LAssommoir | Page 2

towards
the Boulevard Rochechouart, where groups of butchers, in aprons
smeared with blood, were hanging about in front of the
slaughter-houses; and the fresh breeze wafted occasionally a stench of
slaughtered beasts. Looking to the left, she scanned a long avenue that
ended nearly in front of her, where the white mass of the Lariboisiere
Hospital was then in course of construction. Slowly, from one end of
the horizon to the other, she followed the octroi wall, behind which she
sometimes heard, during night time, the shrieks of persons being
murdered; and she searchingly looked into the remote angles, the dark
corners, black with humidity and filth, fearing to discern there Lantier's
body, stabbed to death.

She looked at the endless gray wall that surrounded the city with its
belt of desolation. When she raised her eyes higher, she became aware
of a bright burst of sunlight. The dull hum of the city's awakening
already filled the air. Craning her neck to look at the Poissonniere gate,
she remained for a time watching the constant stream of men, horses,
and carts which flooded down from the heights of Montmartre and La
Chapelle, pouring between the two squat octroi lodges. It was like a
herd of plodding cattle, an endless throng widened by sudden stoppages
into eddies that spilled off the sidewalks into the street, a steady
procession of laborers on their way back to work with tools slung over
their back and a loaf of bread under their arm. This human inundation
kept pouring down into Paris to be constantly swallowed up. Gervaise
leaned further out at the risk of falling when she thought she recognized
Lantier among the throng. She pressed the handkerchief tighter against
her mouth, as though to push back the pain within her.
The sound of a young and cheerful voice caused her to leave the
window.
"So the old man isn't here, Madame Lantier?"
"Why, no, Monsieur Coupeau," she replied, trying to smile.
Coupeau, a zinc-worker who occupied a ten franc room on the top floor,
having seen the door unlocked, had walked in as friends will do.
"You know," he continued, "I'm now working over there in the hospital.
What beautiful May weather, isn't it? The air is rather sharp this
morning."
And he looked at Gervaise's face, red with weeping. When he saw that
the bed had not been slept in, he shook his head gently; then he went to
the children's couch where they were sleeping, looking as rosy as
cherubs, and, lowering his voice, he said,
"Come, the old man's not been home, has he? Don't worry yourself,
Madame Lantier. He's very much occupied with politics. When they
were voting for Eugene Sue the other day, he was acting almost crazy.

He has very likely spent the night with some friends blackguarding
crapulous Bonaparte."
"No, no," she murmured with an effort. "You don't think that. I know
where Lantier is. You see, we have our little troubles like the rest of the
world!"
Coupeau winked his eye, to indicate he was not a dupe of this
falsehood; and he went off, after offering to fetch her milk, if she did
not care to go out: she was a good and courageous woman, and might
count upon him on any day of trouble.
As soon as he was gone, Gervaise again returned to the window. At the
Barriere, the tramp of the drove still continued in the morning air:
locksmiths in short blue blouses, masons in white jackets, house
painters in overcoats over long smocks. From a distance the crowd
looked like a chalky smear of neutral hue composed chiefly of faded
blue and dingy gray. When one of the workers occasionally stopped to
light his pipe the others kept plodding past him, without sparing a laugh
or a word to a comrade. With cheeks gray as clay, their eyes were
continually drawn toward Paris which was swallowing them one by
one.
At both corners of the Rue des Poissonniers however, some of the men
slackened their pace as they neared the doors of the two wine-dealers
who were taking down their shutters; and, before entering, they stood
on the edge of the pavement, looking sideways over Paris, with no
strength in their arms and already inclined for a day of idleness. Inside
various groups were already buying rounds of drinks, or just standing
around, forgetting their troubles, crowding up the place, coughing,
spitting, clearing their throats with sip after sip.
Gervaise was watching Pere Colombe's wineshop to the left of the
street, where she thought she had seen Lantier, when a stout woman,
bareheaded and wearing an apron called to her from the middle of the
roadway:
"Hey, Madame Lantier, you're up very early!"

Gervaise leaned out. "Why! It's you, Madame Boche! Oh! I've