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Updated: May 24, 2025
Mme Lerat having made some sharp little speech or other, she loudly announced that, God willing, she wasn't going to let anyone no, not even her own aunt make improper remarks in her presence. After which she dreed her guests with honorable sentiments.
They had been working upon Coupeau. Everyone was urging him to give up the lease. Madame Lerat herself, who had been on very good terms with Lantier and Virginie for some time past, and who was tickled with the idea that they were a trifle smitten with each other, talked of bankruptcy and prison, putting on the most terrified airs.
Clemence could not swallow a spoonful of strawberries without saying that it was another shirt ironed; Madame Lerat pretended that the cream cheese smelt of starch; whilst Madame Lorilleux said between her teeth that it was capital fun to gobble up the money so quickly on the very boards on which one had had so much trouble to earn it. There was quite a tempest of shouts and laughter.
The Coupeaus had kept her there so that she might remain under the eye of Madame Lerat, who had been forewoman in the workroom for ten years.
The girl flushed very red, whereupon her aunt at once caught her by the arm and made her trot over the pavement, whilst the individual followed behind. Ah! so the tom cat had come for Nana. Well, that was nice! At fifteen years and a half to have men trailing after her! Then Madame Lerat hastily began to question her. Mon Dieu!
"Papa, Papa!" stammered the child. The company overwhelmed him with caresses, but Bosc was bored and talked of sitting down to table. That was the only serious business in life. Nana asked her guests' permission to put Louiset's chair next her own. The dinner was very merry, but Bosc suffered from the near neighborhood of the child, from whom he had to defend his plate. Mme Lerat bored him too.
"While waiting for you to return we'll play a game of bezique," said Mme Maloir after a short silence. "Does Madame play bezique?" Certainly Mme Lerat played it, and that to perfection. It was no good troubling Zoe, who had vanished a corner of the table would do quite well. And they pushed back the tablecloth over the dirty plates.
Shelves against the wall were piled with boxes and bundles all covered with a thick coating of dust. The gas had blackened the ceiling. The two windows were so large that the women, seated at the table, could see all that was going on in the street below. Mme Lerat was the first to make her appearance in the morning, but in another fifteen minutes all the others were there.
Mme Lerat had refused to return to Batignolles so late, and a mattress was laid on the floor in the shop near the table. She slept there amid the debris of the feast, and a neighbor's cat profited by an open window to establish herself by her side, where she crunched the bones of the goose all night between her fine, sharp teeth.
And all three, standing before the bed, commented with divers exclamations on the details of the confinement a most remarkable confinement, just like having a tooth pulled, nothing more. Madame Lerat examined the baby all over, declared she was well formed, even added that she could grow up into an attractive woman.
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