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Updated: May 3, 2025
"One might almost think oneself in the country," murmured Gervaise. They took a seat under the dead tree. The clearstarcher set the basket down at her feet.
The clearstarcher was very pale and so much agitated that she could hardly stand. Virginie knew at once and, leaning over her, looked in at the restaurant and saw Lantier quietly dining. "I turned my foot," said Gervaise when she could speak. Finally at the Assommoir they found Coupeau and Poisson. They were standing in the center of an excited crowd.
Why on earth should he stay there so long if he is not drinking? My heart is in my mouth; I am so afraid something will happen." The clearstarcher begged her to say no more. Mme Putois started up and began a fierce piratical song, standing stiff and erect in her black dress, her pale face surrounded by her black lace cap, and gesticulating violently. Poisson nodded approval.
"Separated!" exclaimed the clearstarcher. "Who is separated?" asked Clemence, interrupting her conversation with Mamma Coupeau. "No one," said Virginie, "or at least no one whom you know." As she spoke she looked at Gervaise and seemed to take a positive delight in disturbing her still more.
The clearstarcher, meanwhile, was going from bad to worse. She had been dismissed from Mme Fauconnier's and in the last few weeks had worked for eight laundresses, one after the other dismissed from all for her untidiness. As she seemed to have lost all skill in ironing, she went out by the day to wash and by degrees was entrusted with only the roughest work.
Cray stayed behind, pretending he did not belong to us, and he heard a man say, 'Perhaps the gentleman's a parson; that sort always think they ought to be moralising about something or other. And he found out by their talk that the old lady was a clearstarcher, so when she was alone again we went back.
Mme Lerat had amused herself by quarreling with her sister, to whom she had expressed her admiration of the generosity evinced by Gervaise, and when she saw that Mme Lorilleux was intensely exasperated she declared she had never seen such eyes in anybody's head as those of the clearstarcher. She really believed one might light paper at them.
Poor Gervaise wrung her hands in despair. But finally, after two days of energetic labor, the whole thing was done, and the men walked off with their ladders, singing lustily. Then came the moving, and finally Gervaise called herself settled in her new home and was pleased as a child. As she came up the street she could see her sign afar off: CLEARSTARCHER
Goujet, wishing to save Etienne from Coupeau's rough treatment, had taken him to the place where he was employed to blow the bellows, with the prospect of becoming an apprentice as soon as he was old enough, and Etienne thus became another tie between the clearstarcher and the blacksmith. All their little world laughed and told Gervaise that her friend worshiped the very ground she trod upon.
I should like sometimes a cup of tisane, but I can't get it; and Nana that child whom I have raised from the cradle disappears in the morning and never shows her face until night, when she sleeps right through and never once asks me how I am or if she can do anything for me. It will soon be over, and I really believe this clearstarcher would smother me herself if she were not afraid of the law!"
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