finger,
appeared to recollect, and exclaimed in his clear voice:

“Papa’s gone away.”

“He’s gone to buy the lunch, and told you to come here to fetch me?”

Claude looked at his brother, hesitated, no longer recollecting. Then
he resumed all in a breath: “Papa’s gone away. He jumped off the bed,
he put all the things in the trunk, he carried the trunk down to a cab.
He’s gone away.”

Gervaise, who was squatting down, slowly rose to her feet, her face
ghastly pale. She put her hands to her cheeks and temples, as though
she felt her head was breaking; and she could find only these words,
which she repeated twenty times in the same tone of voice:

“Ah! good heavens!—ah! good heavens!—ah! good heavens!”

Madame Boche, however, also questioned the child, quite delighted at
the chance of hearing the whole story.

“Come, little one, you must tell us just what happened. It was he who
locked the door and who told you to bring the key, wasn’t it?” And,
lowering her voice, she whispered in Claude’s ear: “Was there a lady in
the cab?”

The child again got confused. Then he recommenced his story in a
triumphant manner: “He jumped off the bed, he put all the things in the
trunk. He’s gone away.”

Then, when Madame Boche let him go, he drew his brother in front of the
tap, and they amused themselves by turning on the water. Gervaise was
unable to cry. She was choking, leaning back against her tub, her face
still buried in her hands. Brief shudders rocked her body and she
wailed out long sighs while pressing her hands tighter against her
eyes, as though abandoning herself to the blackness of desolation, a
dark, deep pit into which she seemed to be falling.

“Come, my dear, pull yourself together!” murmured Madame Boche.

“If you only knew! If you only knew!” said she at length very faintly.
“He sent me this morning to pawn my shawl and my chemises to pay for
that cab.”

And she burst out crying. The memory of the events of that morning and
of her trip to the pawn-place tore from her the sobs that had been
choking her throat. That abominable trip to the pawn-place was the
thing that hurt most in all her sorrow and despair. Tears were
streaming down her face but she didn’t think of using her handkerchief.

“Be reasonable, do be quiet, everyone’s looking at you,” Madame Boche,
who hovered round her, kept repeating. “How can you worry yourself so
much on account of a man? You loved him, then, all the same, did you,
my poor darling? A little while ago you were saying all sorts of things
against him; and now you’re crying for him, and almost breaking your
heart. Dear me, how silly we all are!”

Then she became quite maternal.

“A pretty little woman like you! Can it be possible? One may tell you
everything now, I suppose. Well! You recollect when I passed under your
window, I already had my suspicions. Just fancy, last night, when Adele
came home, I heard a man’s footsteps with hers. So I thought I would
see who it was. I looked up the staircase. The fellow was already on
the second landing; but I certainly recognized Monsieur Lantier’s
overcoat. Boche, who was on the watch this morning, saw him tranquilly
nod adieu. He was with Adele, you know. Virginie has a situation now,
where she goes twice a week. Only it’s highly imprudent all the same,
for they’ve only one room and an alcove, and I can’t very well say
where Virginie managed to sleep.”

She interrupted herself an instant, turned round, and then resumed,
subduing her loud voice:

“She’s laughing at seeing you cry, that heartless thing over there. I’d
stake my life that her washing’s all a pretence. She’s packed off the
other two, and she’s come here so as to tell them how you take it.”

Gervaise removed her hands from her face and looked. When she beheld
Virginie in front of her, amidst three or four women, speaking low and
staring at her, she was seized with a mad rage. Her arms in front of
her, searching the ground, she stumbled forward a few paces. Trembling
all over, she found a bucket full of water, grabbed it with both hands,
and emptied it at Virginie.

“The virago!” yelled tall Virginie.

She had stepped back, and her boots alone got wet. The other women, who
for some minutes past had all been greatly upset by Gervaise’s tears,
jostled each other in their anxiety to see the fight. Some, who were
finishing their lunch, got on the tops of their tubs. Others hastened
forward, their hands smothered with soap. A ring was formed.

“Ah! the virago!” repeated tall Virginie. “What’s the matter with her?
She’s mad!”

Gervaise, standing on the defensive, her chin thrust out, her features
convulsed, said nothing, not having yet acquired the Paris gift of
street gab. The other continued:

“Get out! This girl’s tired of wallowing about in the country; she
wasn’t twelve years old when the soldiers were at her. She even lost
her leg serving her country. That leg’s rotting off.”

The lookers-on burst out laughing. Virginie, seeing her success,
advanced a couple of steps, drawing herself up to her full height, and
yelling louder than ever:

“Here! Come a bit nearer, just to see how I’ll settle you! Don’t you
come annoying us here. Do I even know her, the hussy? If she’d wetted
me, I’d have pretty soon shown her battle, as you’d have seen. Let her
just say what I’ve ever done to her. Speak, you vixen; what’s been done
to you?”

“Don’t talk so much,” stammered Gervaise. “You know well enough. Some
one saw my husband last night. And shut up, because if you don’t I’ll
most certainly strangle you.”

“Her husband! That’s a good one! As if cripples like her had husbands!
If he’s left you it’s not my fault. Surely you don’t think I’ve stolen
him, do you? He was much too good for you and you made him sick. Did
you keep him on a leash? Has anyone here seen her husband? There’s a
reward.”

The laughter burst forth again. Gervaise contented herself with
continually murmuring in a low tone of voice:

“You know well enough, you know well enough. It’s your sister. I’ll
strangle her—your sister.”

“Yes, go and try it on with my sister,” resumed Virginie sneeringly.
“Ah! it’s my sister! That’s very likely. My sister looks a trifle
different to you; but what’s that to me? Can’t one come and wash one’s
clothes in peace now? Just dry up, d’ye hear, because I’ve had enough
of it!”

But it was she who returned to the attack, after giving five or six
strokes with her beetle, intoxicated by the insults she had been giving
utterance to, and worked up into a passion. She left off and
recommenced again, speaking in this way three times:

“Well, yes! it’s my sister. There now, does that satisfy you? They
adore each other. You should just see them bill and coo! And he’s left
you with your children. Those pretty kids with scabs all over their
faces! You got one of them from a gendarme, didn’t you? And you let
three others die because you didn’t want to pay excess baggage on your
journey. It’s your Lantier who told us that. Ah! he’s been telling some
fine things; he’d had enough of you!”

“You dirty jade! You dirty jade! You dirty jade!” yelled Gervaise,
beside herself, and again seized with a furious trembling. She turned
round, looking once more about the ground; and only observing the
little tub, she seized hold of it by the legs, and flung the whole of
the bluing at Virginie’s face.

“The beast! She’s spoilt my dress!” cried the latter, whose shoulder
was sopping wet and whose left hand was dripping blue. “Just wait, you
wretch!”

In her turn she seized a bucket, and emptied it over Gervaise. Then a
formidable battle began. They both ran along the rows of tubs, seized
hold of the pails that were full, and returned to dash the contents at
each other’s heads. And each deluge was accompanied by a volley of
words. Gervaise herself answered now:

“There, you scum! You got it that time. It’ll help to cool you.”

“Ah! the carrion! That’s for your filth. Wash yourself for once in your
life.”

“Yes, yes, I’ll wash the salt out of you, you cod!”

“Another one! Brush your teeth, fix yourself up for your post to-night
at the corner of the Rue Belhomme.”

They ended by having to refill the buckets at the water taps,
continuing to insult each other the while. The initial bucketfuls were
so poorly aimed as to scarcely reach their targets, but they soon began
to splash each other in earnest. Virginie was the first to receive a
bucketful in the face. The water ran down, soaking her back and front.
She was still staggering when another caught her from the side, hitting
her left ear and drenching her chignon which then came unwound into a
limp, bedraggled string of hair.

Gervaise was hit first in the legs. One pail filled her shoes full of
water and splashed up to her thighs. Two more wet her even higher. Soon
both of them were soaked from top to bottom and it was impossible to
count the hits. Their clothes were plastered to their bodies and they
looked shrunken. Water was dripping everywhere as from umbrellas in a
rainstorm.

“They look jolly funny!” said the hoarse voice of one of the women.

Everyone in the wash-house was highly amused. A good space was left to
the combatants, as nobody cared to get splashed. Applause and jokes
circulated in the midst of the sluice-like noise of the buckets emptied
in rapid succession! On the floor the puddles were running one into
another, and the two women were wading in them up to their ankles.
Virginie, however, who had been meditating a treacherous move, suddenly
seized hold of a pail of lye, which one of her neighbors had left there
and threw it. The same cry arose from all. Everyone thought Gervaise
was scalded; but only her left foot had been slightly touched. And,
exasperated by the pain, she seized a bucket, without troubling herself
to fill it this time, and threw it with all her might at the legs of
Virginie, who fell to the ground. All the women spoke together.

“She’s broken one of her limbs!”

“Well, the other tried to cook her!”

“She’s right, after all, the blonde one, if her man’s been taken from
her!”

Madame Boche held up her arms to heaven, uttering all sorts of
exclamations. She had prudently retreated out of the way between two
tubs; and the children, Claude and Etienne, crying, choking, terrified,
clung to her dress with the continuous cry of “Mamma! Mamma!” broken by
their sobs. When she saw Virginie fall she hastened forward, and tried
to pull Gervaise away by her skirt, repeating the while,

“Come now, go home! Be reasonable. On my word, it’s quite upset me.
Never was such a butchery seen before.”

But she had to draw back and seek refuge again between the two tubs,
with the children. Virginie had just flown at Gervaise’s throat. She
squeezed her round the neck, trying to strangle her. The latter freed
herself with a violent jerk, and in her turn hung on to the other’s
hair, as though she was trying to pull her head off. The battle was
silently resumed, without a cry, without an insult. They did not seize
each other round the body, they attacked each other’s faces with open
hands and clawing fingers, pinching, scratching whatever they caught
hold of. The tall, dark girl’s red ribbon and blue silk hair net were
torn off. The body of her dress, giving way at the neck, displayed a
large portion of her shoulder; whilst the blonde, half stripped, a
sleeve gone from her loose white jacket without her knowing how, had a
rent in her underlinen, which exposed to view the naked line of her
waist. Shreds of stuff flew in all directions. It was from Gervaise
that the first blood was drawn, three long scratches from the mouth to
the chin; and she sought to protect her eyes, shutting them at every
grab the other made, for fear of having them torn out. No blood showed
on Virginie as yet. Gervaise aimed at her ears, maddened at not being
able to reach them. At length she succeeded in seizing hold of one of
the earrings—an imitation pear in yellow glass—which she pulled out and
slit the ear, and the blood flowed.

“They’re killing each other! Separate them, the vixens!” exclaimed
several voices.

The other women had drawn nearer. They formed themselves into two
camps. Some were cheering the combatants on as the others were
trembling and turning their heads away saying that it was making them
sick. A large fight nearly broke out between the two camps as the women
called each other names and brandished their fists threateningly. Three
loud slaps rang out.

Madame Boche, meanwhile, was trying to discover the wash-house boy.

“Charles! Charles! Wherever has he got to?”

And she found him in the front rank, looking on with his arms folded.
He was a big fellow, with an enormous neck. He was laughing and
enjoying the sight of the skin which the two women displayed. The
little blonde was as fat as a quail. It would be fun if her chemise
burst open.

“Why,” murmured he, blinking his eye, “she’s got a strawberry birthmark
under her arm.”

“What! You’re there!” cried Madame Boche, as she caught sight of him.
“Just come and help us separate them. You can easily separate them, you
can!”

“Oh, no! thank you, not if I know it,” said he coolly. “To get my eye
scratched like I did the other day, I suppose! I’m not here for that
sort of thing; I have enough to do without that. Don’t be afraid, a
little bleeding does ’em good; it’ll soften ’em.”

The concierge then talked of fetching the police; but the mistress of
the wash-house, the delicate young woman with the red, inflamed eyes,
would not allow her to do this. She kept saying:

“No, no, I won’t; it’ll compromise my establishment.”

The struggle on the ground continued. All on a sudden, Virginie raised
herself up on her knees. She had just gotten hold of a beetle and held
it on high. She had a rattle in her throat and in an altered voice, she
exclaimed,

“Here’s something that’ll settle you! Get your dirty linen ready!”

Gervaise quickly thrust out her hand, and also seized a beetle, and
held it up like a club; and she too spoke in a choking voice,

“Ah! you want to wash. Let me get hold of your skin that I may beat it
into dish-cloths!”

For a moment they remained there, on their knees, menacing each other.
Their hair all over their faces, their breasts heaving, muddy, swelling
with rage, they watched one another, as they waited and took breath.
Gervaise gave the first blow. Her beetle glided off Virginie’s
shoulder, and she at once threw herself on one side to avoid the
latter’s beetle, which grazed her hip. Then, warming to their work they
struck at each other like washerwomen beating clothes, roughly, and in
time. Whenever there was a hit, the sound was deadened, so that one
might have thought it a blow in a tub full of water. The other women
around them no longer laughed. Several had gone off saying that it
quite upset them; those who remained stretched out their necks, their
eyes lighted up with a gleam of cruelty, admiring the pluck displayed.
Madame Boche had led Claude and Etienne away, and one could hear at the
other end of the building the sound of their sobs, mingled with the
sonorous shocks of the two beetles. But Gervaise suddenly yelled.
Virginie had caught her a whack with all her might on her bare arm,
just above the elbow. A large red mark appeared, the flesh at once
began to swell. Then she threw herself upon Virginie, and everyone
thought she was going to beat her to death.

“Enough! Enough!” was cried on all sides.

Her face bore such a terrible expression, that no one dared approach
her. Her strength seemed to have increased tenfold. She seized Virginie
round the waist, bent her down and pressed her face against the
flagstones. Raising her beetle she commenced beating as she used to
beat at Plassans, on the banks of the Viorne, when her mistress washed
the clothes of the garrison. The wood seemed to yield to the flesh with
a damp sound. At each whack a red weal marked the white skin.

“Oh, oh!” exclaimed the boy Charles, opening his eyes to their full
extent and gloating over the sight.

Laughter again burst forth from the lookers-on, but soon the cry,
“Enough! Enough!” recommenced. Gervaise heard not, neither did she
tire. She examined her work, bent over it, anxious not to leave a dry
place. She wanted to see the whole of that skin beaten, covered with
contusions. And she talked, seized with a ferocious gaiety, recalling a
washerwoman’s song,

“Bang! Bang! Margot at her tub.
Bang! Bang! Beating rub-a-dub.
Bang! Bang! Tries to wash her heart.
Bang! Bang! Black with grief to part.”


And then she resumed,

“That’s for you, that’s for your sister.
That’s for Lantier.
When you next see them,
You can give them that.
Attention! I’m going to begin again.
That’s for Lantier, that’s for your sister.
That’s for you.
Bang! Bang! Margot at her tub.
Bang! Bang! Beating rub-a-dub—”


The others were obliged to drag Virginie away from her. The tall, dark
girl, her face bathed in tears and purple with shame, picked up her
things and hastened away. She was vanquished. Gervaise slipped on the
sleeve of her jacket again, and fastened up her petticoats. Her arm
pained her a good deal, and she asked Madame Boche to place her bundle
of clothes on her shoulder. The concierge referred to the battle, spoke
of her emotions, and talked of examining the young woman’s person, just
to see.

“You may, perhaps, have something broken. I heard a tremendous blow.”

But Gervaise wanted to go home. She made no reply to the pitying
remarks and noisy ovation of the other women who surrounded her, erect
in their aprons. When she was laden she gained the door, where the
children awaited her.

“Two hours, that makes two sous,” said the mistress of the wash-house,
already back at her post in the glazed closet.

Why two sous? She no longer understood that she was asked to pay for
her place there. Then she gave the two sous; and limping very much
beneath the weight of the wet clothes on her shoulder, the water
dripping from off her, her elbow black and blue, her cheek covered with
blood, she went off, dragging Claude and Etienne with her bare arms,
whilst they trotted along on either side of her, still trembling, and
their faces besmeared with their tears.

Once she was gone, the wash-house resumed its roaring tumult. The
washerwomen had eaten their bread and drunk their wine. Their faces
were lit up and their spirits enlivened by the fight between Gervaise
and Virginie.

The long lines of tubs were astir again with the fury of thrashing
arms, of craggy profiles, of marionettes with bent backs and slumping
shoulders that twisted and jerked violently as though on hinges.
Conversations went on from one end to the other in loud voices.
Laughter and coarse remarks crackled through the ceaseless gurgling of
the water. Faucets were sputtering, buckets spilling, rivulets flowing
underneath the rows of washboards. Throughout the huge shed rising
wisps of steam reflected a reddish tint, pierced here and there by
disks of sunlight, golden globes that had leaked through holes in the
awnings. The air was stiflingly warm and odorous with soap.

Suddenly the hall was filled with a white mist. The huge copper lid of
the lye-water kettle was rising mechanically along a notched shaft, and
from the gaping copper hollow within its wall of bricks came whirling
clouds of vapor. Meanwhile, at one side the drying machines were hard
at work; within their cast-iron cylinders bundles of laundry were being
wrung dry by the centrifugal force of the steam engine, which was still
puffing, steaming, jolting the wash-house with the ceaseless labor of
its iron limbs.

