Page:Germinal - Zola - 1925.djvu/103

GERMINAL Maheude refused, but without energy. Well! a drop, at all events, not to disoblige. And she entered.

The room was black with dirt, the floor and the walls spotted with grease, the sideboard and the table sticky with filth; and the stink of a badly-kept house took you by the throat. Near the fire, with his elbows on the table and his nose in his plate, Bouteloup, a broad stout placid man, still young for thirty-five, was finishing the remains of his boiled beef, while standing in front of him, little Achille, Philomène's first-born, who was already in his third year, was looking at him in the silent, supplicating way of a gluttonous animal. The lodger, very kind behind his big brown beard, from time to time stuffed a piece of meat into his mouth.

"Wait till I sugar it," said the Levaque woman, putting some brown sugar beforehand into the coffee-pot.

Six years older than he was, she was hideous and worn out, with her bosom hanging on her belly, and her belly on her thighs, with a flattened muzzle, and greyish hair always uncombed. He had taken her naturally, without choosing, the same as he did his soup in which he found hairs, or his bed of which the sheets lasted for three months. She was part of the lodging; the husband liked repeating that good reckonings make good friends.

"I was going to tell you," she went on, "that Pierronne was seen yesterday prowling about on the Bas-de-Soie side. The gentleman that you know was waiting for her behind Rasseneur's, and they went off together along the canal. Eh! that's nice, isn't it? A married woman!"

"Gracious!" said Maheude, "Pierron, before marrying her, used to give the captain rabbits; now it costs him less to lend his wife."

Bouteloup began to laugh enormously, and threw a fragment of sauced bread into Achille's mouth. The two women went on relieving themselves with regard to Pierronne—a flirt, not prettier than anyone else, but always occupied in looking after every freckle of her skin, in washing herself, and putting on pomade. Anyhow, it concerned the husband, if he liked that sort of thing. There were men so ambitious that they would wipe the masters' behinds to hear them say thank-you. And they were only interrupted by the arrival of a [91]