The neighborhood in which she felt so ashamed, so greatly was it being embellished, was now full of fresh air.
Lost in the crowd on the broad footway, walking past the little plane trees, Gervaise felt alone and abandoned.
The vistas of the avenues seemed to empty her stomach all the more.
And to think that among this flood of people there were many in easy circumstances, and yet not a Christian who could guess her position, and slip a ten sous piece into her hand!
Yes, it was too great and too beautiful; her head swam and her legs tottered under this broad expanse of grey sky stretched over so vast a space.
The twilight had the dirty-yellowish tinge of Parisian evenings, a tint that gives you a longing to die at once, so ugly does street life seem.
The horizon was growing indistinct, assuming a mud-colored tinge as it were.
Gervaise, who was already weary, met all the workpeople returning home.
At this hour of the day the ladies in bonnets and the well-dressed gentlemen living in the new houses mingled with the people, with the files of men and women still pale from inhaling the tainted atmosphere of workshops and workrooms.
From the Boulevard Magenta and the Rue du Faubourg-Poissonniere, came bands of people, rendered breathless by their uphill walk.
As the omnivans and the cabs rolled by less noiselessly among the vans and trucks returning home empty at a gallop, an ever-increasing swarm of blouses and blue vests covered the pavement.
Commissionaires returned with their crotchets on their backs.
Two workmen took long strides side by side, talking to each other in loud voices, with any amount of gesticulation, but without looking at one another; others who were alone in overcoats and caps walked along the curbstones with lowered noses; others again came in parties of five or six, following each other, with pale eyes and their hands in their pockets and not exchanging a word.
Some still had their pipes, which had gone out between their teeth.
Four masons poked their white faces out of the windows of a cab which they had hired between them, and on the roof of which their mortar-troughs rocked to and fro.
House-painters were swinging their pots; a zinc-worker was returning laden with a long ladder, with which he almost poked people’s eyes out; whilst a belated plumber, with his box on his back, played the tune of “The Good King Dagobert” on his little trumpet.
Ah! the sad music, a fitting accompaniment to the tread of the flock, the tread of the weary beasts of burden.
Suddenly on raising her eyes she noticed the old Hotel Boncoeur in front of her.
After being an all-night cafe, which the police had closed down, the little house was now abandoned; the shutters were covered with posters, the lantern was broken, and the whole building was rotting and crumbling away from top to bottom, with its smudgy claret-colored paint, quite moldy. The stationer’s and the tobacconist’s were still there.
In the rear, over some low buildings, you could see the leprous facades of several five-storied houses rearing their tumble-down outlines against the sky.
The “Grand Balcony” dancing hall no longer existed; some sugar-cutting works, which hissed continually, had been installed in the hall with the ten flaming windows.
And yet it was here, in this dirty den — the Hotel Boncoeur — that the whole cursed life had commenced.
Gervaise remained looking at the window of the first floor, from which hung a broken shutter, and recalled to mind her youth with Lantier, their first rows and the ignoble way in which he had abandoned her.
Never mind, she was young then, and it all seemed gay to her, seen from a distance.
Only twenty years. Mon Dieu! and yet she had fallen to street-walking.
Then the sight of the lodging house oppressed her and she walked up the Boulevard in the direction of Montmartre.
The night was gathering, but children were still playing on the heaps of sand between the benches.
The march past continued, the workgirls went by, trotting along and hurrying to make up for the time they had lost in looking in at the shop windows; one tall girl, who had stopped, left her hand in that of a big fellow, who accompanied her to within three doors of her home; others as they parted from each other, made appointments for the night at the “Great Hall of Folly” or the “Black Ball.”
In the midst of the groups, piece-workmen went by, carrying their clothes folded under their arms. A chimney sweep, harnessed with leather braces, was drawing a cart along, and nearly got himself crushed by an omnibus.
Among the crowd which was now growing scantier, there were several women running with bare heads; after lighting the fire, they had come downstairs again and were hastily making their purchases for dinner; they jostled the people they met, darted into the bakers’ and the pork butchers’, and went off again with all despatch, their provisions in their hands.
There were little girls of eight years old, who had been sent out on errands, and who went along past the shops, pressing long loaves of four pounds’ weight, as tall as they were themselves, against their chests, as if these loaves had been beautiful yellow dolls; at times these little ones forgot themselves for five minutes or so, in front of some pictures in a shop window, and rested their cheeks against the bread.
Then the flow subsided, the groups became fewer and farther between, the working classes had gone home; and as the gas blazed now that the day’s toil was over, idleness and amusement seemed to wake up.
Ah! yes; Gervaise had finished her day!
She was wearier even than all this mob of toilers who had jostled her as they went by.
She might lie down there and croak, for work would have nothing more to do with her, and she had toiled enough during her life to say:
“Whose turn now?
I’ve had enough.”
At present everyone was eating.
It was really the end, the sun had blown out its candle, the night would be a long one.
Mon Dieu! To stretch one’s self at one’s ease and never get up again; to think one had put one’s tools by for good and that one could ruminate like a cow forever!
That’s what is good, after tiring one’s self out for twenty years!
And Gervaise, as hunger twisted her stomach, thought in spite of herself of the fete days, the spreads and the revelry of her life.
Of one occasion especially, an awfully cold day, a mid-Lent Thursday.
She had enjoyed herself wonderfully well. She was very pretty, fair-haired and fresh looking at that time.
Her wash-house in the Rue Neuve had chosen her as queen in spite of her leg.
And then they had had an outing on the boulevards in carts decked with greenery, in the midst of stylish people who ogled her.
Real gentlemen put up their glasses as if she had been a true queen.
In the evening there was a wonderful spread, and then they had danced till daylight.
Queen; yes Queen!
With a crown and a sash for twenty-four hours — twice round the clock! And now oppressed by hunger, she looked on the ground, as if she were seeking for the gutter in which she had let her fallen majesty tumble.