Madame Boche, the doorkeeper of the Hotel 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 Hotel 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 Adele.  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?”