When Gervaise turned into the entry of the Hotel Boncoeur, her tears
again mastered her. It was a dark, narrow passage, with a gutter for
the dirty water running alongside the wall; and the stench which she
again encountered there caused her to think of the fortnight she had
passed in the place with Lantier—a fortnight of misery and quarrels,
the recollection of which was now a bitter regret. It seemed to bring
her abandonment home to her.

Upstairs the room was bare, in spite of the sunshine which entered
through the open window. That blaze of light, that kind of dancing
golden dust, exposed the lamentable condition of the blackened ceiling,
and of the walls half denuded of paper, all the more. The only thing
left hanging in the room was a woman’s small neckerchief, twisted like
a piece of string. The children’s bedstead, drawn into the middle of
the apartment, displayed the chest of drawers, the open drawers of
which exposed their emptiness. Lantier had washed himself and had used
up the last of the pomatum—two sous’ worth of pomatum in a playing
card; the greasy water from his hands filled the basin. And he had
forgotten nothing. The corner which until then had been filled by the
trunk seemed to Gervaise an immense empty space. Even the little mirror
which hung on the window-fastening was gone. When she made this
discovery, she had a presentiment. She looked on the mantel-piece.
Lantier had taken away the pawn tickets; the pink bundle was no longer
there, between the two odd zinc candlesticks.

She hung her laundry over the back of a chair and just stood there,
gazing around at the furniture. She was so dulled and bewildered that
she could no longer cry. She had only one sou left. Then, hearing
Claude and Etienne laughing merrily by the window, their troubles
already forgotten, she went to them and put her arms about them, losing
herself for a moment in contemplation of that long gray avenue where,
that very morning, she had watched the awakening of the working
population, of the immense work-shop of Paris.

At this hour immense heat was rising from the pavement and from all the
furnaces in the factories, setting alight a reflecting oven over the
city and beyond the octroi wall. Out upon this very pavement, into this
furnace blast, she had been tossed, alone with her little ones. As she
glanced up and down the boulevard, she was seized with a dull dread
that her life would be fixed there forever, between a slaughter-house
and a hospital.




CHAPTER II.


Three weeks later, towards half-past eleven, one beautiful sunshiny
day, Gervaise and Coupeau, the zinc-worker, were each partaking of a
plum preserved in brandy, at “l’Assommoir” kept by Pere Colombe.
Coupeau, who had been smoking a cigarette on the pavement, had
prevailed on her to go inside as she returned from taking home a
customer’s washing; and her big square laundress’s basket was on the
floor beside her, behind the little zinc covered table.

Pere Colombe’s l’Assommoir was at the corner of Rue des Poissonniers
and Boulevard de Rochechouart. The sign, in tall blue letters
stretching from one end to the other said: Distillery. Two dusty
oleanders planted in half casks stood beside the doorway. A long bar
with its tin measuring cups was on the left as you entered. The large
room was decorated with casks painted a gay yellow, bright with
varnish, and gleaming with copper taps and hoops.

On the shelves above the bar were liquor bottles, jars of fruit
preserved in brandy, and flasks of all shapes. They completely covered
the wall and were reflected in the mirror behind the bar as colorful
spots of apple green, pale gold, and soft brown. The main feature of
the establishment, however, was the distilling apparatus. It was at the
rear, behind an oak railing in a glassed-in area. The customers could
watch its functioning, long-necked still-pots, copper worms
disappearing underground, a devil’s kitchen alluring to drink-sodden
work men in search of pleasant dreams.

L’Assommoir was nearly empty at the lunch hour. Pere Colombe, a heavy
man of forty, was serving a ten year old girl who had asked him to
place four sous’ worth of brandy into her cup. A shaft of sunlight came
through the entrance to warm the floor which was always damp from the
smokers’ spitting. From everything, the casks, the bar, the entire
room, a liquorish odor arose, an alcoholic aroma which seemed to
thicken and befuddle the dust motes dancing in the sunlight.

Coupeau was making another cigarette. He was very neat, in a short blue
linen blouse and cap, and was laughing and showing his white teeth.
With a projecting under jaw and a slightly snub nose, he had handsome
chestnut eyes, and the face of a jolly dog and a thorough good fellow.
His coarse curly hair stood erect. His skin still preserved the
softness of his twenty-six years. Opposite to him, Gervaise, in a thin
black woolen dress, and bareheaded, was finishing her plum which she
held by the stalk between the tips of her fingers. They were close to
the street, at the first of the four tables placed alongside the
barrels facing the bar.

When the zinc-worker had lit his cigarette, he placed his elbows on the
table, thrust his face forward, and for an instant looked without
speaking at the young woman, whose pretty fair face had that day the
milky transparency of china. Then, alluding to a matter known to
themselves alone, and already discussed between them, he simply asked
in a low voice:

“So it’s to be ‘no’? you say ‘no’?”

“Oh! most decidedly ‘no’ Monsieur Coupeau,” quietly replied Gervaise
with a smile. “I hope you’re not going to talk to me about that here.
You know you promised me you would be reasonable. Had I known, I
wouldn’t have let you treat me.”

Coupeau kept silence, looking at her intently with a boldness. She sat
still, at ease and friendly. At the end of a brief silence she added:

“You can’t really mean it. I’m an old woman; I’ve a big boy eight years
old. Whatever could we two do together?”

“Why!” murmured Coupeau, blinking his eyes, “what the others do, of
course, get married!”

She made a gesture of feeling annoyed. “Oh! do you think it’s always
pleasant? One can very well see you’ve never seen much of living. No,
Monsieur Coupeau, I must think of serious things. Burdening oneself
never leads to anything, you know! I’ve two mouths at home which are
never tired of swallowing, I can tell you! How do you suppose I can
bring up my little ones, if I only sit here talking indolently? And
listen, besides that, my misfortune has been a famous lesson to me. You
know I don’t care a bit about men now. They won’t catch me again for a
long while.”

She spoke with such cool objectivity that it was clear she had resolved
this in her mind, turning it about thoroughly.

Coupeau was deeply moved and kept repeating: “I feel so sorry for you.
It causes me a great deal of pain.”

“Yes, I know that,” resumed she, “and I am sorry, Monsieur Coupeau. But
you mustn’t take it to heart. If I had any idea of enjoying myself,
_mon Dieu!_, I would certainly rather be with you than anyone else.
You’re a good boy and gentle. Only, where’s the use, as I’ve no
inclination to wed? I’ve been for the last fortnight, now, at Madame
Fauconnier’s. The children go to school. I’ve work, I’m contented. So
the best is to remain as we are, isn’t it?”

And she stooped down to take her basket.

“You’re making me talk; they must be expecting me at the shop. You’ll
easily find someone else prettier than I, Monsieur Coupeau, and who
won’t have two boys to drag about with her.”

He looked at the clock inserted in the frame-work of the mirror, and
made her sit down again, exclaiming:

“Don’t be in such a hurry! It’s only eleven thirty-five. I’ve still
twenty-five minutes. You don’t have to be afraid that I shall do
anything foolish; there’s the table between us. So you detest me so
much that you won’t stay and have a little chat with me.”

She put her basket down again, so as not to disoblige him; and they
conversed like good friends. She had eaten her lunch before going out
with the laundry. He had gulped down his soup and beef hurriedly to be
able to wait for her. All the while she chatted amiably, Gervaise kept
looking out the window at the activity on the street. It was now
unusually crowded with the lunch time rush.

Everywhere were hurried steps, swinging arms, and pushing elbows. Some
late comers, hungry and angry at being kept extra long at the job,
rushed across the street into the bakery. They emerged with a loaf of
bread and went three doors farther to the Two-Headed Calf to gobble
down a six-sou meat dish.

Next door to the bakery was a grocer who sold fried potatoes and
mussels cooked with parsley. A procession of girls went in to get hot
potatoes wrapped in paper and cups of steaming mussels. Other pretty
girls bought bunches of radishes. By leaning a bit, Gervaise could see
into the sausage shop from which children issued, holding a fried chop,
a sausage or a piece of hot blood pudding wrapped in greasy paper. The
street was always slick with black mud, even in clear weather. A few
laborers had already finished their lunch and were strolling aimlessly
about, their open hands slapping their thighs, heavy from eating, slow
and peaceful amid the hurrying crowd. A group formed in front of the
door of l’Assommoir.

“Say, Bibi-the-Smoker,” demanded a hoarse voice, “aren’t you going to
buy us a round of _vitriol_?”

Five laborers came in and stood by the bar.

“Ah! Here’s that thief, Pere Colombe!” the voice continued. “We want
the real old stuff, you know. And full sized glasses, too.”

Pere Colombe served them as three more laborers entered. More blue
smocks gathered on the street corner and some pushed their way into the
establishment.

“You’re foolish! You only think of the present,” Gervaise was saying to
Coupeau. “Sure, I loved him, but after the disgusting way in which he
left me—”

They were talking of Lantier. Gervaise had not seen him again; she
thought he was living with Virginie’s sister at La Glaciere, in the
house of that friend who was going to start a hat factory. She had no
thought of running after him. She had been so distressed at first that
she had thought of drowning herself in the river. But now that she had
thought about it, everything seemed to be for the best. Lantier went
through money so fast, that she probably never could have raised her
children properly. Oh, she’d let him see his children, all right, if he
bothered to come round. But as far as she was concerned, she didn’t
want him to touch her, not even with his finger tips.

She told all this to Coupeau just as if her plan of life was well
settled. Meanwhile, Coupeau never forgot his desire to possess her. He
made a jest of everything she said, turning it into ribaldry and asking
some very direct questions about Lantier. But he proceeded so gaily and
which such a smile that she never thought of being offended.

“So, you’re the one who beat him,” said he at length. “Oh! you’re not
kind. You just go around whipping people.”

She interrupted him with a hearty laugh. It was true, though, she had
whipped Virginie’s tall carcass. She would have delighted in strangling
someone on that day. She laughed louder than ever when Coupeau told her
that Virginie, ashamed at having shown so much cowardice, had left the
neighborhood. Her face, however, preserved an expression of childish
gentleness as she put out her plump hands, insisting she wouldn’t even
harm a fly.

She began to tell Coupeau about her childhood at Plassans. She had
never cared overmuch for men; they had always bored her. She was
fourteen when she got involved with Lantier. She had thought it was
nice because he said he was her husband and she had enjoyed playing a
housewife. She was too soft-hearted and too weak. She always got
passionately fond of people who caused her trouble later. When she
loved a man, she wasn’t thinking of having fun in the present; she was
dreaming about being happy and living together forever.

And as Coupeau, with a chuckle, spoke of her two children, saying they
hadn’t come from under a bolster, she slapped his fingers; she added
that she was, no doubt made on the model of other women; women thought
of their home, slaved to keep the place clean and tidy, and went to bed
too tired at night not to go to sleep at once. Besides, she resembled
her mother, a stout laboring woman who died at her work and who had
served as beast of burden to old Macquart for more than twenty years.
Her mother’s shoulders had been heavy enough to smash through doors,
but that didn’t prevent her from being soft-hearted and madly attracted
to people. And if she limped a little, she no doubt owed that to the
poor woman, whom old Macquart used to belabor with blows. Her mother
had told her about the times when Macquart came home drunk and brutally
bruised her. She had probably been born with her lame leg as a result
of one of those times.

“Oh! it’s scarcely anything, it’s hardly perceptible,” said Coupeau
gallantly.

She shook her head; she knew well enough that it could be seen; at
forty she would look broken in two. Then she added gently, with a
slight laugh: “It’s a funny fancy of yours to fall in love with a
cripple.”

With his elbows still on the table, he thrust his face closer to hers
and began complimenting her in rather dubious language as though to
intoxicate her with his words. But she kept shaking her head “no,” and
didn’t allow herself to be tempted although she was flattered by the
tone of his voice. While listening, she kept looking out the window,
seeming to be fascinated by the interesting crowd of people passing.

The shops were now almost empty. The grocer removed his last panful of
fried potatoes from the stove. The sausage man arranged the dishes
scattered on his counter. Great bearded workmen were as playful as
young boys, clumping along in their hobnailed boots. Other workmen were
smoking, staring up into the sky and blinking their eyes. Factory bells
began to ring in the distance, but the workers, in no hurry, relit
their pipes. Later, after being tempted by one wineshop after another,
they finally decided to return to their jobs, but were still dragging
their feet.

Gervaise amused herself by watching three workmen, a tall fellow and
two short ones who turned to look back every few yards; they ended by
descending the street, and came straight to Pere Colombe’s l’Assommoir.

“Ah, well,” murmured she, “there’re three fellows who don’t seem
inclined for work!”

“Why!” said Coupeau, “I know the tall one, it’s My-Boots, a comrade of
mine.”

Pere Colombe’s l’Assommoir was now full. You had to shout to be heard.
Fists often pounded on the bar, causing the glasses to clink. Everyone
was standing, hands crossed over belly or held behind back. The
drinking groups crowded close to one another. Some groups, by the
casks, had to wait a quarter of an hour before being able to order
their drinks of Pere Colombe.

“Hallo! It’s that aristocrat, Young Cassis!” cried My-Boots, bringing
his hand down roughly on Coupeau’s shoulder. “A fine gentleman, who
smokes paper, and wears shirts! So we want to do the grand with our
sweetheart; we stand her little treats!”

“Shut up! Don’t bother me!” replied Coupeau, greatly annoyed.

But the other added, with a chuckle, “Right you are! We know what’s
what, my boy. Muffs are muffs, that’s all!”

He turned his back after leering terribly as he looked at Gervaise. The
latter drew back, feeling rather frightened. The smoke from the pipes,
the strong odor of all those men, ascended in the air, already foul
with the fumes of alcohol; and she felt a choking sensation in her
throat, and coughed slightly.

“Oh, what a horrible thing it is to drink!” said she in a low voice.

And she related that formerly at Plassans she used to drink anisette
with her mother. But on one occasion it nearly killed her, and that
disgusted her with it; now, she could never touch any liqueurs.

“You see,” added she, pointing to her glass, “I’ve eaten my plum; only
I must leave the juice, because it would make me ill.”

For himself, Coupeau couldn’t understand how anyone could drink glass
after glass of cheap brandy. A brandied plum occasionally could not
hurt, but as for cheap brandy, absinthe and the other strong stuff, no,
not for him, no matter how much his comrades teased him about it. He
stayed out on the sidewalk when his friends went into low
establishments. Coupeau’s father had smashed his head open one day when
he fell from the eaves of No. 25 on Rue Coquenard. He was drunk. This
memory keeps Coupeau’s entire family from the drink. Every time Coupeau
passed that spot, he thought he would rather lick up water from the
gutter than accept a free drink in a bar. He would always say: “In our
trade, you have to have steady legs.”

Gervaise had taken up her basket again. She did not rise from her seat
however, but held the basket on her knees, with a vacant look in her
eyes and lost in thought, as though the young workman’s words had
awakened within her far-off thoughts of existence. And she said again,
slowly, and without any apparent change of manner:

“_Mon Dieu_! I’m not ambitious; I don’t ask for much. My desire is to
work in peace, always to have bread to eat and a decent place to sleep
in, you know; with a bed, a table, and two chairs, nothing more. If I
can, I’d like to raise my children to be good citizens. Also, I’d like
not to be beaten up, if I ever again live with a man. It’s not my idea
of amusement.” She pondered, thinking if there was anything else she
wanted, but there wasn’t anything of importance. Then, after a moment
she went on, “Yes, when one reaches the end, one might wish to die in
one’s bed. For myself, having trudged through life, I should like to
die in my bed, in my own home.”

And she rose from her seat. Coupeau, who cordially approved her wishes,
was already standing up, anxious about the time. But they did not leave
yet. Gervaise was curious enough to go to the far end of the room for a
look at the big still behind the oak railing. It was chugging away in
the little glassed-in courtyard. Coupeau explained its workings to her,
pointing at the different parts of the machinery, showing her the
trickling of the small stream of limpid alcohol. Not a single gay puff
of steam was coming forth from the endless coils. The breathing could
barely be heard. It sounded muffled as if from underground. It was like
a sombre worker, performing dark deeds in the bright daylight, strong
but silent.

My-Boots, accompanied by his two comrades, came to lean on the railing
until they could get a place at the bar. He laughed, looking at the
machine. _Tonnerre de Dieu_, that’s clever. There’s enough stuff in its
big belly to last for weeks. He wouldn’t mind if they just fixed the
end of the tube in his mouth, so he could feel the fiery spirits
flowing down to his heels like a river. It would be better than the
tiny sips doled out by Pere Colombe! His two comrades laughed with him,
saying that My-Boots was quite a guy after all.

The huge still continued to trickle forth its alcoholic sweat.
Eventually it would invade the bar, flow out along the outer
Boulevards, and inundate the immense expanse of Paris.

Gervaise stepped back, shivering. She tried to smile as she said:

“It’s foolish, but that still and the liquor gives me the creeps.”

Then, returning to the idea she nursed of a perfect happiness, she
resumed: “Now, ain’t I right? It’s much the nicest isn’t it—to have
plenty of work, bread to eat, a home of one’s own, and to be able to
bring up one’s children and to die in one’s bed?”

“And never to be beaten,” added Coupeau gaily. “But I would never beat
you, if you would only try me, Madame Gervaise. You’ve no cause for
fear. I don’t drink and then I love you too much. Come, shall it be
marriage? I’ll get you divorced and make you my wife.”

