A real mud-splashed dog when she came out of it, soaked and showing her blue skin.
At the same time she grew stouter and stouter, despite her frequent dances before the empty sideboard, and her leg became so crooked that she could no longer walk beside anyone without the risk of knocking him over, so great indeed was her limp.
Naturally enough when a woman falls to this point all her pride leaves her.
Gervaise had divested herself of all her old self-respect, coquetry and need of sentiment, propriety and politeness.
You might have kicked her, no matter where, she did not feel kicks for she had become too fat and flabby.
Lantier had altogether neglected her; he no longer escorted her or even bothered to give her a pinch now and again.
She did not seem to notice this finish of a long liaison slowly spun out, and ending in mutual insolence.
It was a chore the less for her.
Even Lantier’s intimacy with Virginie left her quite calm, so great was her indifference now for all that she had been so upset about in the past.
She would even have held a candle for them now.
Everyone was aware that Virginie and Lantier were carrying on.
It was much too convenient, especially with Poisson on duty every other night.
Lantier had thought of himself when he advised Virginie to deal in dainties.
He was too much of a Provincial not to adore sugared things; and in fact he would have lived off sugar candy, lozenges, pastilles, sugar plums and chocolate.
Sugared almonds especially left a little froth on his lips so keenly did they tickle his palate.
For a year he had been living only on sweetmeats.
He opened the drawers and stuffed himself whenever Virginie asked him to mind the shop.
Often, when he was talking in the presence of five or six other people, he would take the lid off a jar on the counter, dip his hand into it and begin to nibble at something sweet; the glass jar remained open and its contents diminished.
People ceased paying attention to it, it was a mania of his so he had declared.
Besides, he had devised a perpetual cold, an irritation of the throat, which he always talked of calming.
He still did not work, for he had more and more important schemes than ever in view. He was contriving a superb invention — the umbrella hat, a hat which transformed itself into an umbrella on your head as soon as a shower commenced to fall; and he promised Poisson half shares in the profit of it, and even borrowed twenty franc pieces of him to defray the cost of experiments.
Meanwhile the shop melted away on his tongue.
All the stock-in-trade followed suit down to the chocolate cigars and pipes in pink caramel.
Whenever he was stuffed with sweetmeats and seized with a fit of tenderness, he paid himself with a last lick on the groceress in a corner, who found him all sugar with lips which tasted like burnt almonds.
Such a delightful man to kiss!
He was positively becoming all honey.
The Boches said he merely had to dip a finger into his coffee to sweeten it.
Softened by this perpetual dessert, Lantier showed himself paternal towards Gervaise.
He gave her advice and scolded her because she no longer liked to work.
Indeed! A woman of her age ought to know how to turn herself round.
And he accused her of having always been a glutton.
Nevertheless, as one ought to hold out a helping hand, even to folks who don’t deserve it, he tried to find her a little work.
Thus he had prevailed upon Virginie to let Gervaise come once a week to scrub the shop and the rooms.
That was the sort of thing she understood and on each occasion she earned her thirty sous.
Gervaise arrived on the Saturday morning with a pail and a scrubbing brush, without seeming to suffer in the least at having to perform a dirty, humble duty, a charwoman’s work in the dwelling-place where she had reigned as the beautiful fair-haired mistress.
It was a last humiliation, the end of her pride.
One Saturday she had a hard job of it.
It had rained for three days and the customers seemed to have brought all the mud of the neighborhood into the shop on the soles of their boots.
Virginie was at the counter doing the grand, with her hair well combed, and wearing a little white collar and a pair of lace cuffs.
Beside her, on the narrow seat covered with red oil-cloth, Lantier did the dandy, looking for the world as if he were at home, as if he were the real master of the place, and from time to time he carelessly dipped his hand into a jar of peppermint drops, just to nibble something sweet according to his habit.
“Look here, Madame Coupeau!” cried Virginie, who was watching the scrubbing with compressed lips, “you have left some dirt over there in the corner.
Scrub that rather better please.”
Gervaise obeyed.
She returned to the corner and began to scrub again. She bent double on her knees in the midst of the dirty water, with her shoulders protruding, her arms stiff and purple with cold.
Her old skirt, fairly soaked, stuck to her figure.
And there on the floor she looked a dirty, ill-combed drab, the rents in her jacket showing her puffy form, her fat, flabby flesh which heaved, swayed and floundered about as she went about her work; and all the while she perspired to such a point that from her moist face big drops of sweat fell on to the floor.
“The more elbow grease one uses, the more it shines,” said Lantier, sententiously, with his mouth full of peppermint drops.
Virginie, who sat back with the demeanor of a princess, her eyes partly open, was still watching the scrubbing, and indulging in remarks.
“A little more on the right there.
Take care of the wainscot. You know I was not very well pleased last Saturday.