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And as Coupeau refused to speak to the Lorilleuxs on the subject saying that she, Gervaise, could very well go and do so, the latter went up in a fit of indignation with which her heart was almost bursting. When she reached their door she entered without knocking. Nothing had been changed since the night when the Lorilleuxs, at their first meeting had received her so ungraciously.

At first she thought she would not ask her two women, Mme Putois and Clemence, lest it should make them too familiar, but as the entertainment was constantly under discussion before them she ended by inviting them too. Thus there were ten; she must have two more. She decided on a reconciliation with the Lorilleuxs, who had extended the olive branch several times lately.

Gervaise remained conciliatory, and peaceably argued against all this bad reasoning. She tried to soften the Lorilleuxs. But the husband ended by no longer answering her. The wife was now at the forge scouring a piece of chain in the little, long-handled brass saucepan full of lye-water. She still affectedly turned her back, as though a hundred leagues away.

Then, wishing particularly to have twelve, she became reconciled with the Lorilleuxs, who for some time past had been hovering around her; at least it was agreed that the Lorilleuxs should come to dinner, and that peace should be made with glasses in hand. You really shouldn't keep family quarrels going forever.

Besides, it seemed good to him to loaf around like a bum! On the afternoons when Coupeau felt dull, he would call on the Lorilleuxs. The latter would pity him immensely, and attract him with all sorts of amiable attentions. During the first years following his marriage, he had avoided them, thanks to Gervaise's influence.

It is pretty when it shines all new in the sunshine. She resembled them so little now, that on the days when she had twenty sous she arranged things to let people think that she had forty. Mother Coupeau and Gervaise talked of the Lorilleuxs whilst they laid the cloth about three o'clock.

Occasionally, however, when eating his dinner, he would snatch up a knife and wave it wildly in the air, crying out that he was dishonored and then, laying it down as suddenly, resumed eating his soup. In this great house, whence each month a girl or two took flight, this incident astonished no one. The Lorilleuxs were rather triumphant at the success of their prophecy. Lantier defended Nana.

Was it not a great comfort, she said to herself and to her enemies, for as such she had begun to regard the Lorilleuxs, that she had this money now to turn to in this emergency? Her neighbors next door had been very kind and thoughtful to Gervaise all through her trouble and the illness of her husband.

Only they would rather have died than have applied to the Lorilleuxs, for they knew they were too tight-fisted. Thus Gervaise displayed remarkable courage in going to knock at their door. She felt so frightened in the passage that she experienced the sudden relief of people who ring a dentist's bell. "Come in!" cried the chainmaker in a sour voice. How warm and nice it was inside.

The next evening Coupeau urged Gervaise to go with him to call on his sister. But the young woman shrank with ardent fear from this visit to the Lorilleuxs'. She saw perfectly well that her lover stood in dread of these people. He was in no way dependent on this sister, who was not the eldest either. Mother Coupeau would gladly give her consent, for she had never been known to contradict her son.