He was speaking low, whispering at the back of her neck while she made
her way through the crowd of men with her basket held before her. She
kept shaking her head “no.” Yet she turned around to smile at him,
apparently happy to know that he never drank. Yes, certainly, she would
say “yes” to him, except she had already sworn to herself never to
start up with another man. Eventually they reached the door and went
out.

When they left, l’Assommoir was packed to the door, spilling its hubbub
of rough voices and its heavy smell of vitriol into the street.
My-Boots could be heard railing at Pere Colombe, calling him a
scoundrel and accusing him of only half filling his glass. He didn’t
have to come in here. He’d never come back. He suggested to his
comrades a place near the Barriere Saint-Denis where you drank good
stuff straight.

“Ah,” sighed Gervaise when they reached the sidewalk. “You can breathe
out here. Good-bye, Monsieur Coupeau, and thank you. I must hurry now.”

He seized her hand as she started along the boulevard, insisting, “Take
a walk with me along Rue de la Goutte-d’Or. It’s not much farther for
you. I’ve got to see my sister before going back to work. We’ll keep
each other company.”

In the end, Gervaise agreed and they walked beside each other along the
Rue des Poissonniers, although she did not take his arm. He told her
about his family. His mother, an old vest-maker, now had to do
housekeeping because her eyesight was poor. Her birthday was the third
of last month and she was sixty-two. He was the youngest. One of his
sisters, a widow of thirty-six, worked in a flower shop and lived in
the Batignolles section, on Rue des Moines. The other sister was thirty
years old now. She had married a deadpan chainmaker named Lorilleux.
That’s where he was going now. They lived in a big tenement on the left
side. He ate with them in the evenings; it saved a bit for all of them.
But he had been invited out this evening and he was going to tell her
not to expect him.

Gervaise, who was listening to him, suddenly interrupted him to ask,
with a smile: “So you’re called ‘Young Cassis,’ Monsieur Coupeau?”

“Oh!” replied he, “it’s a nickname my mates have given me because I
generally drink ‘cassis’ when they force me to accompany them to the
wineshop. It’s no worse to be called Young Cassis than My-Boots, is
it?”

“Of course not. Young Cassis isn’t an ugly name,” observed the young
woman.

And she questioned him about his work. He was still working there,
behind the octroi wall at the new hospital. Oh! there was no want of
work, he would not be finished there for a year at least. There were
yards and yards of gutters!

“You know,” said he, “I can see the Hotel Boncoeur when I’m up there.
Yesterday you were at the window, and I waved my arms, but you didn’t
notice me.”

They had already gone about a hundred paces along the Rue de la
Goutte-d’Or, when he stood still and raising his eyes, said:

“That’s the house. I was born farther on, at No. 22. But this house is,
all the same, a fine block of masonry! It’s as big as a barrack
inside!”

Gervaise looked up, examining the facade. On the street side, the
tenement had five stories, each with fifteen windows, whose black
shutters with their broken slats gave an air of desolation to the wide
expanse of wall. Four shops occupied the ground floor. To the right of
the entrance, a large, greasy hash house, and to the left, a coal
dealer, a notions seller, and an umbrella merchant. The building
appeared even larger than it was because it had on each side a small,
low building which seemed to lean against it for support. This immense,
squared-off building was outlined against the sky. Its unplastered side
walls were as bare as prison walls, except for rows of roughly jutting
stones which suggested jaws full of decayed teeth yawning vacantly.

Gervaise was gazing at the entrance with interest. The high, arched
doorway rose to the second floor and opened onto a deep porch, at the
end of which could be seen the pale daylight of a courtyard. This
entranceway was paved like the street, and down the center flowed a
streamlet of pink-stained water.

“Come in,” said Coupeau, “no one will eat you.”

Gervaise wanted to wait for him in the street. However, she could not
resist going through the porch as far as the concierge’s room on the
right. And there, on the threshold, she raised her eyes. Inside, the
building was six stories high, with four identical plain walls
enclosing the broad central court. The drab walls were corroded by
yellowish spots and streaked by drippings from the roof gutters. The
walls went straight up to the eaves with no molding or ornament except
the angles on the drain pipes at each floor. Here the sink drains added
their stains. The glass window panes resembled murky water. Mattresses
of checkered blue ticking were hanging out of several windows to air.
Clothes lines stretched from other windows with family washing hanging
to dry. On a third floor line was a baby’s diaper, still implanted with
filth. This crowded tenement was bursting at the seams, spilling out
poverty and misery through every crevice.

Each of the four walls had, at ground level, a narrow entrance,
plastered without a trace of woodwork. This opened into a vestibule
containing a dirt-encrusted staircase which spiraled upward. They were
each labeled with one of the first four letters of the alphabet painted
on the wall.

Several large work-shops with weather-blackened skylights were
scattered about the court. Near the concierge’s room was the dyeing
establishment responsible for the pink streamlet. Puddles of water
infested the courtyard, along with wood shavings and coal cinders.
Grass and weeds grew between the paving stones. The unforgiving
sunlight seemed to cut the court into two parts. On the shady side was
a dripping water tap with three small hens scratching for worms with
their filth-smeared claws.

Gervaise slowly gazed about, lowering her glance from the sixth floor
to the paving stones, then raising it again, surprised at the vastness,
feeling as it were in the midst of a living organ, in the very heart of
a city, and interested in the house, as though it were a giant before
her.

“Is madame seeking for any one?” called out the inquisitive concierge,
emerging from her room.

The young woman explained that she was waiting for a friend. She
returned to the street; then as Coupeau did not come, she went back to
the courtyard seized with the desire to take another look. She did not
think the house ugly. Amongst the rags hanging from the windows she
discovered various cheerful touches—a wall-flower blooming in a pot, a
cage of chirruping canaries, shaving-glasses shining like stars in the
depth of the shadow. A carpenter was singing in his work-shop,
accompanied by the whining of his plane. The blacksmith’s hammers were
ringing rhythmically.

In contrast to the apparent wretched poverty, at nearly every open
window appeared the begrimed faces of laughing children. Women with
peaceful faces could be seen bent over their sewing. The rooms were
empty of men who had gone back to work after lunch. The whole tenement
was tranquil except for the sounds from the work-shops below which
served as a sort of lullaby that went on, unceasingly, always the same.

The only thing she did not like was the courtyard’s dampness. She would
want rooms at the rear, on the sunny side. Gervaise took a few more
steps into the courtyard, inhaling the characteristic odor of the
slums, comprised of dust and rotten garbage. But the sharp odor of the
waste water from the dye shop was strong, and Gervaise thought it
smelled better here than at the Hotel Boncoeur. She chose a window for
herself, the one at the far left with a small window box planted with
scarlet runners.

“I’m afraid I’ve kept you waiting rather a long time,” said Coupeau,
whom she suddenly heard close beside her. “They always make an awful
fuss whenever I don’t dine with them, and it was worse than ever to-day
as my sister had bought some veal.”

And as Gervaise had slightly started with surprise, he continued
glancing around in his turn:

“You were looking at the house. It’s always all let from the top to the
bottom. There are three hundred lodgers, I think. If I had any
furniture, I would have secured a small room. One would be comfortable
here, don’t you think so?”

“Yes, one would be comfortable,” murmured Gervaise. “In our street at
Plassans there weren’t near so many people. Look, that’s pretty—that
window up on the fifth floor, with the scarlet runners.”

The zinc-worker’s obstinate desire made him ask her once more whether
she would or she wouldn’t. They could rent a place here as soon as they
found a bed. She hurried out the arched entranceway, asking him not to
start that subject again. There was as much chance of this building
collapsing as there was of her sleeping under the same blanket with
him. Still, when Coupeau left her in front of Madame Fauconnier’s shop,
he was allowed to hold her hand for a moment.

For a month the young woman and the zinc-worker were the best of
friends. He admired her courage, when he beheld her half killing
herself with work, keeping her children tidy and clean, and yet finding
time at night to do a little sewing. Often other women were hopelessly
messy, forever nibbling or gadding about, but she wasn’t like them at
all. She was much too serious. Then she would laugh, and modestly
defend herself. It was her misfortune that she had not always been
good, having been with a man when only fourteen. Then too, she had
often helped her mother empty a bottle of anisette. But she had learned
a few things from experience. He was wrong to think of her as
strong-willed; her will power was very weak. She had always let herself
be pushed into things because she didn’t want to hurt someone’s
feelings. Her one hope now was to live among decent people, for living
among bad people was like being hit over the head. It cracks your
skull. Whenever she thought of the future, she shivered. Everything she
had seen in life so far, especially when a child, had given her lessons
to remember.

Coupeau, however, chaffed her about her gloomy thoughts, and brought
back all her courage by trying to pinch her hips. She pushed him away
from her, and slapped his hands, whilst he called out laughingly that,
for a weak woman, she was not a very easy capture. He, who always joked
about everything did not trouble himself regarding the future. One day
followed another, that was all. There would always be somewhere to
sleep and a bite to eat. The neighborhood seemed decent enough to him,
except for a gang of drunkards that ought to be cleaned out of the
gutters.

Coupeau was not a bad sort of fellow. He sometimes had really sensible
things to say. He was something of a dandy with his Parisian working
man’s gift for banter, a regular gift of gab, and besides, he was
attractive.

They had ended by rendering each other all sorts of services at the
Hotel Boncoeur. Coupeau fetched her milk, ran her errands, carried her
bundles of clothes; often of an evening, as he got home first from
work, he took the children for a walk on the exterior Boulevard.
Gervaise, in return for his polite attentions, would go up into the
narrow room at the top of the house where he slept, and see to his
clothes, sewing buttons on his blue linen trousers, and mending his
linen jackets. A great familiarity existed between them. She was never
bored when he was around. The gay songs he sang amused her, and so did
his continuous banter of jokes and jibes characteristic of the Paris
streets, this being still new to her.

On Coupeau’s side, this continual familiarity inflamed him more and
more until it began to seriously bother him. He began to feel tense and
uneasy. He continued with his foolish talk, never failing to ask her,
“When will it be?” She understood what he meant and teased him. He
would then come to visit her carrying his bedroom slippers, as if he
were moving in. She joked about it and continued calmly without
blushing at the allusions with which he was always surrounding her. She
stood for anything from him as long as he didn’t get rough. She only
got angry once when he pulled a strand of her hair while trying to
force a kiss from her.

Towards the end of June, Coupeau lost his liveliness. He became most
peculiar. Gervaise, feeling uneasy at some of his glances, barricaded
herself in at night. Then, after having sulked ever since the Sunday,
he suddenly came on the Tuesday night about eleven o’clock and knocked
at her room. She would not open to him; but his voice was so gentle and
so trembling that she ended by removing the chest of drawers she had
pushed against the door. When he entered, she thought he was ill; he
looked so pale, his eyes were so red, and the veins on his face were
all swollen. And he stood there, stuttering and shaking his head. No,
no, he was not ill. He had been crying for two hours upstairs in his
room; he wept like a child, biting his pillow so as not to be heard by
the neighbors. For three nights past he had been unable to sleep. It
could not go on like that.

“Listen, Madame Gervaise,” said he, with a swelling in his throat and
on the point of bursting out crying again; “we must end this, mustn’t
we? We’ll go and get married. It’s what I want. I’ve quite made up my
mind.”

Gervaise showed great surprise. She was very grave.

“Oh! Monsieur Coupeau,” murmured she, “whatever are you thinking of?
You know I’ve never asked you for that. I didn’t care about it—that was
all. Oh, no, no! it’s serious now; think of what you’re saying, I beg
of you.”

But he continued to shake his head with an air of unalterable
resolution. He had already thought it all over. He had come down
because he wanted to have a good night. She wasn’t going to send him
back to weep again he supposed! As soon as she said “yes,” he would no
longer bother her, and she could go quietly to bed. He only wanted to
hear her say “yes.” They could talk it over on the morrow.

“But I certainly can’t say ‘yes’ just like that,” resumed Gervaise. “I
don’t want you to be able to accuse me later on of having incited you
to do a foolish thing. You shouldn’t be so insistent, Monsieur Coupeau.
You can’t really be sure that you’re in love with me. If you didn’t see
me for a week, it might fade away. Sometimes men get married and then
there’s day after day, stretching out into an entire lifetime, and they
get pretty well bored by it all. Sit down there; I’m willing to talk it
over at once.”

Then until one in the morning, in the dark room and by the faint light
of a smoky tallow candle which they forgot to snuff, they talked of
their marriage, lowering their voices so as not to wake the two
children, Claude and Etienne, who were sleeping, both heads on the same
pillow. Gervaise kept pointing out the children to Coupeau, what a
funny kind of dowry they were. She really shouldn’t burden him with
them. Besides, what would the neighbors say? She’d feel ashamed for him
because everyone knew about the story of her life and her lover. They
wouldn’t think it decent if they saw them getting married barely two
months later.

Coupeau replied by shrugging his shoulders. He didn’t care about the
neighbors! He never bothered about their affairs. So, there was Lantier
before him, well, so what? What’s so bad about that? She hadn’t been
constantly bringing men upstairs, as some women did, even rich ladies!
The children would grow up, they’d raise them right. Never had he known
before such a woman, such sound character, so good-hearted. Anyway, she
could have been anything, a streetwalker, ugly, lazy and
good-for-nothing, with a whole gang of dirty kids, and so what? He
wanted her.

“Yes, I want you,” he repeated, bringing his hand down on his knee with
a continuos hammering. “You understand, I want you. There’s nothing to
be said to that, is there?”

Little by little, Gervaise gave way. Her emotions began to take control
when faced with his encompassing desire. Still, with her hands in her
lap and her face suffused with a soft sweetness, she hesitantly offered
objections. From outside, through the half-open window, a lovely June
night breathed in puffs of sultry air, disturbing the candle with its
long wick gleaming red like a glowing coal. In the deep silence of the
sleeping neighborhood the only sound was the infantile weeping of a
drunkard lying in the middle of the street. Far away, in the back room
of some restaurant, a violin was playing a dance tune for some late
party.

Coupeau was silent. Then, knowing she had no more arguments, he smiled,
took hold of her hands and pulled her toward him. She was in one of
those moments of weakness she so greatly mistrusted, persuaded at last,
too emotionally stirred to refuse anything or to hurt anyone’s
feelings. Coupeau didn’t realize that she was giving way. He held her
wrists so tightly as to almost crush them. Together they breathed a
long sigh that to both of them meant a partial satisfaction of their
desire.

“You’ll say ‘yes,’ won’t you,” asked he.

“How you worry me!” she murmured. “You wish it? Well then, ‘yes.’ Ah!
we’re perhaps doing a very foolish thing.”

He jumped up, and, seizing her round the waist, kissed her roughly on
the face, at random. Then, as this caress caused a noise, he became
anxious, and went softly and looked at Claude and Etienne.

“Hush, we must be careful,” said he in a whisper, “and not wake the
children. Good-bye till to-morrow.”

And he went back to his room. Gervaise, all in a tremble, remained
seated on the edge of her bed, without thinking of undressing herself
for nearly an hour. She was touched; she felt that Coupeau was very
honorable; for at one moment she had really thought it was all over,
and that he would forget her. The drunkard below, under the window, was
now hoarsely uttering the plaintive cry of some lost animal. The violin
in the distance had left off its saucy tune and was now silent.

During the following days Coupeau sought to get Gervaise to call some
evening on his sister in the Rue de la Goutte-d’Or; but the young
woman, who was very timid, showed a great dread of this visit to the
Lorilleux. She knew that Coupeau had a lingering fear of that
household, even though he certainly wasn’t dependent on his sister, who
wasn’t even the oldest of the family. Mamma Coupeau would certainly
give her consent at once, as she never refused her only son anything.
The thing was that the Lorilleuxs were supposed to be earning ten
francs a day or more and that gave them a certain authority. Coupeau
would never dare to get married unless his wife was acceptable to them.

“I have spoken to them of you, they know our plans,” explained he to
Gervaise. “Come now! What a child you are! Let’s call on them this
evening. I’ve warned you, haven’t I? You’ll find my sister rather
stiff. Lorilleux, too, isn’t always very amiable. In reality they are
greatly annoyed, because if I marry, I shall no longer take my meals
with them, and it’ll be an economy the less. But that doesn’t matter,
they won’t turn you out. Do this for me, it’s absolutely necessary.”

These words only frightened Gervaise the more. One Saturday evening,
however, she gave in. Coupeau came for her at half-past eight. She had
dressed herself in a black dress, a crape shawl with yellow palms, and
a white cap trimmed with a little cheap lace. During the six weeks she
had been working, she had saved the seven francs for the shawl, and the
two and a half francs for the cap; the dress was an old one cleaned and
made up afresh.

“They’re expecting you,” said Coupeau to her, as they went round by the
Rue des Poissonniers. “Oh! they’re beginning to get used to the idea of
my being married. They seem nice indeed, to-night. And you know if
you’ve never seen gold chains made, it’ll amuse you to watch them. They
just happen to have a pressing order for Monday.”

“They’ve got gold in their room?” asked Gervaise.

“I should think so; there’s some on the walls, on the floor, in fact
everywhere.”

