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Updated: May 22, 2025
The evening previous he had said he did not care a sou for their opinion on any subject and that they had the tongues of vipers, but now he was with them, he was like a whipped hound, hung on their words and anticipated their wishes. This troubled his wife, for it augured ill, she thought, for their future happiness. "We won't wait any longer for Mes-Bottes," cried Coupeau.
She toiled up La Rue des Poissonniers when she suddenly heard Coupeau's voice and, glancing in at the window of a wineshop, she saw him drinking with Mes-Bottes, who had had the luck to marry the previous summer a woman with some money. He was now, therefore, well clothed and fed and altogether a happy mortal and had Coupeau's admiration.
And he added with a wink, "There will be all the more for those who do!" Then Coupeau said they would settle the account, and his friend could do as he pleased afterward. Alas! Mes-Bottes could produce only three francs; he had changed his five-franc piece, and the remainder had melted away somehow on the road from St-Denis.
"Do you think I will work for your master?" cried Mes-Bottes. "He is the greatest tyrant in the kingdom. No, I should rather suck my thumbs for a year. You won't stay there, old man! No, you won't stay there three days, now I tell you!" "Are you in earnest?" asked Coupeau uneasily. "Yes, I am in earnest. You can't speak you can't move. Your nose is held close to the grindstone all the time.
"It won't be me then," answered Bibi. "I wash my hands of them all. No more masters for me, I tell you! But I dare say Mes-Bottes would be glad of the offer." And as they reached the Assommoir they saw Mes-Bottes within. Notwithstanding the fact that it was daylight, the gas was blazing in the Assommoir. Lantier remained outside and told Coupeau to make haste, as they had only ten minutes.
It was true that Mes-Bottes crooked his elbow, but he was so deliciously funny that he was always invited to picnics. Gervaise said she, in her turn, would bring her employer, Mme Fauconnier all told, there would be fifteen at the table. That was quite enough. Now as Coupeau was literally penniless, he borrowed fifty francs from his employer.
Mes-Bottes recalled to their memories a day when he had eaten twelve hard-boiled eggs and drunk twelve glasses of wine while the clock was striking twelve. There was a brief silence. A waiter placed on the table a rabbit stew in a deep dish. Coupeau turned round. "Say, boy, is that a gutter rabbit? It mews still." And the low mewing of a cat seemed, indeed, to come from the dish.
At that moment Goujet and Lorilleux were seen going by. Mes-Bottes shouted to them to come in, but they both refused Goujet saying he wanted nothing, and the other, as he hugged a little box of gold chains close to his heart, that he was in a hurry. "Milksops!" muttered Mes-Bottes. "They had best pass their lives in the corner by the fire!"
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