Did you keep him on a leash?
Has anyone here seen her husband?
There’s a reward.”
The laughter burst forth again.
Gervaise contented herself with continually murmuring in a low tone of voice:
“You know well enough, you know well enough. It’s your sister.
I’ll strangle her — your sister.”
“Yes, go and try it on with my sister,” resumed Virginie sneeringly.
“Ah! it’s my sister!
That’s very likely.
My sister looks a trifle different to you; but what’s that to me?
Can’t one come and wash one’s clothes in peace now?
Just dry up, d’ye hear, because I’ve had enough of it!”
But it was she who returned to the attack, after giving five or six strokes with her beetle, intoxicated by the insults she had been giving utterance to, and worked up into a passion.
She left off and recommenced again, speaking in this way three times:
“Well, yes! it’s my sister.
There now, does that satisfy you?
They adore each other.
You should just see them bill and coo!
And he’s left you with your children.
Those pretty kids with scabs all over their faces!
You got one of them from a gendarme, didn’t you? And you let three others die because you didn’t want to pay excess baggage on your journey.
It’s your Lantier who told us that.
Ah! he’s been telling some fine things; he’d had enough of you!”
“You dirty jade!
You dirty jade!
You dirty jade!” yelled Gervaise, beside herself, and again seized with a furious trembling.
She turned round, looking once more about the ground; and only observing the little tub, she seized hold of it by the legs, and flung the whole of the bluing at Virginie’s face.
“The beast!
She’s spoilt my dress!” cried the latter, whose shoulder was sopping wet and whose left hand was dripping blue.
“Just wait, you wretch!”
In her turn she seized a bucket, and emptied it over Gervaise.
Then a formidable battle began.
They both ran along the rows of tubs, seized hold of the pails that were full, and returned to dash the contents at each other’s heads.
And each deluge was accompanied by a volley of words.
Gervaise herself answered now:
“There, you scum! You got it that time.
It’ll help to cool you.”
“Ah! the carrion!
That’s for your filth.
Wash yourself for once in your life.”
“Yes, yes, I’ll wash the salt out of you, you cod!”
“Another one!
Brush your teeth, fix yourself up for your post to-night at the corner of the Rue Belhomme.”
They ended by having to refill the buckets at the water taps, continuing to insult each other the while.
The initial bucketfuls were so poorly aimed as to scarcely reach their targets, but they soon began to splash each other in earnest.
Virginie was the first to receive a bucketful in the face.
The water ran down, soaking her back and front.
She was still staggering when another caught her from the side, hitting her left ear and drenching her chignon which then came unwound into a limp, bedraggled string of hair.
Gervaise was hit first in the legs. One pail filled her shoes full of water and splashed up to her thighs. Two more wet her even higher.