They had passed the arched doorway and crossed the courtyard. The
Lorilleuxs lived on the sixth floor, staircase B. Coupeau laughingly
told her to hold the hand-rail tight and not to leave go of it. She
looked up, and blinked her eyes, as she perceived the tall hollow tower
of the staircase, lighted by three gas jets, one on every second
landing; the last one, right up at the top looked like a star twinkling
in a black sky, whilst the other two cast long flashes of light, of
fantastic shapes, among the interminable windings of the stairs.

“By Jove!” said the zinc-worker as he reached the first floor, smiling,
“there’s a strong smell of onion soup. Someone’s having onion soup, I’m
sure.”

Staircase B, with its gray, dirty steps and hand-rail, its scratched
walls and chipped plaster, was full of strong kitchen odors. Long
corridors, echoing with noise, led away from each landing. Doors,
painted yellow, gaped open, smeared black around the latch from dirty
hands. A sink on each landing gave forth a fetid humidity, adding its
stench to the sharp flavor of the cooking of onions. From the basement,
all the way to the sixth floor, you could hear dishes clattering,
saucepans being rinsed, pots being scraped and scoured.

On the first floor Gervaise saw a half-opened door with the word
“Designer” written on it in large letters. Inside were two men sitting
by a table, the dishes cleared away from its oilcloth cover, arguing
furiously amid a cloud of pipe smoke. The second and third floors were
quieter, and through cracks in the woodwork only such sounds filtered
as the rhythm of a cradle rocking, the stifled crying of a child, a
woman’s voice sounding like the dull murmur of running water with no
words distinct. Gervaise read the various signs on the doors giving the
names of the occupants: “Madame Gaudron, wool-carder” and “Monsieur
Madinier, cardboard boxes.” There was a fight in progress on the fourth
floor: a stomping of feet that shook the floor, furniture banged
around, a racket of curses and blows; but this did not bother the
neighbors opposite, who were playing cards with their door opened wide
to admit more air.

When Gervaise reached the fifth floor, she had to stop to take a
breath; she was not used to going up so high; that wall for ever
turning, the glimpses she had of the lodgings following each other,
made her head ache. Anyway, there was a family almost blocking the
landing: the father washing the dishes over a small earthenware stove
near the sink and the mother sitting with her back to the stair-rail
and cleaning the baby before putting it to bed.

Coupeau kept urging Gervaise along, and they finally reached the sixth
floor. He encouraged her with a smile; they had arrived! She had been
hearing a voice all the way up from the bottom and she was gazing
upward, wondering where it could be coming from, a voice so clear and
piercing that it had dominated all the other sounds. It came from a
little old woman in an attic room who sang while putting dresses on
cheap dolls. When a tall girl came by with a pail of water and entered
a nearby apartment, Gervaise saw a tumbled bed on which a man was
sprawled, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. As the door closed behind her,
Gervaise saw the hand-written card: “Mademoiselle Clemence, ironing.”

Now that she had finally made it to the top, her legs weary and her
breath short, Gervaise leaned over the railing to look down. Now it was
the gaslight on the first floor which seemed a distant star at the
bottom of a narrow well six stories deep. All the odors and all the
murmurings of the immense variety of life within the tenement came up
to her in one stifling breath that flushed her face as she hazarded a
worried glance down into the gulf below.

“We’re not there yet,” said Coupeau. “Oh! It’s quite a journey!”

He had gone down a long corridor on the left. He turned twice, the
first time also to the left, the second time to the right. The corridor
still continued branching off, narrowing between walls full of
crevices, with plaster peeling off, and lighted at distant intervals by
a slender gas-jet; and the doors all alike, succeeded each other the
same as the doors of a prison or a convent, and nearly all open,
continued to display homes of misery and work, which the hot June
evening filled with a reddish mist. At length they reached a small
passage in complete darkness.

“We’re here,” resumed the zinc-worker. “Be careful, keep to the wall;
there are three steps.”

And Gervaise carefully took another ten steps in the obscurity. She
stumbled and then counted the three steps. But at the end of the
passage Coupeau had opened a door, without knocking. A brilliant light
spread over the tiled floor. They entered.

It was a narrow apartment, and seemed as if it were the continuation of
the corridor. A faded woolen curtain, raised up just then by a string,
divided the place in two. The first part contained a bedstead pushed
beneath an angle of the attic ceiling, a cast-iron stove still warm
from the cooking of the dinner, two chairs, a table and a wardrobe, the
cornice of which had had to be sawn off to make it fit in between the
door and the bedstead. The second part was fitted up as a work-shop; at
the end, a narrow forge with its bellows; to the right, a vise fixed to
the wall beneath some shelves on which pieces of old iron lay
scattered; to the left near the window, a small workman’s bench,
encumbered with greasy and very dirty pliers, shears and microscopical
saws, all very dirty and grimy.

“It’s us!” cried Coupeau advancing as far as the woolen curtain.

But no one answered at first. Gervaise, deeply affected, moved
especially by the thought that she was about to enter a place full of
gold, stood behind the zinc-worker, stammering and venturing upon nods
of her head by way of bowing. The brilliant light, a lamp burning on
the bench, a brazier full of coals flaring in the forge, increased her
confusion still more. She ended however, by distinguishing Madame
Lorilleux—little, red-haired and tolerably strong, pulling with all the
strength of her short arms, and with the assistance of a big pair of
pincers, a thread of black metal which she passed through the holes of
a draw-plate fixed to the vise. Seated in front of the bench,
Lorilleux, quite as small of stature, but more slender in the
shoulders, worked with the tips of his pliers, with the vivacity of a
monkey, at a labor so minute, that it was impossible to follow it
between his scraggy fingers. It was the husband who first raised his
head—a head with scanty locks, the face of the yellow tinge of old wax,
long, and with an ailing expression.

“Ah! it’s you; well, well!” murmured he. “We’re in a hurry you know.
Don’t come into the work-room, you’d be in our way. Stay in the
bedroom.”

And he resumed his minute task, his face again in the reflection of a
glass globe full of green-colored water, through which the lamp shed a
circle of bright light over his work.

“Take the chairs!” called out Madame Lorilleux in her turn. “It’s that
lady, isn’t it? Very well, very well!”

She had rolled the wire and she carried it to the forge, and then,
reviving the fire of the brazier with a large wooden fan, she proceeded
to temper the wire before passing it through the last holes of the
draw-plate.

Coupeau moved the chairs forward and seated Gervaise by the curtain.
The room was so narrow that he could not sit beside her, so he sat
behind her, leaning over her shoulder to explain the work in progress.
Gervaise was intimidated by this strange reception and felt uneasy. She
had a buzzing in her ears and couldn’t hear clearly. She thought the
wife looked older than her thirty years and not very neat with her hair
in a pigtail dangling down the back of her loosely worn wrapper. The
husband, who was only a year older, appeared already an old man with
mean, thin lips, as he sat there working in his shirt sleeves with his
bare feet thrust into down at the heel slippers. Gervaise was dismayed
by the smallness of the shop, the grimy walls, the rustiness of the
tools, and the black soot spread all over what looked like the odds and
ends of a scrap-iron peddler’s wares.

“And the gold?” asked Gervaise in a low voice.

Her anxious glances searched the corners and sought amongst all that
filth for the resplendence she had dreamt of. But Coupeau burst out
laughing.

“Gold?” said he; “why there’s some; there’s some more, and there’s some
at your feet!”

He pointed successively to the fine wire at which his sister was
working, and to another roll of wire, similar to the ordinary iron
wire, hanging against the wall close to the vise; then going down on
all fours, he picked up, beneath the wooden screen which covered the
tiled floor of the work-room, a piece of waste, a tiny fragment
resembling the point of a rusty needle. But Gervaise protested; that
couldn’t be gold, that blackish piece of metal as ugly as iron! He had
to bite into the piece and show her the gleaming notch made by his
teeth. Then he continued his explanations: the employers provided the
gold wire, already alloyed; the craftsmen first pulled it through the
draw-plate to obtain the correct size, being careful to anneal it five
or six times to keep it from breaking. It required a steady, strong
hand, and plenty of practice. His sister would not let her husband
touch the wire-drawing since he was subject to coughing spells. She had
strong arms for it; he had seen her draw gold to the fineness of a
hair.

Lorilleux, seized with a fit of coughing, almost doubled up on his
stool. In the midst of the paroxysm, he spoke, and said in a choking
voice, still without looking at Gervaise, as though he was merely
mentioning the thing to himself:

“I’m making the herring-bone chain.”

Coupeau urged Gervaise to get up. She might draw nearer and see. The
chainmaker consented with a grunt. He wound the wire prepared by his
wife round a mandrel, a very thin steel rod. Then he sawed gently,
cutting the wire the whole length of the mandrel, each turn forming a
link, which he soldered. The links were laid on a large piece of
charcoal. He wetted them with a drop of borax, taken from the bottom of
a broken glass beside him; and he made them red-hot at the lamp beneath
the horizontal flame produced by the blow-pipe. Then, when he had
soldered about a hundred links he returned once more to his minute
work, propping his hands against the edge of the _cheville_, a small
piece of board which the friction of his hands had polished. He bent
each link almost double with the pliers, squeezed one end close,
inserted it in the last link already in place and then, with the aid of
a point opened out again the end he had squeezed; and he did this with
a continuous regularity, the links joining each other so rapidly that
the chain gradually grew beneath Gervaise’s gaze, without her being
able to follow, or well understand how it was done.

“That’s the herring-bone chain,” said Coupeau. “There’s also the long
link, the cable, the plain ring, and the spiral. But that’s the
herring-bone. Lorilleux only makes the herring-bone chain.”

The latter chuckled with satisfaction. He exclaimed, as he continued
squeezing the links, invisible between his black finger-nails.

“Listen to me, Young Cassis! I was making a calculation this morning. I
commenced work when I was twelve years old, you know. Well! Can you
guess how long a herring-bone chain I must have made up till to-day?”

He raised his pale face, and blinked his red eye-lids.

“Twenty-six thousand feet, do you hear? Two leagues! That’s something!
A herring-bone chain two leagues long! It’s enough to twist round the
necks of all the women of the neighborhood. And you know, it’s still
increasing. I hope to make it long enough to reach from Paris to
Versailles.”

Gervaise had returned to her seat, disenchanted and thinking everything
very ugly. She smiled to be polite to the Lorilleuxs. The complete
silence about her marriage bothered her. It was the sole reason for her
having come. The Lorilleuxs were treating her as some stranger brought
in by Coupeau. When a conversation finally did get started, it
concerned the building’s tenants. Madame Lorilleux asked her husband if
he had heard the people on the fourth floor having a fight. They fought
every day. The husband usually came home drunk and the wife had her
faults too, yelling in the filthiest language. Then they spoke of the
designer on the first floor, an uppity show-off with a mound of debts,
always smoking, always arguing loudly with his friends. Monsieur
Madinier’s cardboard business was barely surviving. He had let two girl
workers go yesterday. The business ate up all his money, leaving his
children to run around in rags. And that Madame Gaudron was pregnant
again; this was almost indecent at her age. The landlord was going to
evict the Coquets on the fifth floor. They owed nine months’ rent, and
besides, they insisted on lighting their stove out on the landing. Last
Saturday the old lady on the sixth floor, Mademoiselle Remanjou, had
arrived just in time to save the Linguerlot child from being badly
burned. Mademoiselle Clemence, one who took in ironing, well, she lived
life as she pleased. She was so kind to animals though and had such a
good heart that you couldn’t say anything against her. It was a pity, a
fine girl like her, the company she kept. She’d be walking the streets
before long.

“Look, here’s one,” said Lorilleux to his wife, giving her the piece of
chain he had been working on since his lunch. “You can trim it.” And he
added, with the persistence of a man who does not easily relinquish a
joke: “Another four feet and a half. That brings me nearer to
Versailles.”

Madame Lorilleux, after tempering it again, trimmed it by passing it
through the regulating draw-plate. Then she put it in a little copper
saucepan with a long handle, full of lye-water, and placed it over the
fire of the forge. Gervaise, again pushed forward by Coupeau, had to
follow this last operation. When the chain was thoroughly cleansed, it
appeared a dull red color. It was finished, and ready to be delivered.

“They’re always delivered like that, in their rough state,” the
zinc-worker explained. “The polishers rub them afterwards with cloths.”

Gervaise felt her courage failing her. The heat, more and more intense,
was suffocating her. They kept the door shut, because Lorilleux caught
cold from the least draught. Then as they still did not speak of the
marriage, she wanted to go away and gently pulled Coupeau’s jacket. He
understood. Besides, he also was beginning to feel ill at ease and
vexed at their affectation of silence.

“Well, we’re off,” said he. “We mustn’t keep you from your work.”

He moved about for a moment, waiting, hoping for a word or some
allusion or other. At length he decided to broach the subject himself.

“I say, Lorilleux, we’re counting on you to be my wife’s witness.”

The chainmaker pretended, with a chuckle, to be greatly surprised;
whilst his wife, leaving her draw-plates, placed herself in the middle
of the work-room.

“So it’s serious then?” murmured he. “That confounded Young Cassis, one
never knows whether he is joking or not.”

“Ah! yes, madame’s the person involved,” said the wife in her turn, as
she stared rudely at Gervaise. “_Mon Dieu!_ We’ve no advice to give
you, we haven’t. It’s a funny idea to go and get married, all the same.
Anyhow, it’s your own wish. When it doesn’t succeed, one’s only got
oneself to blame, that’s all. And it doesn’t often succeed, not often,
not often.”

She uttered these last words slower and slower, and shaking her head,
she looked from the young woman’s face to her hands, and then to her
feet as though she had wished to undress her and see the very pores of
her skin. She must have found her better than she expected.

“My brother is perfectly free,” she continued more stiffly. “No doubt
the family might have wished—one always makes projects. But things take
such funny turns. For myself, I don’t want to have any unpleasantness.
Had he brought us the lowest of the low, I should merely have said:
‘Marry her and go to blazes!’ He was not badly off though, here with
us. He’s fat enough; one can very well see he didn’t fast much; and he
always found his soup hot right on time. I say, Lorilleux, don’t you
think madame’s like Therese—you know who I mean, that woman who used to
live opposite, and who died of consumption?”

“Yes, there’s a certain resemblance,” replied the chainmaker.

“And you’ve got two children, madame? Now, I must admit I said to my
brother: ‘I can’t understand how you can want to marry a woman who’s
got two children.’ You mustn’t be offended if I consult his interests;
its only natural. You don’t look strong either. Don’t you think,
Lorilleux, that madame doesn’t look very strong?”

“No, no, she’s not strong.”

They did not mention her leg; but Gervaise understood by their side
glances, and the curling of their lips, that they were alluding to it.
She stood before them, wrapped in her thin shawl with the yellow palms,
replying in monosyllables, as though in the presence of her judges.
Coupeau, seeing she was suffering, ended by exclaiming:

“All that’s nothing to do with it. What you are talking about isn’t
important. The wedding will take place on Saturday, July 29. I
calculated by the almanac. Is it settled? Does it suit you?”

“Oh, it’s all the same to us,” said his sister. “There was no necessity
to consult us. I shan’t prevent Lorilleux being witness. I only want
peace and quiet.”

Gervaise, hanging her head, not knowing what to do with herself had put
the toe of her boot through one of the openings in the wooden screen
which covered the tiled floor of the work-room; then afraid of having
disturbed something when she had withdrawn it, she stooped down and
felt about with her hand. Lorilleux hastily brought the lamp, and he
examined her fingers suspiciously.

“You must be careful,” said he, “the tiny bits of gold stick to the
shoes, and get carried away without one knowing it.”

It was all to do with business. The employers didn’t allow a single
speck for waste. He showed her the rabbit’s foot he used to brush off
any flecks of gold left on the _cheville_ and the leather he kept on
his lap to catch any gold that fell. Twice weekly the shop was swept
out carefully, the sweepings collected and burned and the ashes sifted.
This recovered up to twenty-five or thirty francs’ worth of gold a
month.

Madame Lorilleux could not take her eyes from Gervaise’s shoes.

“There’s no reason to get angry,” murmured she with an amiable smile.
“But, perhaps madame would not mind looking at the soles of her shoes.”

And Gervaise, turning very red, sat down again, and holding up her feet
showed that there was nothing clinging to them. Coupeau had opened the
door, exclaiming: “Good-night!” in an abrupt tone of voice. He called
to her from the corridor. Then she in her turn went off, after
stammering a few polite words: she hoped to see them again, and that
they would all agree well together. Both of the Lorilleux had already
gone back to their work at the far end of their dark hole of a
work-room. Madame Lorilleux, her skin reflecting the red glow from the
bed of coals, was drawing on another wire, each effort swelling her
neck and making the strained muscles stand out like taut cords. Her
husband, hunched over beneath the greenish gleam of the globe was
starting another length of chain, twisting each link with his pliers,
pressing it on one side, inserting it into the next link above, opening
it again with the pointed tool, continuously, mechanically, not wasting
a motion, even to wipe the sweat from his face.

When Gervaise emerged from the corridor on to the landing, she could
not help saying, with tears in her eyes:

“That doesn’t promise much happiness.”

Coupeau shook his head furiously. He would get even with Lorilleux for
that evening. Had anyone ever seen such a miserly fellow? To think that
they were going to walk off with two or three grains of his gold dust!
All the fuss they made was from pure avarice. His sister thought
perhaps that he would never marry, so as to enable her to economize
four sous on her dinner every day. However, it would take place all the
same on July 29. He did not care a hang for them!

