The workers were a bad lot, forever getting drunk! They didn’t take their work seriously. Sometimes they quit in the middle of a job and only returned when they needed something in their pockets.
Then Lantier would switch his attack to the employers.
They were nasty exploiters, regular cannibals.
But he could sleep with a clear conscience as he had always acted as a friend to his employees. He didn’t want to get rich the way others did.
“Let’s be off, my boy,” he said, speaking to Coupeau.
“We must be going or we shall be late.”
Bibi-the-Smoker followed them, swinging his arms.
Outside the sun was scarcely rising, the pale daylight seemed dirtied by the muddy reflection of the pavement; it had rained the night before and it was very mild.
The gas lamps had just been turned out; the Rue des Poissonniers, in which shreds of night rent by the houses still floated, was gradually filling with the dull tramp of the workmen descending towards Paris.
Coupeau, with his zinc-worker’s bag slung over his shoulder, walked along in the imposing manner of a fellow who feels in good form for a change.
He turned round and asked: “Bibi, do you want a job.
The boss told me to bring a pal if I could.”
“No thanks,” answered Bibi-the-Smoker;
“I’m purging myself. You should ask My-Boots. He was looking for something yesterday. Wait a minute. My-Boots is most likely in there.”
And as they reached the bottom of the street they indeed caught sight of My-Boots inside Pere Colombe’s.
In spite of the early hour l’Assommoir was flaring, the shutters down, the gas lighted.
Lantier stood at the door, telling Coupeau to make haste, because they had only ten minutes left.
“What!
You’re going to work for that rascal Bourguignon?” yelled My-Boots, when the zinc-worker had spoken to him.
“You’ll never catch me in his hutch again!
No, I’d rather go till next year with my tongue hanging out of my mouth. But, old fellow, you won’t stay three days, and it’s I who tell you so.”
“Really now, is it such a dirty hole?” asked Coupeau anxiously.
“Oh, it’s about the dirtiest. You can’t move there.
The ape’s for ever on your back.
And such queer ways too — a missus who always says you’re drunk, a shop where you mustn’t spit.
I sent them to the right about the first night, you know.”
“Good; now I’m warned.
I shan’t stop there for ever. I’ll just go this morning to see what it’s like; but if the boss bothers me, I’ll catch him up and plant him upon his missus, you know, bang together like two fillets of sole!”
Then Coupeau thanked his friend for the useful information and shook his hand. As he was about to leave, My-Boots cursed angrily.
Was that lousy Bourguignon going to stop them from having a drink?
Weren’t they free any more?
He could well wait another five minutes.
Lantier came in to share in the round and they stood together at the counter.
My-Boots, with his smock black with dirt and his cap flattened on his head had recently been proclaimed king of pigs and drunks after he had eaten a salad of live beetles and chewed a piece of a dead cat.
“Say there, old Borgia,” he called to Pere Colombe, “give us some of your yellow stuff, first class mule’s wine.”
And when Pere Colombe, pale and quiet in his blue-knitted waistcoat, had filled the four glasses, these gentlemen tossed them off, so as not to let the liquor get flat.
“That does some good when it goes down,” murmured Bibi-the-Smoker.
The comic My-Boots had a story to tell.
He was so drunk on the Friday that his comrades had stuck his pipe in his mouth with a handful of plaster.
Anyone else would have died of it; he merely strutted about and puffed out his chest.
“Do you gentlemen require anything more?” asked Pere Colombe in his oily voice.
“Yes, fill us up again,” said Lantier.
“It’s my turn.”
Now they were talking of women.
Bibi-the-Smoker had taken his girl to an aunt’s at Montrouge on the previous Sunday.
Coupeau asked for the news of the “Indian Mail,” a washerwoman of Chaillot who was known in the establishment.
They were about to drink, when My-Boots loudly called to Goujet and Lorilleux who were passing by.
They came just to the door, but would not enter.
The blacksmith did not care to take anything.
The chainmaker, pale and shivering, held in his pocket the gold chains he was going to deliver; and he coughed and asked them to excuse him, saying that the least drop of brandy would nearly make him split his sides.