The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

About eight Lantier returned. He was a young fellow of twenty-six, a short, dark, and handsome Provençal. He pushed her aside, and when she upbraided him, shook her violently, and then sent her out to pawn a few ragged, soiled garments. When she returned with a five-franc-piece he slipped it into his pocket and lay down on the bed and appeared to fall asleep. Reassured by his regular breathing, she gathered together a bundle of dirty clothes and went out to a wash-house near by.

Madame Boche, the doorkeeper of the Hôtel Boncoeur, had kept a place for her, and immediately started talking, without leaving off her work.

"No, we're not married" said Gervaise presently. "Lantier isn't so nice that one should care to be his wife. We have lived together eight years. In the country he was very good to me, but his mother died last year and left him seventeen hundred francs. He would come to Paris, and since then I don't know what to make of him. He's ambitious and a spendthrift, and at the end of two months we came to the Hôtel Boncoeur."

The gossip continued and Gervaise had nearly finished when she recognised, a few tubs away, the tall Virginie, her supposed rival in the affections of Lantier, and the sister of Adèle. Suddenly some laughter arose at the door of the wash-house and Claude and Etienne ran to Gervaise through the puddles. Claude had the key of the room on his finger, and he exclaimed in his clear voice, "Papa's gone. He jumped off the bed, put all the things in the box and carried it down to a cab. He's gone."

Gervaise rose to her feet, ghastly pale, unable to cry.

"Come, my dear," murmured Madame Boche.

"If you but knew," she said at length. "He sent me this morning to pawn the last of my things so that he could pay the cab." And she burst out crying. Then, seeing the tall Virginie, with other women, staring at her, a mad rage seized her, and noticing a bucket of water, she threw its contents with all her might. A fierce quarrel ensued, ending in a hand-to-hand conflict with flowing blood and torn garments. When her rival was driven to flight Gervaise returned to her deserted lodgings. Her tears again took possession of her. Lantier had forgotten nothing. Even a little hand-glass and the packet of pawn tickets were gone.

II.--Gervaise and Coupeau

About three weeks later, at half-past eleven one beautiful day of sunshine, Gervaise and Coupeau, the zinc-worker, were partaking together of plums preserved in brandy at the "Assommoir" kept by old Colombe. Coupeau, who had been smoking a cigarette on the pavement, had prevailed on her to go inside as she crossed the road returning from taking home a customer's washing; and her large square laundress's basket was on the floor beside her, behind the little zinc-covered table.

Coupeau was making a fresh cigarette. He was very clean in a cap and a short blue linen blouse, laughing and showing his white teeth. With a projecting under jaw, and slightly snub nose, he had yet handsome chestnut eyes, and the face of a jolly dog, and a 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 frock of black Orleans stuff, and bareheaded, was finishing her plum, which she held by the stalk between the tips of her fingers.

The zinc-worker, having lit his cigarette, placed his elbows on the table, and said, "Then it's to be 'No,' is it?"

"Oh, most decidedly 'No,' Monsieur Coupeau," she replied. "You'll find someone else prettier than I am who won't have two monkeys to drag about with her."

But she did not repulse him entirely, and as, in his urgency, Coupeau made a point of offering marriage, little by little Gervaise gave way. At last, after a month, she yielded.

"How you do tease me," she murmured. "Well, then, yes. Ah, we're perhaps doing a very foolish thing."

During the following days Coupeau sought to get Gervaise to call on his sister in the Rue de la Goutte d'Or, but the young woman showed a great dread of this visit to the Lorilleux. Coupeau was in no wise dependent on his sister, only the Lorilleux had the reputation of earning as much as ten francs a day as gold chain makers, and on that ground they exercised special authority. They lived on the sixth floor in a tenement house crammed with tenants of every degree of squalor. They were so busy that they could not cease their work, and welcomed their new relative with but a few cold words. Her reception was very trying to Gervaise, but the disappointment of herself and Coupeau was dispelled when the Lorilleux agreed to attend the wedding and pay their share of the wedding dinner.

Gervaise did not want to have guests at her wedding. What was the use of spending money? Besides, it seemed quite unnecessary to show off her marriage before the whole neighbourhood. But Coupeau exclaimed at this. One could not be married without having a spread, and at length he got her to consent.

They formed a party of twelve, including the Lorilleux and some of Coupeau's comrades who frequented the "Assommoir." The day was excessively hot. At the mayor's they had to wait their turn and thus were late at the church. On the way the men had some beer and after the religious ceremony they adjourned to a wine-shop. Then a heavy storm preventing a proposed excursion into the country before dinner, they went to the Louvre. The general opinion was that the pictures were quite wonderful. Shut out of the galleries with still two hours to spare, the party decided to take a short walk and filled up the interval in climbing to the top of the Vendome monument.