Nevertheless, Gervaise still felt depressed. Tormented by a foolish
fearfulness, she peered anxiously into every dark shadow along the
stair-rail as she descended. It was dark and deserted at this hour, lit
only by a single gas jet on the second floor. In the shadowy depths of
the dark pit, it gave a spot of brightness, even with its flame turned
so low. It was now silent behind the closed doors; the weary laborers
had gone to sleep after eating. However, there was a soft laugh from
Mademoiselle Clemence’s room and a ray of light shone through the
keyhole of Mademoiselle Remanjou’s door. She was still busy cutting out
dresses for the dolls. Downstairs at Madame Gaudron’s, a child was
crying. The sinks on the landings smelled more offensive than ever in
the midst of the darkness and stillness.

In the courtyard, Gervaise turned back for a last look at the tenement
as Coupeau called out to the concierge. The building seemed to have
grown larger under the moonless sky. The drip-drip of water from the
faucet sounded loud in the quiet. Gervaise felt that the building was
threatening to suffocate her and a chill went through her body. It was
a childish fear and she smiled at it a moment later.

“Watch your step,” warned Coupeau.

To get to the entrance, Gervaise had to jump over a wide puddle that
had drained from the dye shop. The puddle was blue now, the deep blue
of a summer sky. The reflections from the night light of the concierge
sparkled in it like stars.




CHAPTER III.


Gervaise did not want to have a wedding-party! What was the use of
spending money? Besides, she still felt somewhat ashamed; it seemed to
her quite unnecessary to parade the marriage before the whole
neighborhood. But Coupeau cried out at that. One could not be married
without having a feed. He did not care a button for the people of the
neighborhood! Nothing elaborate, just a short walk and a rabbit ragout
in the first eating-house they fancied. No music with dessert. Just a
glass or two and then back home.

The zinc-worker, chaffing and joking, at length got the young woman to
consent by promising her that there should be no larks. He would keep
his eye on the glasses, to prevent sunstrokes. Then he organized a sort
of picnic at five francs a head, at the “Silver Windmill,” kept by
Auguste, on the Boulevard de la Chapelle. It was a small cafe with
moderate charges and had a dancing place in the rear, beneath the three
acacias in the courtyard. They would be very comfortable on the first
floor. During the next ten days, he got hold of guests in the house
where his sister lived in the Rue de la Goutte-d’Or—Monsieur Madinier,
Mademoiselle Remanjou, Madame Gaudron and her husband. He even ended by
getting Gervaise to consent to the presence of two of his
comrades—Bibi-the-Smoker and My-Boots. No doubt My-Boots was a boozer;
but then he had such a fantastic appetite that he was always asked to
join those sort of gatherings, just for the sight of the caterer’s mug
when he beheld that bottomless pit swallowing his twelve pounds of
bread. The young woman on her side, promised to bring her employer
Madame Fauconnier and the Boches, some very agreeable people. On
counting, they found there would be fifteen to sit down to table, which
was quite enough. When there are too many, they always wind up by
quarrelling.

Coupeau however, had no money. Without wishing to show off, he intended
to behave handsomely. He borrowed fifty francs of his employer. Out of
that, he first of all purchased the wedding-ring—a twelve franc gold
wedding-ring, which Lorilleux procured for him at the wholesale price
of nine francs. He then bought himself a frock coat, a pair of trousers
and a waistcoat at a tailor’s in the Rue Myrrha, to whom he gave merely
twenty-five francs on account; his patent leather shoes and his hat
were still good enough. When he had put by the ten francs for his and
Gervaise’s share of the feast—the two children not being charged for—he
had exactly six francs left—the price of a low mass at the altar of the
poor. He had no liking for those black crows, the priests. It would
gripe him to pay his last six francs to keep their whistles wet;
however, a marriage without a mass wasn’t a real marriage at all.

Going to the church himself, he bargained for a whole hour with a
little old priest in a dirty cassock who was as sharp at dealing as a
push-cart peddler. Coupeau felt like boxing his ears. For a joke, he
asked the priest if he didn’t have a second-hand mass that would do for
a modest young couple. The priest, mumbling that God would take small
pleasure in blessing their union, finally let him have his mass for
five francs. Well after all, that meant twenty sous saved.

Gervaise also wanted to look decent. As soon as the marriage was
settled, she made her arrangements, worked extra time in the evenings,
and managed to put thirty francs on one side. She had a great longing
for a little silk mantle marked thirteen francs in the Rue du Faubourg
Poissonniere. She treated herself to it, and then bought for ten francs
off the husband of a washerwoman who had died in Madame Fauconnier’s
house a blue woolen dress, which she altered to fit herself. With the
seven francs remaining she procured a pair of cotton gloves, a rose for
her cap, and some shoes for Claude, her eldest boy. Fortunately the
youngsters’ blouses were passable. She spent four nights cleaning
everything, and mending the smallest holes in her stockings and
chemise.

On Friday night, the eve of the great day, Gervaise and Coupeau had
still a good deal of running about to do up till eleven o’clock, after
returning home from work. Then before separating for the night they
spent an hour together in the young woman’s room, happy at being about
to be released from their awkward position. In spite of the fact that
they had originally resolved not to put themselves out to impress the
neighbors, they had ended by taking it seriously and working themselves
till they were weary. By the time they said “Good-night,” they were
almost asleep on their feet. They breathed a great sigh of relief now
that everything was ready.

Coupeau’s witnesses were to be Monsieur Madinier and Bibi-the-Smoker.
They were counting on Lorilleux and Boche for Gervaise’s witnesses.
They were to go quietly to the mayor’s office and the church, just the
six of them, without a whole procession of people trailing behind them.
The bridegroom’s two sisters had even declared that they would stay
home, their presence not being necessary. Coupeau’s mother, however,
had sobbed and wailed, threatening to go ahead of them and hide herself
in some corner of the church, until they had promised to take her
along. The meeting of the guests was set for one o’clock at the Silver
Windmill. From there, they would go to Saint-Denis, going out by
railroad and returning on foot along the highway in order to work up an
appetite. The party promised to be quite all right.

Saturday morning, while getting dressed, Coupeau felt a qualm of
uneasiness in view of the single franc in his pocket. He began to think
that it was a matter of ordinary courtesy to offer a glass of wine and
a slice of ham to the witnesses while awaiting dinner. Also, there
might be unforeseen expenses. So, after taking Claude and Etienne to
stay with Madame Boche, who was to bring them to the dinner later that
afternoon, he hurried over to the Rue de la Goutte-d’Or to borrow ten
francs from Lorilleux. Having to do that griped him immensely as he
could guess the attitude his brother-in-law would take. The latter did
grumble a bit, but ended by lending him two five-franc pieces. However,
Coupeau overheard his sister muttering under her breath, “This is a
fine beginning.”

The ceremony at the mayor’s was to take place at half-past ten. It was
beautiful weather—a magnificent sun seemed to roast the streets. So as
not to be stared at the bride and bridegroom, the old mother, and the
four witnesses separated into two bands. Gervaise walked in front with
Lorilleux, who gave her his arm; whilst Monsieur Madinier followed with
mother Coupeau. Then, twenty steps behind on the opposite side of the
way, came Coupeau, Boche, and Bibi-the-Smoker. These three were in
black frock coats, walking erect and swinging their arms. Boche’s
trousers were bright yellow. Bibi-the-Smoker didn’t have a waistcoat so
he was buttoned up to the neck with only a bit of his cravat showing.
The only one in a full dress suit was Monsieur Madinier and passers-by
gazed at this well-dressed gentleman escorting the huge bulk of mother
Coupeau in her green shawl and black bonnet with red ribbons.

Gervaise looked very gay and sweet in her dress of vivid blue and with
her new silk mantle fitted tightly to her shoulders. She listened
politely to the sneering remarks of Lorilleux, who seemed buried in the
depths of the immense overcoat he was wearing. From time to time,
Gervaise would turn her head a little to smile brightly at Coupeau, who
was rather uncomfortable under the hot sun in his new clothes.

Though they walked very slowly, they arrived at the mayor’s quite half
an hour too soon. And as the mayor was late, their turn was not reached
till close upon eleven o’clock. They sat down on some chairs and waited
in a corner of the apartment, looking by turns at the high ceiling and
bare walls, talking low, and over-politely pushing back their chairs
each time that one of the attendants passed. Yet among themselves they
called the mayor a sluggard, saying he must be visiting his blonde to
get a massage for his gout, or that maybe he’d swallowed his official
sash.

However, when the mayor did put in his appearance, they rose
respectfully in his honor. They were asked to sit down again and they
had to wait through three other marriages. The hall was crowded with
the three bourgeois wedding parties: brides all in white, little girls
with carefully curled hair, bridesmaids wearing wide sashes, an endless
procession of ladies and gentlemen dressed in their best and looking
very stylish.

When at length they were called, they almost missed being married
altogether, Bibi-the-Smoker having disappeared. Boche discovered him
outside smoking his pipe. Well! They were a nice lot inside there to
humbug people about like that, just because one hadn’t yellow kid
gloves to shove under their noses! And the various formalities—the
reading of the Code, the different questions to be put, the signing of
all the documents—were all got through so rapidly that they looked at
each other with an idea that they had been robbed of a good half of the
ceremony. Gervaise, dizzy, her heart full, pressed her handkerchief to
her lips. Mother Coupeau wept bitterly. All had signed the register,
writing their names in big struggling letters with the exception of the
bridegroom, who not being able to write, had put his cross. They each
gave four sous for the poor. When an attendant handed Coupeau the
marriage certificate, the latter, prompted by Gervaise who nudged his
elbow, handed him another five sous.

It was a fair walk from the mayor’s office in the town hall to the
church. The men stopped along the way to have a beer. Mother Coupeau
and Gervaise took cassis with water. Then they had to trudge along the
long street where the sun glared straight down without the relief of
shade.

When they arrived at the church they were hurried along and asked if
they came so late in order to make a mockery of religion. A priest came
forward, his face pale and resentful from having to delay his lunch. An
altar boy in a soiled surplice ran before him.

The mass went very fast, with the priest turning, bowing his head,
spreading out his arms, making all the ritual gestures in haste while
casting sidelong glances at the group. Gervaise and Coupeau, before the
altar, were embarrassed, not knowing when they should kneel or rise or
seat themselves, expecting some indication from the attendant. The
witnesses, not knowing what was proper, remained standing during the
ceremony. Mother Coupeau was weeping again and shedding her tears into
the missal she had borrowed from a neighbor.

Meanwhile, the noon chimes had sounded and the church began to fill
with noise from the shuffling feet of sacristans and the clatter of
chairs being put back in place. The high altar was apparently being
prepared for some special ceremony.

Thus, in the depths of this obscure chapel, amid the floating dust, the
surly priest placed his withered hands on the bared heads of Gervaise
and Coupeau, blessing their union amid a hubbub like that of moving
day. The wedding party signed another registry, this time in the
sacristy, and then found themselves out in the bright sunlight before
the church doors where they stood for a moment, breathless and confused
from having been carried along at such a break-neck speed.

“Voila!” said Coupeau with an embarrassed laugh. “Well, it sure didn’t
take long. They shove it at you so; it’s like being at the painless
dentist’s who doesn’t give you time to cry out. Here you get a painless
wedding!”

“Yes, it’s a quick job,” Lorilleux smirked. “In five minutes you’re
tied together for the rest of your life. You poor Young Cassis, you’ve
had it.”

The four witnesses whacked Coupeau on the shoulders as he arched his
back against the friendly blows. Meanwhile Gervaise was hugging and
kissing mother Coupeau, her eyes moist, a smile lighting her face. She
replied reassuringly to the old woman’s sobbing: “Don’t worry, I’ll do
my best. I want so much to have a happy life. If it doesn’t work out it
won’t be my fault. Anyhow, it’s done now. It’s up to us to get along
together and do the best we can for each other.”

After that they went straight to the Silver Windmill. Coupeau had taken
his wife’s arm. They walked quickly, laughing as though carried away,
quite two hundred steps ahead of the others, without noticing the
houses or the passers-by, or the vehicles. The deafening noises of the
faubourg sounded like bells in their ears. When they reached the
wineshop, Coupeau at once ordered two bottles of wine, some bread and
some slices of ham, to be served in the little glazed closet on the
ground floor, without plates or table cloth, simply to have a snack.
Then, noticing that Boche and Bibi-the-Smoker seemed to be very hungry,
he had a third bottle brought, as well as a slab of brie cheese. Mother
Coupeau was not hungry, being too choked up to be able to eat. Gervaise
found herself very thirsty, and drank several large glasses of water
with a small amount of wine added.

“I’ll settle for this,” said Coupeau, going at once to the bar, where
he paid four francs and five sous.

It was now one o’clock and the other guests began to arrive. Madame
Fauconnier, a fat woman, still good looking, first put in an
appearance; she wore a chintz dress with a flowery pattern, a pink tie
and a cap over-trimmed with flowers. Next came Mademoiselle Remanjou,
looking very thin in the eternal black dress which she seemed to keep
on even when she went to bed; and the two Gaudrons—the husband, like
some heavy animal and almost bursting his brown jacket at the slightest
movement, the wife, an enormous woman, whose figure indicated evident
signs of an approaching maternity and whose stiff violet colored skirt
still more increased her rotundity. Coupeau explained that they were
not to wait for My-Boots; his comrade would join the party on the Route
de Saint-Denis.

“Well!” exclaimed Madame Lerat as she entered, “it’ll pour in torrents
soon! That’ll be pleasant!”

And she called everyone to the door of the wineshop to see the clouds
as black as ink which were rising rapidly to the south of Paris. Madame
Lerat, eldest of the Coupeaus, was a tall, gaunt woman who talked
through her nose. She was unattractively dressed in a puce-colored robe
that hung loosely on her and had such long dangling fringes that they
made her look like a skinny poodle coming out of the water. She
brandished her umbrella like a club. After greeting Gervaise, she said,
“You’ve no idea. The heat in the street is like a slap on the face.
You’d think someone was throwing fire at you.”

Everyone agreed that they knew the storm was coming. It was in the air.
Monsieur Madinier said that he had seen it as they were coming out of
the church. Lorilleux mentioned that his corns were aching and he
hadn’t been able to sleep since three in the morning. A storm was due.
It had been much too hot for three days in a row.

“Well, maybe it will just be a little mist,” Coupeau said several
times, standing at the door and anxiously studying the sky. “Now we
have to wait only for my sister. We’ll start as soon as she arrives.”

Madame Lorilleux was late. Madame Lerat had stopped by so they could
come together, but found her only beginning to get dressed. The two
sisters had argued. The widow whispered in her brother’s ear, “I left
her flat! She’s in a dreadful mood. You’ll see.”

And the wedding party had to wait another quarter of an hour, walking
about the wineshop, elbowed and jostled in the midst of the men who
entered to drink a glass of wine at the bar. Now and again Boche, or
Madame Fauconnier, or Bibi-the-Smoker left the others and went to the
edge of the pavement, looking up at the sky. The storm was not passing
over at all; a darkness was coming on and puffs of wind, sweeping along
the ground, raised little clouds of white dust. At the first clap of
thunder, Mademoiselle Remanjou made the sign of the cross. All the
glances were anxiously directed to the clock over the looking-glass; it
was twenty minutes to two.

“Here it goes!” cried Coupeau. “It’s the angels who’re weeping.”

A gush of rain swept the pavement, along which some women flew, holding
down their skirts with both hands. And it was in the midst of this
first shower that Madame Lorilleux at length arrived, furious and out
of breath, and struggling on the threshold with her umbrella that would
not close.

“Did any one ever see such a thing?” she exclaimed. “It caught me just
at the door. I felt inclined to go upstairs again and take my things
off. I should have been wise had I done so. Ah! it’s a pretty wedding!
I said how it would be. I wanted to put it off till next Saturday; and
it rains because they wouldn’t listen to me! So much the better, so
much the better! I wish the sky would burst!”

Coupeau tried to pacify her without success. He wouldn’t have to pay
for her dress if it was spoilt! She had on a black silk dress in which
she was nearly choking, the bodice, too tight fitting, was almost
bursting the button-holes, and was cutting her across the shoulders;
while the skirt only allowed her to take very short steps in walking.
However, the ladies present were all staring at her, quite overcome by
her costume.

She appeared not to notice Gervaise, who was sitting beside mother
Coupeau. She asked her husband for his handkerchief. Then she went into
a corner and very carefully wiped off the raindrops that had fallen on
her silk dress.

The shower had abruptly ceased. The darkness increased, it was almost
like night—a livid night rent at times by large flashes of lightning.
Bibi-the-Smoker said laughingly that it would certainly rain priests.
Then the storm burst forth with extreme violence. For half an hour the
rain came down in bucketsful, and the thunder rumbled unceasingly. The
men standing up before the door contemplated the grey veil of the
downpour, the swollen gutters, the splashes of water caused by the rain
beating into the puddles. The women, feeling frightened, had sat down
again, holding their hands before their eyes. They no longer conversed,
they were too upset. A jest Boche made about the thunder, saying that
St. Peter was sneezing up there, failed to raise a smile. But, when the
thunder-claps became less frequent and gradually died away in the
distance, the wedding guests began to get impatient, enraged against
the storm, cursing and shaking their fists at the clouds. A fine and
interminable rain now poured down from the sky which had become an ashy
grey.

