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Updated: May 31, 2025
The dresses with trains caused quite a sensation in the house; the Lorilleuxs sneered; Lantier, whose mouth sneered, turned the girl round to sniff at her delicious aroma; the Boches had forbidden Pauline to associate with this baggage in her frippery.
Coupeau at length went off to tell the news to his relations. Half an hour later he returned with all of them, mother Coupeau, the Lorilleuxs, and Madame Lerat, whom he had met at the latter's. "I've brought you the whole gang!" cried Coupeau. "It can't be helped! They wanted to see you. Don't open your mouth, it's forbidden. They'll stop here and look at you without ceremony, you know.
The Lorilleuxs lived on the sixth floor staircase B. Coupeau told her with a laugh to keep tight hold of the iron railing and not let it go. She looked up, half shutting her eyes, and gasped as she saw the height to which the staircase wound.
She wanted to go home, but she could not find her way. At the corner of the street she took her seat by the side of the gutter, thinking herself at her washtub. Finally she got home and endeavored to walk straight past the door of the concierge, within whose room she was vaguely conscious of the Poissons and Lorilleuxs holding up their hands in disgust at her condition.
Lantier had been placed at the table by Coupeau and was eating a piece of cake, leisurely dipping it into his glass of wine. With the exception of Mme Boche and Virginie, no one knew him. The Lorilleuxs looked at him with some suspicion, which, however, was very far from the mark. An awkward silence followed, broken by Coupeau, who said simply: "He is a friend of ours!"
It couldn't last; the twelfth day she took herself off, with no more luggage than her modest dress on her back and her cap perched over one ear. The Lorilleuxs, who had pursed their lips on hearing of her return and repentance, nearly died of laughter now. Second performance, eclipse number two, all aboard for the train for Saint-Lazare, the prison-hospital for streetwalkers!
If a thing fell from her hands, it might remain on the floor; it was certainly not she who would have stooped to pick it up. She took her ease about everything, and never handled a broom except when the accumulation of filth almost brought her to the ground. The Lorilleuxs now made a point of holding something to their noses whenever they passed her room; the stench was poisonous, said they.
The Lorilleuxs were in a state of rage, and one morning when the apprentice was emptying, on the sly, a bowl of starch which she had burned in making, just as Mme Lorilleux was passing, she rushed in and accused her sister-in-law of insulting her. After this all friendly relations were at an end. "It all looks very strange to me," sniffed Mme Lorilleux.
At first the Lorilleuxs had called two or three times a day, offering to sit up and watch, and even bringing an easy-chair for Gervaise. Then it was not long before there were disputes as to the proper way to nurse invalids. Madame Lorilleux said that she had saved enough people's lives to know how to go about it.
The Lorilleuxs, delighted at the idea that she would lose her shop, declared that Lantier's idea was an excellent one. They gave Coupeau a push and repeated it to him. Gervaise seemed to be disposed to yield, and then Virginie spoke in the blandest of tones. "I will take the lease off your hands," she said, "and will arrange the back rent with your landlord." "No, no!
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