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"The more elbow grease one uses, the more it shines," said Lantier, sententiously, with his mouth full of peppermint drops. Virginie, who sat back with the demeanor of a princess, her eyes partly open, was still watching the scrubbing, and indulging in remarks. "A little more on the right there. Take care of the wainscot. You know I was not very well pleased last Saturday.
But all at once, recollecting that he had left Florent behind him, he hastily came back. "I live at the end of the Impasse des Bourdonnais," he said rapidly. "My name's written in chalk on the door, Claude Lantier. Come and see the etching of the Rue Pirouette." Then he vanished.
Ah! they had predicted that the girl would reward her parents in this fashion. It was deserved; all artificial flower-girls went that way. The Boches and the Poissons also sneered with an extraordinary display and outlay of grief. Lantier alone covertly defended Nana.
Her daughter must have sent her some especial message. Lantier ate his sugarplums. "I would not have looked at her," said Virginie. "I sincerely trust, if I should meet her, that she would not speak to me for, really, it would mortify me beyond expression. I am sorry for you, Madame Gervaise, but the truth is that Poisson arrests every day a dozen just such girls."
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.
When he was on duty and anyone winked their eye to him it meant a glass of wine. He would even walk for hours up and down before the laundry waiting for a wink. Then so as not to be seen, he would pass through the courtyard and toss off the liquor in secret. "Ah! ah!" said Lantier when he saw him enter, "it's you, Badingue."
It was a long, dark, narrow alley, with a gutter on one side close to the wall, and the loathsome smell brought to her mind the recollection of having passed through there with Lantier a fortnight previous. And what had that fortnight been? A succession of quarrels and dissensions, the remembrance of which would be forevermore a regret and bitterness.
"And the army," he said, "what would you do with that?" Lantier became very much excited. "The army!" he cried. "I would scatter it to the four winds of heaven! I want the military system of the country abolished! I want the abolition of titles and monopolies! I want salaries equalized! I want liberty for everyone. Divorces, too " "Yes; divorces, of course," interposed Boche.
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.
He, in his turn, was fully aware of the happiness she felt in being there, and he reserved the work which required skill for the time when she could look on in wonder and admiration. It was an idyl that they were unconsciously enacting all that spring, and when Gervaise returned to her home it was in a spirit of sweet content. By degrees her unreasonable fears of Lantier were conquered.
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