“It’s past two o’clock,” cried Madame Lorilleux. “We can’t stop here
for ever.”

Mademoiselle Remanjou, having suggested going into the country all the
same, even though they went no farther than the moat of the
fortifications, the others scouted the idea: the roads would be in a
nice state, one would not even be able to sit down on the grass;
besides, it did not seem to be all over yet, there might perhaps be
another downpour. Coupeau, who had been watching a workman, completely
soaked, yet quietly walking along in the rain, murmured:

“If that animal My-Boots is waiting for us on the Route de Saint-Denis,
he won’t catch a sunstroke.”

That made some of them laugh; but the general ill-humor increased. It
was becoming ludicrous. They must decide on something unless they
planned to sit there, staring at each other, until time for dinner. So
for the next quarter of an hour, while the persistent rain continued,
they tried to think of what to do. Bibi-the-Smoker suggested that they
play cards. Boche slyly suggesting a most amusing game, the game of
true confessions. Madame Gaudron thought of going to eat onion tarts on
the Chaussee Clignancourt. Madame Lerat wanted to hear some stories.
Gaudron said he wasn’t a bit put out and thought they were quite well
off where they were, out of the downpour. He suggested sitting down to
dinner immediately.

There was a discussion after each proposal. Some said that this would
put everybody to sleep or that that would make people think they were
stupid. Lorilleux had to get his word in. He finally suggested a walk
along the outer Boulevards to Pere Lachaise cemetery. They could visit
the tomb of Heloise and Abelard. Madame Lorilleux exploded, no longer
able to control herself. She was leaving, she was. Were they trying to
make fun of her? She got all dressed up and came out in the rain. And
for what? To be wasting time in a wineshop. No, she had had enough of
this wedding party. She’d rather be in her own home. Coupeau and
Lorilleux had to get between her and the door to keep her from leaving.
She kept telling them, “Get out of my way! I am leaving, I tell you!”

Lorilleux finally succeeded in calming her down. Coupeau went over to
Gervaise, who had been sitting quietly in a corner with mother Coupeau
and Madame Fauconnier.

“You haven’t suggested anything,” he said to her.

“Oh! Whatever they want,” she replied, laughing. “I don’t mind. We can
go out or stay here.”

She seemed aglow with contentment. She had spoken to each guest as they
arrived. She spoke sensibly, in her soft voice, not getting into any
disagreements. During the downpour, she had sat with her eyes wide
open, watching the lightning as though she could see the future in the
sudden flashes.

Monsieur Madinier had up to this time not proposed anything. He was
leaning against the bar, with the tails of his dress coat thrust apart,
while he fully maintained the important air of an employer. He kept on
expectorating, and rolled his big eyes about.

“_Mon Dieu_!” said he, “we might go to the Museum.”

And he stroked his chin, as he blinkingly consulted the other members
of the party.

“There are antiquities, pictures, paintings, a whole heap of things. It
is very instructive. Perhaps you have never been there. Oh! it is quite
worth seeing at least once in a while.”

They looked at each other interrogatively. No, Gervaise had never been;
Madame Fauconnier neither, nor Boche, nor the others. Coupeau thought
he had been one Sunday, but he was not sure. They hesitated, however,
when Madame Lorilleux, greatly impressed by Monsieur Madinier’s
importance, thought the suggestion a very worthy and respectable one.
As they were wasting the day, and were all dressed up, they might as
well go somewhere for their own instruction. Everyone approved. Then,
as it still rained a little, they borrowed some umbrellas from the
proprietor of the wineshop, old blue, green, and brown umbrellas,
forgotten by different customers, and started off to the Museum.

The wedding party turned to the right, and descended into Paris along
the Faubourg Saint-Denis. Coupeau and Gervaise again took the lead,
almost running and keeping a good distance in front of the others.
Monsieur Madinier now gave his arm to Madame Lorilleux, mother Coupeau
having remained behind in the wineshop on account of her old legs. Then
came Lorilleux and Madame Lerat, Boche and Madame Fauconnier,
Bibi-the-Smoker and Mademoiselle Remanjou, and finally the two
Gaudrons. They were twelve and made a pretty long procession on the
pavement.

“I swear to you, we had nothing to do with it,” Madame Lorilleux
explained to Monsieur Madinier. “We don’t even know how they met, or,
we know only too well, but that’s not for us to discuss. My husband
even had to buy the wedding ring. We were scarcely out of bed this
morning when he had to lend them ten francs. And, not a member of her
family at her wedding, what kind of bride is that? She says she has a
sister in Paris who works for a pork butcher. Why didn’t she invite
her?” She stopped to point at Gervaise, who was limping awkwardly
because of the slope of the pavement. “Just look at her. Clump-clump.”

“Clump-clump” ran through the wedding procession. Lorilleux laughed
under his breath, and said they ought to call her that, but Madame
Fauconnier stood up for Gervaise. They shouldn’t make fun of her; she
was neat as a pin and did a good job when there was washing to be done.

When the wedding procession came out of the Faubourg Saint-Denis, they
had to cross the boulevard. The street had been transformed into a
morass of sticky mud by the storm. It had started to pour again and
they had opened the assorted umbrellas. The women picked their way
carefully through the mud, holding their skirts high as the men held
the sorry-looking umbrellas over their heads. The procession stretched
out the width of the street.

“It’s a masquerade!” yelled two street urchins.

People turned to stare. These couples parading across the boulevard
added a splash of vivid color against the damp background. It was a
parade of a strange medley of styles showing fancy used clothing such
as constitute the luxury of the poor. The gentlemen’s hats caused the
most merriment, old hats preserved for years in dark and dusty
cupboards, in a variety of comical forms: tall ones, flattened ones,
sharply peaked ones, hats with extraordinary brims, curled back or
flat, too narrow or too wide. Then at the very end, Madame Gaudron came
along with her bright dress over her bulging belly and caused the
smiles of the audience to grow even wider. The procession made no
effort to hasten its progress. They were, in fact, rather pleased to
attract so much attention and admiration.

“Look! Here comes the bride!” one of the urchins shouted, pointing to
Madame Gaudron. “Oh! Isn’t it too bad! She must have swallowed
something!”

The entire wedding procession burst into laughter. Bibi-the-Smoker
turned around and laughed. Madame Gaudron laughed the most of all. She
wasn’t ashamed as she thought more than one of the women watching had
looked at her with envy.

They turned into the Rue de Clery. Then they took the Rue du Mail. On
reaching the Place des Victoires, there was a halt. The bride’s left
shoe lace had come undone, and as she tied it up again at the foot of
the statue of Louis XIV., the couples pressed behind her waiting, and
joking about the bit of calf of her leg that she displayed. At length,
after passing down the Rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs, they reached the
Louvre.

Monsieur Madinier politely asked to be their cicerone. It was a big
place, and they might lose themselves; besides, he knew the best parts,
because he had often come there with an artist, a very intelligent
fellow from whom a large dealer bought designs to put on his cardboard
boxes. Down below, when the wedding party entered the Assyrian Museum,
a slight shiver passed through it. The deuce! It was not at all warm
there; the hall would have made a capital cellar. And the couples
slowly advanced, their chins raised, their eyes blinking, between the
gigantic stone figures, the black marble gods, dumb in their hieratic
rigidity, and the monstrous beasts, half cats and half women, with
death-like faces, attenuated noses, and swollen lips. They thought all
these things very ugly. The stone carvings of the present day were a
great deal better. An inscription in Phoenician characters amazed them.
No one could possibly have ever read that scrawl. But Monsieur
Madinier, already up on the first landing with Madame Lorilleux, called
to them, shouting beneath the vaulted ceiling:

“Come along! They’re nothing, all those things! The things to see are
on the first floor!”

The severe barrenness of the staircase made them very grave. An
attendant, superbly attired in a red waistcoat and a coat trimmed with
gold lace, who seemed to be awaiting them on the landing, increased
their emotion. It was with great respect, and treading as softly as
possible, that they entered the French Gallery.

Then, without stopping, their eyes occupied with the gilding of the
frames, they followed the string of little rooms, glancing at the
passing pictures too numerous to be seen properly. It would have
required an hour before each, if they had wanted to understand it. What
a number of pictures! There was no end to them. They must be worth a
mint of money. Right at the end, Monsieur Madinier suddenly ordered a
halt opposite the “Raft of the Medusa” and he explained the subject to
them. All deeply impressed and motionless, they uttered not a word.
When they started off again, Boche expressed the general feeling,
saying it was marvellous.

In the Apollo Gallery, the inlaid flooring especially astonished the
party—a shining floor, as clear as a mirror, and which reflected the
legs of the seats. Mademoiselle Remanjou kept her eyes closed, because
she could not help thinking that she was walking on water. They called
to Madame Gaudron to be careful how she trod on account of her
condition. Monsieur Madinier wanted to show them the gilding and
paintings of the ceiling; but it nearly broke their necks to look up
above, and they could distinguish nothing. Then, before entering the
Square Salon, he pointed to a window, saying:

“That’s the balcony from which Charles IX. fired on the people.”

He looked back to make sure the party was following. In the middle of
the Salon Carre, he held up his hand. “There are only masterpieces
here,” he said, in a subdued voice, as though in church. They went all
around the room. Gervaise wanted to know about “The Wedding at Cana.”
Coupeau paused to stare at the “Mona Lisa,” saying that she reminded
him of one of his aunts. Boche and Bibi-the-Smoker snickered at the
nudes, pointing them out to each other and winking. The Gaudrons looked
at the “Virgin” of Murillo, he with his mouth open, she with her hands
folded on her belly.

When they had been all around the Salon, Monsieur Madinier wished them
to go round it again, it was so worth while. He was very attentive to
Madame Lorilleux, because of her silk dress; and each time that she
questioned him he answered her gravely, with great assurance. She was
curious about “Titian’s Mistress” because the yellow hair resembled her
own. He told her it was “La Belle Ferronniere,” a mistress of Henry IV.
about whom there had been a play at the Ambigu.

Then the wedding party invaded the long gallery occupied by the Italian
and Flemish schools. More paintings, always paintings, saints, men and
women, with faces which some of them could understand, landscapes that
were all black, animals turned yellow, a medley of people and things,
the great mixture of the colors of which was beginning to give them all
violent headaches. Monsieur Madinier no longer talked as he slowly
headed the procession, which followed him in good order, with stretched
necks and upcast eyes. Centuries of art passed before their bewildered
ignorance, the fine sharpness of the early masters, the splendors of
the Venetians, the vigorous life, beautiful with light, of the Dutch
painters. But what interested them most were the artists who were
copying, with their easels planted amongst the people, painting away
unrestrainedly; an old lady, mounted on a pair of high steps, working a
big brush over the delicate sky of an immense painting, struck them as
something most peculiar.

Slowly the word must have gone around that a wedding party was visiting
the Louvre. Several painters came over with big smiles. Some visitors
were so curious that they went to sit on benches ahead of the group in
order to be comfortable while they watched them pass in review. Museum
guards bit back comments. The wedding party was now quite weary and
beginning to drag their feet.

Monsieur Madinier was reserving himself to give more effect to a
surprise that he had in store. He went straight to the “Kermesse” of
Rubens; but still he said nothing. He contented himself with directing
the others’ attention to the picture by a sprightly glance. The ladies
uttered faint cries the moment they brought their noses close to the
painting. Then, blushing deeply they turned away their heads. The men
though kept them there, cracking jokes, and seeking for the coarser
details.

“Just look!” exclaimed Boche, “it’s worth the money. There’s one
spewing, and another, he’s watering the dandelions; and that one—oh!
that one. Ah, well! They’re a nice clean lot, they are!”

“Let us be off,” said Monsieur Madinier, delighted with his success.
“There is nothing more to see here.”

They retraced their steps, passing again through the Salon Carre and
the Apollo Gallery. Madame Lerat and Mademoiselle Remanjou complained,
declaring that their legs could scarcely bear them. But the cardboard
box manufacturer wanted to show Lorilleux the old jewelry. It was close
by in a little room which he could find with his eyes shut. However, he
made a mistake and led the wedding party astray through seven or eight
cold, deserted rooms, only ornamented with severe looking-glass cases,
containing numberless broken pots and hideous little figures.

While looking for an exit they stumbled into the collection of
drawings. It was immense. Through room after room they saw nothing
interesting, just scribblings on paper that filled all the cases and
covered the walls. They thought there was no end to these drawings.

Monsieur Madinier, losing his head, not willing to admit that he did
not know his way, ascended a flight of stairs, making the wedding party
mount to the next floor. This time they traversed the Naval Museum,
among models of instruments and cannons, plans in relief, and vessels
as tiny as playthings. After going a long way, and walking for a
quarter of an hour, the party came upon another staircase; and, having
descended this, found itself once more surrounded by the drawings. Then
despair took possession of them as they wandered at random through long
halls, following Monsieur Madinier, who was furious and mopping the
sweat from his forehead. He accused the government of having moved the
doors around. Museum guards and visitors looked on with astonishment as
the procession, still in a column of couples, passed by. They passed
again through the Salon Carre, the French Gallery and then along the
cases where minor Eastern divinities slumbered peacefully. It seemed
they would never find their way out. They were getting tired and made a
lot of noise.

“Closing time! Closing time!” called out the attendants, in a loud tone
of voice.

And the wedding party was nearly locked in. An attendant was obliged to
place himself at the head of it, and conduct it to a door. Then in the
courtyard of the Louvre, when it had recovered its umbrellas from the
cloakroom, it breathed again. Monsieur Madinier regained his assurance.
He had made a mistake in not turning to the left, now he recollected
that the jewelry was to the left. The whole party pretended to be very
pleased at having seen all they had.

Four o’clock was striking. There were still two hours to be employed
before the dinner time, so it was decided they should take a stroll,
just to occupy the interval. The ladies, who were very tired, would
have preferred to sit down; but, as no one offered any refreshments,
they started off, following the line of quays. There they encountered
another shower and so sharp a one that in spite of the umbrellas, the
ladies’ dresses began to get wet. Madame Lorilleux, her heart sinking
within her each time a drop fell upon her black silk, proposed that
they should shelter themselves under the Pont-Royal; besides if the
others did not accompany her, she threatened to go all by herself. And
the procession marched under one of the arches of the bridge. They were
very comfortable there. It was, most decidedly a capital idea! The
ladies, spreading their handkerchiefs over the paving-stones, sat down
with their knees wide apart, and pulled out the blades of grass that
grew between the stones with both hands, whilst they watched the dark
flowing water as though they were in the country. The men amused
themselves with calling out very loud, so as to awaken the echoes of
the arch. Boche and Bibi-the-Smoker shouted insults into the air at the
top of their voices, one after the other. They laughed uproariously
when the echo threw the insults back at them. When their throats were
hoarse from shouting, they made a game of skipping flat stones on the
surface of the Seine.

The shower had ceased but the whole party felt so comfortable that no
one thought of moving away. The Seine was flowing by, an oily sheet
carrying bottle corks, vegetable peelings, and other refuse that
sometimes collected in temporary whirlpools moving along with the
turbulent water. Endless traffic rumbled on the bridge overhead, the
noisy bustle of Paris, of which they could glimpse only the rooftops to
the left and right, as though they were in the bottom of a deep pit.

Mademoiselle Remanjou sighed; if the leaves had been out this would
have reminded her of a bend of the Marne where she used to go with a
young man. It still made her cry to think of him.

At last, Monsieur Madinier gave the signal for departure. They passed
through the Tuileries gardens, in the midst of a little community of
children, whose hoops and balls upset the good order of the couples.
Then as the wedding party on arriving at the Place Vendome looked up at
the column, Monsieur Madinier gallantly offered to treat the ladies to
a view from the top. His suggestion was considered extremely amusing.
Yes, yes, they would go up; it would give them something to laugh about
for a long time. Besides, it would be full of interest for those
persons who had never been higher than a cow pasture.

“Do you think Clump-clump will venture inside there with her leg all
out of place?” murmured Madame Lorilleux.

“I’ll go up with pleasure,” said Madame Lerat, “but I won’t have any
men walking behind me.”

And the whole party ascended. In the narrow space afforded by the
spiral staircase, the twelve persons crawled up one after the other,
stumbling against the worn steps, and clinging to the walls. Then, when
the obscurity became complete, they almost split their sides with
laughing. The ladies screamed when the gentlemen pinched their legs.
But they were weren’t stupid enough to say anything! The proper plan is
to think that it is the mice nibbling at them. It wasn’t very serious;
the men knew when to stop.

Boche thought of a joke and everyone took it up. They called down to
Madame Gaudron to ask her if she could squeeze her belly through. Just
think! If she should get stuck there, she would completely block the
passage, and how would they ever get out? They laughed so at the jokes
about her belly that the column itself vibrated. Boche was now quite
carried away and declared that they were growing old climbing up this
chimney pipe. Was it ever coming to an end, or did it go right up to
heaven? He tried to frighten the ladies by telling them the structure
was shaking.

