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The accumulation of linen disturbed Gervaise, for her husband never arranged the boxes he had promised, and she was obliged to stow it away in all sorts of places, under the bed and in the corner. She did not like making up Etienne's mattress late at night either. Goujet had spoken of sending the child to Lille to his own old master, who wanted apprentices.
Monsieur de Chargeboeuf, Monsieur d'Hauteserre, and the Abbe Goujet, who also went to Paris, obtained an interview with Talleyrand, who promised them his support.
Madame Durieu, Mademoiselle Goujet, and Madame d'Hauteserre sprang to help her, for she was suffocating. She signed to cut the frogging of her habit. "Duped!" said Corentin to Peyrade. "I am certain now they are on their way to Paris. Change the orders." They left the room and the house, placing one gendarme on guard at the door of the salon.
Goujet was still counting. "And twenty-eight!" cried he at length, laying the hammer on the ground. "It's finished; you can look." The head of the bolt was clean, polished, and without a flaw, regular goldsmith's work, with the roundness of a marble cast in a mold. The other men looked at it and nodded their heads; there was no denying it was lovely enough to be worshipped.
Goujet, crushed by what he had heard from Mamma Coupeau, lay at full length on the bed with pale face and haggard eyes. "Listen!" he said. "You must not mind my mother's words; she does not understand. You do not owe me anything." He staggered to his feet and stood leaning against the bed and looking at her. "Are you ill?" she said nervously. "No, not ill," he answered, "but sick at heart.
All one spring-time their love thus filled Goujet with the rumbling of a storm. It was an idyll amongst giant-like labor in the midst of the glare of the coal fire, and of the shaking of the shed, the cracking carcass of which was black with soot. All that beaten iron, kneaded like red wax, preserved the rough marks of their love.
When Goujet quitted the little room, he leant against the wall, almost stifling with grief. Then, when the laundress returned home, mother Coupeau called to her that Madame Goujet required her to go round with her clothes, ironed or not; and she was so animated that Gervaise, seeing something was wrong, guessed what had taken place and had a presentiment of the unpleasantness which awaited her.
And Etienne had thus become another link between the laundress and the blacksmith. The latter would bring the child home and speak of his good conduct. Everyone laughingly said that Goujet was smitten with Gervaise. She knew it, and blushed like a young girl, the flush of modesty coloring her cheeks with the bright tints of an apple. The poor fellow, he was never any trouble!
Then as they were going down towards the Boulevard, Gervaise uttered a faint cry on passing the eating-house at the corner kept by Francois. "What's the matter?" asked Goujet. The laundress no longer laughed. She was very pale, and laboring under so great an emotion that she had almost fallen.
But who is to warn the countess? Where is she?" "Catherine didn't come for her hat and whip to make relics of them," remarked Mademoiselle Goujet. Goulard tried to detain the two agents for a few moments, assuring them of the perfect ignorance of the family at Cinq-Cygne. "You don't know these people!" said Peyrade, laughing at him.
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