She would say to Virginie and Madame Lerat, whenever they were ringing the hatter’s praises, that he could very well do without her admiration, because all the women of the neighborhood were smitten with him.
Coupeau went braying about everywhere that Lantier was a friend and a true one.
People might jabber about them; he knew what he knew and did not care a straw for their gossip, for he had respectability on his side.
When they all three went out walking on Sundays, he made his wife and the hatter walk arm-in-arm before him, just by way of swaggering in the street; and he watched the people, quite prepared to administer a drubbing if anyone had ventured on the least joke.
It was true that he regarded Lantier as a bit of a high flyer. He accused him of avoiding hard liquor and teased him because he could read and spoke like an educated man.
Still, he accepted him as a regular comrade.
They were ideally suited to each other and friendship between men is more substantial than love for a woman.
Coupeau and Lantier were forever going out junketing together.
Lantier would now borrow money from Gervaise — ten francs, twenty francs at a time, whenever he smelt there was money in the house.
Then on those days he would keep Coupeau away from his work, talk of some distant errand and take him with him.
Then seated opposite to each other in the corner of some neighboring eating house, they would guzzle fancy dishes which one cannot get at home and wash them down with bottles of expensive wine.
The zinc-worker would have preferred to booze in a less pretentious place, but he was impressed by the aristocratic tastes of Lantier, who would discover on the bill of fare dishes with the most extraordinary names.
It was hard to understand a man so hard to please.
Maybe it was from being a southerner.
Lantier didn’t like anything too rich and argued about every dish, sending back meat that was too salty or too peppery.
He hated drafts. If a door was left open, he complained loudly.
At the same time, he was very stingy, only giving the waiter a tip of two sous for a meal of seven or eight francs.
He was treated with respect in spite of that.
The pair were well known along the exterior boulevards, from Batignolles to Belleville.
They would go to the Grand Rue des Batignolles to eat tripe cooked in the Caen style.
At the foot of Montmartre they obtained the best oysters in the neighborhood at the “Town of Bar-le-Duc.”
When they ventured to the top of the height as far as the
“Galette Windmill” they had a stewed rabbit.
The “Lilacs,” in the Rue des Martyrs, had a reputation for their calf’s head, whilst the restaurant of the
“Golden Lion” and the
“Two Chestnut Trees,” in the Chaussee Clignancourt, served them stewed kidneys which made them lick their lips.
Usually they went toward Belleville where they had tables reserved for them at some places of such excellent repute that you could order anything with your eyes closed.
These eating sprees were always surreptitious and the next day they would refer to them indirectly while playing with the potatoes served by Gervaise.
Once Lantier brought a woman with him to the “Galette Windmill” and Coupeau left immediately after dessert.
One naturally cannot both guzzle and work; so that ever since the hatter was made one of the family, the zinc-worker, who was already pretty lazy, had got to the point of never touching a tool.
When tired of doing nothing, he sometimes let himself be prevailed upon to take a job. Then his comrade would look him up and chaff him unmercifully when he found him hanging to his knotty cord like a smoked ham, and he would call to him to come down and have a glass of wine.
And that settled it. The zinc-worker would send the job to blazes and commence a booze which lasted days and weeks.
Oh, it was a famous booze — a general review of all the dram shops of the neighborhood, the intoxication of the morning slept off by midday and renewed in the evening; the goes of “vitriol” succeeded one another, becoming lost in the depths of the night, like the Venetian lanterns of an illumination, until the last candle disappeared with the last glass!
That rogue of a hatter never kept on to the end. He let the other get elevated, then gave him the slip and returned home smiling in his pleasant way.
He could drink a great deal without people noticing it.
When one got to know him well one could only tell it by his half-closed eyes and his overbold behavior to women.
The zinc-worker, on the contrary, became quite disgusting, and could no longer drink without putting himself into a beastly state.
Thus, towards the beginning of November, Coupeau went in for a booze which ended in a most dirty manner, both for himself and the others.
The day before he had been offered a job.
This time Lantier was full of fine sentiments; he lauded work, because work ennobles a man.
In the morning he even rose before it was light, for he gravely wished to accompany his friend to the workshop, honoring in him the workman really worthy of the name.
But when they arrived before the “Little Civet,” which was just opening, they entered to have a plum in brandy, only one, merely to drink together to the firm observance of a good resolution.
On a bench opposite the counter, and with his back against the wall, Bibi-the-Smoker was sitting smoking with a sulky look on his face.
“Hallo! Here’s Bibi having a snooze,” said Coupeau.
“Are you down in the dumps, old bloke?”
“No, no,” replied the comrade, stretching his arm.
“It’s the employers who disgust me. I sent mine to the right about yesterday. They’re all toads and scoundrels.”
Bibi-the-Smoker accepted a plum.
He was, no doubt, waiting there on that bench for someone to stand him a drink.
Lantier, however, took the part of the employers; they often had some very hard times, as he who had been in business himself well knew.