Coupeau, meanwhile, said nothing. He was behind Gervaise, with his arm
around her waist, and felt that she was everything perfect to him. When
they suddenly emerged again into the daylight, he was just in the act
of kissing her on the cheek.

“Well! You’re a nice couple; you don’t stand on ceremony,” said Madame
Lorilleux with a scandalized air.

Bibi-the-Smoker pretended to be furious. He muttered between his teeth.
“You made such a noise together! I wasn’t even able to count the
steps.”

But Monsieur Madinier was already up on the platform, pointing out the
different monuments. Neither Madame Fauconnier nor Mademoiselle
Remanjou would on any consideration leave the staircase. The thought of
the pavement below made their blood curdle, and they contented
themselves with glancing out of the little door. Madame Lerat, who was
bolder, went round the narrow terrace, keeping close to the bronze
dome; but, _mon Dieu_, it gave one a rude emotion to think that one
only had to slip off. The men were a little paler than usual as they
stared down at the square below. You would think you were up in
mid-air, detached from everything. No, it wasn’t fun, it froze your
very insides.

Monsieur Madinier told them to raise their eyes and look straight into
the distance to avoid feeling dizzy. He went on pointing out the
Invalides, the Pantheon, Notre Dame and the Montmartre hill. Madame
Lorilleux asked if they could see the place where they were to have
dinner, the Silver Windmill on the Boulevard de la Chapelle. For ten
minutes they tried to see it, even arguing about it. Everyone had their
own idea where it was.

“It wasn’t worth while coming up here to bite each other’s noses off,”
said Boche, angrily as he turned to descend the staircase.

The wedding party went down, unspeaking and sulky, awakening no other
sound beyond that of shoes clanking on the stone steps. When it reached
the bottom, Monsieur Madinier wished to pay; but Coupeau would not
permit him, and hastened to place twenty-four sous into the keeper’s
hand, two sous for each person. So they returned by the Boulevards and
the Faubourg du Poissonniers. Coupeau, however, considered that their
outing could not end like that. He bundled them all into a wineshop
where they took some vermouth.

The repast was ordered for six o’clock. At the Silver Windmill, they
had been waiting for the wedding party for a good twenty minutes.
Madame Boche, who had got a lady living in the same house to attend to
her duties for the evening, was conversing with mother Coupeau in the
first floor room, in front of the table, which was all laid out; and
the two youngsters, Claude and Etienne, whom she had brought with her,
were playing about beneath the table and amongst the chairs. When
Gervaise, on entering caught sight of the little ones, whom she had not
seen all the day, she took them on her knees, and caressed and kissed
them.

“Have they been good?” asked she of Madame Boche. “I hope they haven’t
worried you too much.”

And as the latter related the things the little rascals had done during
the afternoon, and which would make one die with laughing, the mother
again took them up and pressed them to her breast, seized with an
overpowering outburst of maternal affection.

“It’s not very pleasant for Coupeau, all the same,” Madame Lorilleux
was saying to the other ladies, at the end of the room.

Gervaise had kept her smiling peacefulness from the morning, but after
the long walk she appeared almost sad at times as she watched her
husband and the Lorilleuxs in a thoughtful way. She had the feeling
that Coupeau was a little afraid of his sister. The evening before, he
had been talking big, swearing he would put them in their places if
they didn’t behave. However, she could see that in their presence he
was hanging on their words, worrying when he thought they might be
displeased. This gave the young bride some cause for worry about the
future.

They were now only waiting for My-Boots, who had not yet put in an
appearance.

“Oh! blow him!” cried Coupeau, “let’s begin. You’ll see, he’ll soon
turn up, he’s got a hollow nose, he can scent the grub from afar. I say
he must be amusing himself, if he’s still standing like a post on the
Route de Saint-Denis!”

Then the wedding party, feeling very lively, sat down making a great
noise with the chairs. Gervaise was between Lorilleux and Monsieur
Madinier, and Coupeau between Madame Fauconnier and Madame Lorilleux.
The other guests seated themselves where they liked, because it always
ended with jealousies and quarrels, when one settled their places for
them. Boche glided to a seat beside Madame Lerat. Bibi-the-Smoker had
for neighbors Mademoiselle Remanjou and Madame Gaudron. As for Madame
Boche and mother Coupeau, they were right at the end of the table,
looking after the children, cutting up their meat and giving them
something to drink, but not much wine.

“Does nobody say grace?” asked Boche, whilst the ladies arranged their
skirts under the table-cloth, so as not to get them stained.

But Madame Lorilleux paid no attention to such pleasantries. The
vermicelli soup, which was nearly cold, was gulped down very quickly,
their lips making a hissing noise against the spoons. Two waiters
served at table, dressed in little greasy jackets and not over-clean
white aprons. By the four open windows overlooking the acacias of the
courtyard there entered the clear light of the close of a stormy day,
with the atmosphere purified thereby though without sufficiently
cooling it. The light reflected from the humid corner of trees tinged
the haze-filled room with green and made leaf shadows dance along the
table-cloth, from which came a vague aroma of dampness and mildew.

Two large mirrors, one at each end of the room, seemed to stretch out
the table. The heavy crockery with which it was set was beginning to
turn yellow and the cutlery was scratched and grimed with grease. Each
time a waiter came through the swinging doors from the kitchen a whiff
of odorous burnt lard came with him.

“Don’t all talk at once,” said Boche, as everyone remained silent with
his nose in his plate.

They were drinking the first glass of wine as their eyes followed two
meat pies which the waiters were handing round when My-Boots entered
the room.

“Well, you’re a scurvy lot, you people!” said he. “I’ve been wearing my
pins out for three hours waiting on that road, and a gendarme even came
and asked me for my papers. It isn’t right to play such dirty tricks on
a friend! You might at least have sent me word by a commissionaire. Ah!
no, you know, joking apart, it’s too bad. And with all that, it rained
so hard that I got my pickets full of water. Honor bright, you might
still catch enough fish in ’em for a meal.”

The others wriggled with laughter. That animal My-Boots was just a bit
on; he had certainly already stowed away his two quarts of wine, merely
to prevent his being bothered by all that frog’s liquor with which the
storm had deluged his limbs.

“Hallo! Count Leg-of-Mutton!” said Coupeau, “just go and sit yourself
there, beside Madame Gaudron. You see you were expected.”

Oh, he did not mind, he would soon catch the others up; and he asked
for three helpings of soup, platefuls of vermicelli, in which he soaked
enormous slices of bread. Then, when they had attacked the meat pies,
he became the profound admiration of everyone at the table. How he
stowed it away! The bewildered waiters helped each other to pass him
bread, thin slices which he swallowed at a mouthful. He ended by losing
his temper; he insisted on having a loaf placed on the table beside
him. The landlord, very anxious, came for a moment and looked in at the
door. The party, which was expecting him, again wriggled with laughter.
It seemed to upset the caterer. What a rum card he was that My-Boots!
One day he had eaten a dozen hard-boiled eggs and drank a dozen glasses
of wine while the clock was striking twelve! There are not many who can
do that. And Mademoiselle Remanjou, deeply moved, watched My-Boots chew
whilst Monsieur Madinier, seeking for a word to express his almost
respectful astonishment, declared that such a capacity was
extraordinary.

There was a brief silence. A waiter had just placed on the table a
ragout of rabbits in a vast dish as deep as a salad-bowl. Coupeau, who
liked fun, started another joke.

“I say, waiter, that rabbit’s from the housetops. It still mews.”

And in fact, a faint mew perfectly imitated seemed to issue from the
dish. It was Coupeau who did that with his throat, without opening his
lips; a talent which at all parties, met with decided success, so much
so that he never ordered a dinner abroad without having a rabbit
ragout. After that he purred. The ladies pressed their napkins to their
mouths to try and stop their laughter. Madame Fauconnier asked for a
head, she only liked that part. Mademoiselle Remanjou had a weakness
for the slices of bacon. And as Boche said he preferred the little
onions when they were nicely broiled, Madame Lerat screwed up her lips,
and murmured:

“I can understand that.”

She was a dried up stick, living the cloistered life of a hard-working
woman imprisoned within her daily routine, who had never had a man
stick his nose into her room since the death of her husband; yet she
had an obsession with double meanings and indecent allusions that were
sometimes so far off the mark that only she understood them.

As Boche leaned toward her and, in a whisper, asked for an explanation,
she resumed:

“Little onions, why of course. That’s quite enough, I think.”

The general conversation was becoming grave. Each one was talking of
his trade. Monsieur Madinier raved about the cardboard business. There
were some real artists. For an example, he mentioned Christmas gift
boxes, of which he’d seen samples that were marvels of splendor.

Lorilleux sneered at this; he was extremely vain because of working
with gold, feeling that it gave a sort of sheen to his fingers and his
whole personality. “In olden times jewelers wore swords like
gentlemen.” He often cited the case of Bernard Palissy, even though he
really knew nothing about him.

Coupeau told of a masterpiece of a weather vane made by one of his
fellow workers which included a Greek column, a sheaf of wheat, a
basket of fruit, and a flag, all beautifully worked out of nothing but
strips of zinc shaped and soldered together.

Madame Lerat showed Bibi-the-Smoker how to make a rose by rolling the
handle of her knife between her bony fingers.

All the while, their voices had been rising louder and louder,
competing for attention. Shrill comments by Madame Fauconnier were
heard. She complained about the girls who worked for her, especially a
little apprentice who was nothing but a tart and had badly scorched
some sheets the evening before.

“You may talk,” Lorilleux cried, banging his fist down on the table,
“but gold is gold.”

And, in the midst of the silence caused by the statement of this fact,
the only sound heard was Mademoiselle Remanjou’s shrill voice
continuing:

“Then I turn up the skirt and stitch it inside. I stick a pin in the
head to keep the cap on, and that’s all; and they are sold for thirteen
sous a piece.”

She was explaining how she dressed her dolls to My-Boots, whose jaws
were working slowly like grindstones. He did not listen, though he kept
nodding his head, but looked after the waiters to prevent them removing
any of the dishes he had not cleaned out. They had now finished a veal
stew with green beans. The roast was brought in, two scrawny chickens
resting on a bed of water cress which was limp from the warming oven.

Outside, only the higher branches of the acacias were touched by the
setting sun. Inside, the greenish reflected light was thickened by
wisps of steam rising from the table, now messy with spilled wine and
gravy and the debris of the dinner. Along the wall were dirty dishes
and empty bottles which the waiters had piled there like a heap of
refuse. It was so hot that the men took off their jackets and continued
eating in their shirt sleeves.

“Madame Boche, please don’t spread their butter so thick,” said
Gervaise, who spoke but little, and who was watching Claude and Etienne
from a distance.

She got up from her seat, and went and talked for a minute while
standing behind the little ones’ chairs. Children did not reason; they
would eat all day long without refusing a single thing; and then she
herself helped them to some chicken, a little of the breast. But mother
Coupeau said they might, just for once in a while, risk an attack of
indigestion. Madame Boche, in a low voice accused Boche of caressing
Madame Lerat’s knees. Oh, he was a sly one, but he was getting a little
too gay. She had certainly seen his hand disappear. If he did it again,
drat him! she wouldn’t hesitate throwing a pitcher of water over his
head.

In the partial silence, Monsieur Madinier was talking politics. “Their
law of May 31, is an abominable one. Now you must reside in a place for
two years. Three millions of citizens are struck off the voting lists.
I’ve been told that Bonaparte is, in reality, very much annoyed for he
loves the people; he has given them proofs.”

He was a republican; but he admired the prince on account of his uncle,
a man the like of whom would never be seen again. Bibi-the-Smoker flew
into a passion. He had worked at the Elysee; he had seen Bonaparte just
as he saw My-Boots in front of him over there. Well that muff of a
president was just like a jackass, that was all! It was said that he
was going to travel about in the direction of Lyons; it would be a
precious good riddance of bad rubbish if he fell into some hole and
broke his neck. But, as the discussion was becoming too heated, Coupeau
had to interfere.

“Ah, well! How simple you all are to quarrel about politics. Politics
are all humbug! Do such things exist for us? Let there be any one as
king, it won’t prevent me earning my five francs a day, and eating and
sleeping; isn’t that so? No, it’s too stupid to argue about!”

Lorilleux shook his head. He was born on the same day as the Count of
Chambord, the 29th of September, 1820. He was greatly struck with this
coincidence, indulging himself in a vague dream, in which he
established a connection between the king’s return to France and his
own private fortunes. He never said exactly what he was expecting, but
he led people to suppose that when that time arrived something
extraordinarily agreeable would happen to him. So whenever he had a
wish too great to be gratified, he would put it off to another time,
when the king came back.

“Besides,” observed he, “I saw the Count de Chambord one evening.”

Every face was turned towards him.

“It’s quite true. A stout man, in an overcoat, and with a good-natured
air. I was at Pequignot’s, one of my friends who deals in furniture in
the Grand Rue de la Chapelle. The Count of Chambord had forgotten his
umbrella there the day before; so he came in, and just simply said,
like this: ‘Will you please return me my umbrella?’ Well, yes, it was
him; Pequignot gave me his word of honor it was.”

Not one of the guests suggested the smallest doubt. They had now
arrived at dessert and the waiters were clearing the table with much
clattering of dishes. Madame Lorilleux, who up to then had been very
genteel, very much the lady, suddenly let fly with a curse. One of the
waiters had spilled something wet down her neck while removing a dish.
This time her silk dress would be stained for sure. Monsieur Madinier
had to examine her back, but he swore there was nothing to be seen.

Two platters of cheese, two dishes of fruit, and a floating island
pudding of frosted eggs in a deep salad-bowl had now been placed along
the middle of the table. The pudding caused a moment of respectful
attention even though the overdone egg whites had flattened on the
yellow custard. It was unexpected and seemed very fancy.

My-Boots was still eating. He had asked for another loaf. He finished
what there was of the cheese; and, as there was some cream left, he had
the salad-bowl passed to him, into which he sliced some large pieces of
bread as though for a soup.

“The gentleman is really remarkable,” said Monsieur Madinier, again
giving way to his admiration.

Then the men rose to get their pipes. They stood for a moment behind
My-Boots, patting him on the back, and asking him if he was feeling
better. Bibi-the-Smoker lifted him up in his chair; but _tonnerre de
Dieu!_ the animal had doubled in weight. Coupeau joked that My-Boots
was only getting started, that now he was going to settle down and
really eat for the rest of the night. The waiters were startled and
quickly vanished from sight.

Boche, who had gone downstairs for a moment, came up to report the
proprietor’s reaction. He was standing behind his bar, pale as death.
His wife, dreadfully upset, was wondering if any bakeries were still
open. Even the cat seemed deep in despair. This was as funny as could
be, really worth the price of the dinner. It was impossible to have a
proper dinner party without My-Boots, the bottomless pit. The other men
eyed him with a brooding jealousy as they puffed on their pipes.
Indeed, to be able to eat so much, you had to be very solidly built!

“I wouldn’t care to be obliged to support you,” said Madame Gaudron.
“Ah, no; you may take my word for that!”

“I say, little mother, no jokes,” replied My-Boots, casting a side
glance at his neighbor’s rotund figure. “You’ve swallowed more than I
have.”

The others applauded, shouting “Bravo!”—it was well answered. It was
now pitch dark outside, three gas-jets were flaring in the room,
diffusing dim rays in the midst of the tobacco-smoke. The waiters,
after serving the coffee and the brandy, had removed the last piles of
dirty plates. Down below, beneath the three acacias, dancing had
commenced, a cornet-a-piston and two fiddles playing very loud, and
mingling in the warm night air with the rather hoarse laughter of
women.

“We must have a punch!” cried My-Boots; “two quarts of brandy, lots of
lemon, and a little sugar.”

But Coupeau, seeing the anxious look on Gervaise’s face in front of
him, got up from the table, declaring that there should be no more
drink. They had emptied twenty-five quarts, a quart and a half to each
person, counting the children as grown-up people; that was already too
much. They had had a feed together in good fellowship, and without
ceremony, because they esteemed each other, and wished to celebrate the
event of the day amongst themselves. Everything had been very nice;
they had had lots of fun. It wouldn’t do to get cockeyed drunk now, out
of respect to the ladies. That was all he had to say, they had come
together to toast a marriage and they had done so.

Coupeau delivered the little speech with convincing sincerity and
punctuated each phrase by placing his hand on his heart. He won
whole-hearted approval from Lorilleux and Monsieur Madinier; but the
other four men, especially My-Boots, were already well lit and sneered.
They declared in hoarse drunken voices that they were thirsty and
wanted drinks.

“Those who’re thirsty are thirsty, and those who aren’t thirsty aren’t
thirsty,” remarked My-Boots. “Therefore, we’ll order the punch. No one
need take offence. The aristocrats can drink sugar-and-water.”

And as the zinc-worker commenced another sermon, the other, who had
risen on his legs, gave himself a slap, exclaiming:

“Come, let’s have no more of that, my boy! Waiter, two quarts of your
aged stuff!”

