Page:Germinal - Zola - 1925.djvu/152

GERMINAL make both ends meet now that the best part of her purse was going.

"Place yourself there, neighbour," she said, pointing to a table near that where Maheu was drinking with Étienne and Pierron.

"Is not my husband with you?" asked the Levaque woman

The others told her that he would soon come. They were all seated together in a heap, Bouteloup and the youngsters, so tightly squeezed among the drinkers that the two tables only formed one. There was a call for drinks. Seeing her mother and her children Philomène had decided to come near. She accepted a chair, and seemed pleased to hear that she was at last to be married; then, as they were looking for Zacharie, she replied in her soft voice:

"I am waiting for him; he is over there."

Maheu had exchanged a look with his wife. She had then consented? He became serious and smoked in silence. He also felt anxiety for the morrow in face of the ingratitude of these children, who got married one by one leaving their parents in wretchedness.

The dancing still went on, and the end of a quadrille drowned the ball-room in red dust; the walls cracked, a piston produced shrill whistling sounds like a locomotive in distress; and when the dancers stopped they were smoking like horses.

"Do you remember?" said the Levaque woman, bending towards Maheude's ear; "you talked of strangling Catherine if she did anything foolish!"

Chaval brought Catherine back to the family table, and both of them standing behind the father finished their glasses.

"Bah!" murmured Maheude, with an air of resignation, "one says things like that. But what quiets me is that she will not have a child; I feel sure of that. You see if she is confined, and I am obliged to marry her, what shall we do for a living then?"

Now the piston was whistling a polka, and as the deafening noise began again, Maheu, in a low voice, communicated an idea to his wife. Why should they not take a lodger. Étienne for example, who was looking out for quarters? They would have room since Zacharie was going to leave them, and the money that they would lose in that direction would be in part [140]