So Coupeau said very well, only they would settle for the dinner at
once. It would prevent any disputes. The well-behaved people did not
want to pay for the drunkards; and it just happened that My-Boots,
after searching in his pockets for a long time, could only produce
three francs and seven sous. Well, why had they made him wait all that
time on the Route de Saint-Denis? He could not let himself be drowned
and so he had broken into his five-franc piece. It was the fault of the
others, that was all! He ended by giving the three francs, keeping the
seven sous for the morrow’s tobacco. Coupeau, who was furious, would
have knocked him over had not Gervaise, greatly frightened, pulled him
by his coat, and begged him to keep cool. He decided to borrow the two
francs of Lorilleux, who after refusing them, lent them on the sly, for
his wife would never have consented to his doing so.

Monsieur Madinier went round with a plate. The spinster and the ladies
who were alone—Madame Lerat, Madame Fauconnier, Mademoiselle
Remanjou—discreetly placed their five-franc pieces in it first. Then
the gentlemen went to the other end of the room, and made up the
accounts. They were fifteen; it amounted therefore to seventy-five
francs. When the seventy-five francs were in the plate, each man added
five sous for the waiters. It took a quarter of an hour of laborious
calculations before everything was settled to the general satisfaction.

But when Monsieur Madinier, who wished to deal direct with the
landlord, had got him to step up, the whole party became lost in
astonishment on hearing him say with a smile that there was still
something due to him. There were some extras; and, as the word “extras”
was greeted with angry exclamations, he entered into
details:—Twenty-five quarts of wine, instead of twenty, the number
agreed upon beforehand; the frosted eggs, which he had added, as the
dessert was rather scanty; finally, a quarter of a bottle of rum,
served with the coffee, in case any one preferred rum. Then a
formidable quarrel ensued. Coupeau, who was appealed to, protested
against everything; he had never mentioned twenty quarts; as for the
frosted eggs, they were included in the dessert, so much the worse for
the landlord if he choose to add them without being asked to do so.
There remained the rum, a mere nothing, just a mode of increasing the
bill by putting on the table spirits that no one thought anything
about.

“It was on the tray with the coffee,” he cried; “therefore it goes with
the coffee. Go to the deuce! Take your money, and never again will we
set foot in your den!”

“It’s six francs more,” repeated the landlord. “Pay me my six francs;
and with all that I haven’t counted the four loaves that gentleman
ate!”

The whole party, pressing forward, surrounded him with furious gestures
and a yelping of voices choking with rage. The women especially threw
aside all reserve, and refused to add another centime. This was some
wedding dinner! Mademoiselle Remanjou vowed she would never again
attend such a party. Madame Fauconnier declared she had had a very
disappointing meal; at home she could have had a finger-licking dish
for only two francs. Madame Gaudron bitterly complained that she had
been shoved down to the worst end of the table next to My-Boots who had
ignored her. These parties never turned out well, one should be more
careful whom one invites. Gervaise had taken refuge with mother Coupeau
near one of the windows, feeling shamed as she realized that all these
recriminations would fall back upon her.

Monsieur Madinier ended by going down with the landlord. One could hear
them arguing below. Then, when half an hour had gone by the cardboard
box manufacturer returned; he had settled the matter by giving three
francs. But the party continued annoyed and exasperated, constantly
returning to the question of the extras. And the uproar increased from
an act of vigor on Madame Boche’s part. She had kept an eye on Boche,
and at length detected him squeezing Madame Lerat round the waist in a
corner. Then, with all her strength, she flung a water pitcher, which
smashed against the wall.

“One can easily see that your husband’s a tailor, madame,” said the
tall widow, with a curl of the lip, full of a double meaning. “He’s a
petticoat specialist, even though I gave him some pretty hard kicks
under the table.”

The harmony of the evening was altogether upset. Everyone became more
and more ill-tempered. Monsieur Madinier suggested some singing, but
Bibi-the-Smoker, who had a fine voice, had disappeared some time
before; and Mademoiselle Remanjou, who was leaning out of the window,
caught sight of him under the acacias, swinging round a big girl who
was bare-headed. The cornet-a-piston and two fiddles were playing “_Le
Marchand de Moutarde_.” The party now began to break up. My-Boots and
the Gaudrons went down to the dance with Boche sneaking along after
them. The twirling couples could be seen from the windows. The night
was still as though exhausted from the heat of the day. A serious
conversation started between Lorilleux and Monsieur Madinier. The
ladies examined their dresses carefully to see if they had been
stained.

Madame Lerat’s fringe looked as though it had been dipped in the
coffee. Madame Fauconnier’s chintz dress was spotted with gravy. Mother
Coupeau’s green shawl, fallen from off a chair, was discovered in a
corner, rolled up and trodden upon. But it was Madame Lorilleux
especially who became more ill-tempered still. She had a stain on the
back of her dress; it was useless for the others to declare that she
had not—she felt it. And, by twisting herself about in front of a
looking-glass, she ended by catching a glimpse of it.

“What did I say?” cried she. “It’s gravy from the fowl. The waiter
shall pay for the dress. I will bring an action against him. Ah! this
is a fit ending to such a day. I should have done better to have stayed
in bed. To begin with, I’m off. I’ve had enough of their wretched
wedding!”

And she left the room in a rage, causing the staircase to shake beneath
her heavy footsteps. Lorilleux ran after her. But all she would consent
to was that she would wait five minutes on the pavement outside, if he
wanted them to go off together. She ought to have left directly after
the storm, as she wished to do. She would make Coupeau sorry for that
day. Coupeau was dismayed when he heard how angry she was. Gervaise
agreed to leave at once to avoid embarrassing him any more.

There was a flurry of quick good-night kisses. Monsieur Madinier was to
escort mother Coupeau home. Madame Boche would take Claude and Etienne
with her for the bridal night. The children were sound asleep on
chairs, stuffed full from the dinner. Just as the bridal couple and
Lorilleux were about to go out the door, a quarrel broke out near the
dance floor between their group and another group. Boche and My-Boots
were kissing a lady and wouldn’t give her up to her escorts, two
soldiers.

It was scarcely eleven o’clock. On the Boulevard de la Chapelle, and in
the entire neighborhood of the Goutte-d’Or, the fortnight’s pay, which
fell due on that Saturday, produced an enormous drunken uproar. Madame
Lorilleux was waiting beneath a gas-lamp about twenty paces from the
Silver Windmill. She took her husband’s arm, and walked on in front
without looking round, at such a rate, that Gervaise and Coupeau got
quite out of breath in trying to keep up with them. Now and again they
stepped off the pavement to leave room for some drunkard who had fallen
there. Lorilleux looked back, endeavoring to make things pleasant.

“We will see you as far as your door,” said he.

But Madame Lorilleux, raising her voice, thought it a funny thing to
spend one’s wedding night in such a filthy hole as the Hotel Boncoeur.
Ought they not to have put their marriage off, and have saved a few
sous to buy some furniture, so as to have had a home of their own on
the first night? Ah! they would be comfortable, right up under the
roof, packed into a little closet, at ten francs a month, where there
was not even the slightest air.

“I’ve given notice, we’re not going to use the room up at the top of
the house,” timidly interposed Coupeau. “We are keeping Gervaise’s
room, which is larger.”

Madame Lorilleux forgot herself. She turned abruptly round.

“That’s worse than all!” cried she. “You’re going to sleep in
Clump-clump’s room.”

Gervaise became quite pale. This nickname, which she received full in
the face for the first time, fell on her like a blow. And she fully
understood it, too, her sister-in-law’s exclamation: the Clump-clump’s
room was the room in which she had lived for a month with Lantier,
where the shreds of her past life still hung about. Coupeau did not
understand this, but merely felt hurt at the harsh nickname.

“You do wrong to christen others,” he replied angrily. “You don’t know
perhaps, that in the neighborhood they call you Cow’s-Tail, because of
your hair. There, that doesn’t please you, does it? Why should we not
keep the room on the first floor? To-night the children won’t sleep
there, and we shall be very comfortable.”

Madame Lorilleux added nothing further, but retired into her dignity,
horribly annoyed at being called Cow’s-Tail. To cheer up Gervaise,
Coupeau squeezed her arm softly. He even succeeded in making her smile
by whispering into her ear that they were setting up housekeeping with
the grand sum of seven sous, three big two-sou pieces and one little
sou, which he jingled in his pocket.

When they reached the Hotel Boncoeur, the two couples wished each other
good-night, with an angry air; and as Coupeau pushed the two women into
each other’s arms, calling them a couple of ninnies, a drunken fellow,
who seemed to want to go to the right, suddenly slipped to the left and
came tumbling between them.

“Why, it’s old Bazouge!” said Lorilleux. “He’s had his fill to-day.”

Gervaise, frightened, squeezed up against the door of the hotel. Old
Bazouge, an undertaker’s helper of some fifty years of age, had his
black trousers all stained with mud, his black cape hooked on to his
shoulder, and his black feather hat knocked in by some tumble he had
taken.

“Don’t be afraid, he’s harmless,” continued Lorilleux. “He’s a neighbor
of ours—the third room in the passage before us. He would find himself
in a nice mess if his people were to see him like this!”

Old Bazouge, however, felt offended at the young woman’s evident
terror.

“Well, what!” hiccoughed he, “we ain’t going to eat any one. I’m as
good as another any day, my little woman. No doubt I’ve had a drop!
When work’s plentiful one must grease the wheels. It’s not you, nor
your friends, who would have carried down the stiff ’un of forty-seven
stone whom I and a pal brought from the fourth floor to the pavement,
and without smashing him too. I like jolly people.”

But Gervaise retreated further into the doorway, seized with a longing
to cry, which spoilt her day of sober-minded joy. She no longer thought
of kissing her sister-in-law, she implored Coupeau to get rid of the
drunkard. Then Bazouge, as he stumbled about, made a gesture of
philosophical disdain.

“That won’t prevent you passing though our hands, my little woman.
You’ll perhaps be glad to do so, one of these days. Yes, I know some
women who’d be much obliged if we did carry them off.”

And, as Lorilleux led him away, he turned around, and stuttered out a
last sentence, between two hiccoughs.

“When you’re dead—listen to this—when you’re dead, it’s for a long,
long time.”




CHAPTER IV.


Then followed four years of hard work. In the neighborhood, Gervaise
and Coupeau had the reputation of being a happy couple, living in
retirement without quarrels, and taking a short walk regularly every
Sunday in the direction of St. Ouen. The wife worked twelve hours a day
at Madame Fauconnier’s, and still found means to keep their lodging as
clean and bright as a new coined sou and to prepare the meals for all
her little family, morning and evening. The husband never got drunk,
brought his wages home every fortnight, and smoked a pipe at his window
in the evening, to get a breath of fresh air before going to bed. They
were frequently alluded to on account of their nice, pleasant ways; and
as between them they earned close upon nine francs a day, it was
reckoned that they were able to put by a good deal of money.

However, during their first months together they had to struggle hard
to get by. Their wedding had left them owing two hundred francs. Also,
they detested the Hotel Boncoeur as they didn’t like the other
occupants. Their dream was to have a home of their own with their own
furniture. They were always figuring how much they would need and
decided three hundred and fifty francs at least, in order to be able to
buy little items that came up later.

They were in despair at ever being able to collect such a large sum
when a lucky chance came their way. An old gentleman at Plassans
offered to take the older boy, Claude, and send him to an academy down
there. The old man, who loved art, had previously been much impressed
by Claude’s sketches. Claude had already begun to cost them quite a
bit. Now, with only Etienne to support, they were able to accumulate
the money in a little over seven months. One day they were finally able
to buy their own furniture from a second-hand dealer on Rue Belhomme.
Their hearts filled with happiness, they celebrated by walking home
along the exterior Boulevards.

They had purchased a bed, a night table, a chest of drawers with a
marble top, a wardrobe, a round table covered with oilcloth, and six
chairs. All were of dark mahogany. They also bought blankets, linen,
and kitchen utensils that were scarcely used. It meant settling down
and giving themselves a status in life as property owners, as persons
to be respected.

For two months past they had been busy seeking some new apartments. At
first they wanted above everything to hire these in the big house of
the Rue de la Goutte-d’Or. But there was not a single room to let
there; so that they had to relinquish their old dream. To tell the
truth, Gervaise was rather glad in her heart; the neighborhood of the
Lorilleux almost door to door, frightened her immensely. Then, they
looked about elsewhere. Coupeau, very properly did not wish to be far
from Madame Fauconnier’s so that Gervaise could easily run home at any
hour of the day. And at length they met with exactly what suited them,
a large room with a small closet and a kitchen, in the Rue Neuve de la
Goutte-d’Or, almost opposite the laundress’s. This was in a small
two-story building with a very steep staircase. There were two
apartments on the second floor, one to the left, the other to the
right, The ground floor was occupied by a man who rented out carriages,
which filled the sheds in the large stable yard by the street.

Gervaise was delighted with this as it made her feel she was back in a
country town. With no close neighbors there would be no gossip to worry
about in this little corner. It reminded her of a small lane outside
the ramparts of Plassans. She could even see her own window while
ironing at the laundry by just tilting her head to the side.

They took possession of their new abode at the April quarter. Gervaise
was then eight months advanced. But she showed great courage, saying
with a laugh that the baby helped her as she worked; she felt its
influence growing within her and giving her strength. Ah, well! She
just laughed at Coupeau whenever he wanted her to lie down and rest
herself! She would take to her bed when the labor pains came. That
would be quite soon enough as with another mouth to feed, they would
have to work harder than ever.

She made their new place bright and shiny before helping her husband
install the furniture. She loved the furniture, polishing it and
becoming almost heart-broken at the slightest scratch. Any time she
knocked into the furniture while cleaning she would stop with a sudden
shock as though she had hurt herself.

The chest of drawers was especially dear to her. She thought it
handsome, sturdy and most respectable-looking. The dream that she
hadn’t dared to mention was to get a clock and put it right in the
middle of the marble top. It would make a splendid effect. She probably
would have bought one right away except for the expected baby.

The couple were thoroughly enchanted with their new home. Etienne’s bed
occupied the small closet, where there was still room to put another
child’s crib. The kitchen was a very tiny affair and as dark as night,
but by leaving the door wide open, one could just manage to see;
besides, Gervaise had not to cook meals for thirty people, all she
wanted was room to make her soup. As for the large room, it was their
pride. The first thing in the morning, they drew the curtains of the
alcove, white calico curtains; and the room was thus transformed into a
dining-room, with the table in the centre, and the wardrobe and chest
of drawers facing each other.

They stopped up the chimney since it burned as much as fifteen sous of
coal a day. A small cast-iron stove on the marble hearth gave them
enough warmth on cold days for only seven sous. Coupeau had also done
his best to decorate the walls. There was a large engraving showing a
marshal of France on horseback with a baton in his hand. Family
photographs were arranged in two rows on top of the chest of drawers on
each side of an old holy-water basin in which they kept matches. Busts
of Pascal and Beranger were on top of the wardrobe. It was really a
handsome room.

“Guess how much we pay here?” Gervaise would ask of every visitor she
had.

And whenever they guessed too high a sum, she triumphed and delighted
at being so well suited for such a little money, cried:

“One hundred and fifty francs, not a sou more! Isn’t it almost like
having it for nothing!”

The street, Rue Neuve de la Goutte d’Or, played an important part in
their contentment. Gervaise’s whole life was there, as she traveled
back and forth endlessly between her home and Madame Fauconnier’s
laundry. Coupeau now went down every evening and stood on the doorstep
to smoke his pipe. The poorly-paved street rose steeply and had no
sidewalks. Toward Rue de la Goutte d’Or there were some gloomy shops
with dirty windows. There were shoemakers, coopers, a run-down grocery,
and a bankrupt cafe whose closed shutters were covered with posters. In
the opposite direction, toward Paris, four-story buildings blocked the
sky. Their ground floor shops were all occupied by laundries with one
exception—a green-painted store front typical of a small-town
hair-dresser. Its shop windows were full of variously colored flasks.
It lighted up this drab corner with the gay brightness of its copper
bowls which were always shining.

The most pleasant part of the street was in between, where the
buildings were fewer and lower, letting in more sunlight. The carriage
sheds, the plant which manufactured soda water, and the wash-house
opposite made a wide expanse of quietness. The muffled voices of the
washerwomen and the rhythmic puffing of the steam engine seemed to
deepen the almost religious silence. Open fields and narrow lanes
vanishing between dark walls gave it the air of a country village.
Coupeau, always amused by the infrequent pedestrians having to jump
over the continuous streams of soapy water, said it reminded him of a
country town where his uncle had taken him when he was five years old.
Gervaise’s greatest joy was a tree growing in the courtyard to the left
of their window, an acacia that stretched out a single branch and yet,
with its meager foliage, lent charm to the entire street.

It was on the last day of April that Gervaise was confined. The pains
came on in the afternoon, towards four o’clock, as she was ironing a
pair of curtains at Madame Fauconnier’s. She would not go home at once,
but remained there wriggling about on a chair, and continuing her
ironing every time the pain allowed her to do so; the curtains were
wanted quickly and she obstinately made a point of finishing them.
Besides, perhaps after all it was only a colic; it would never do to be
frightened by a bit of a stomach-ache. But as she was talking of
starting on some shirts, she became quite pale. She was obliged to
leave the work-shop, and cross the street doubled in two, holding on to
the walls. One of the workwomen offered to accompany her; she declined,
but begged her to go instead for the midwife, close by, in the Rue de
la Charbonniere. This was only a false alarm; there was no need to make
a fuss. She would be like that no doubt all through the night. It was
not going to prevent her getting Coupeau’s dinner

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