She lied — she pretended she had surprised them together one night on a seat on the exterior Boulevards.
The thought of this liaison, of pleasures that her sister-in-law was no doubt enjoying, exasperated her still more, because of her own ugly woman’s strict sense of propriety.
Every day the same cry came from her heart to her lips.
“What does she have, that wretched cripple, for people to fall in love with her?
Why doesn’t any one want me?”
She busied herself in endless gossiping among the neighbors.
She told them the whole story.
The day the Coupeaus got married she turned up her nose at her.
Oh, she had a keen nose, she could smell in advance how it would turn out.
Then, Clump-clump pretended to be so sweet, what a hypocrite! She and her husband had only agreed to be Nana’s godparents for the sake of her brother.
What a bundle it had cost, that fancy christening.
If Clump-clump were on her deathbed she wouldn’t give her a glass of water, no matter how much she begged.
She didn’t want anything to do with such a shameless baggage.
Little Nana would always be welcome when she came up to see her godparents.
The child couldn’t be blamed for her mother’s sins.
But there was no use trying to tell Coupeau anything.
Any real man in his situation would have beaten his wife and put a stop to it all.
All they wanted was for him to insist on respect for his family.
Mon Dieu! If she, Madame Lorilleux, had acted like that, Coupeau wouldn’t be so complacent.
He would have stabbed her for sure with his shears.
The Boches, however, who sternly disapproved of quarrels in their building, said that the Lorilleuxs were in the wrong.
The Lorilleuxs were no doubt respectable persons, quiet, working the whole day long, and paying their rent regularly.
But, really, jealousy had driven them mad.
And they were mean enough to skin an egg, real misers.
They were so stingy that they’d hide their bottle when any one came in, so as not to have to offer a glass of wine — not regular people at all.
Gervaise had brought over cassis and soda water one day to drink with the Boches.
When Madame Lorilleux went by, she acted out spitting before the concierge’s door.
Well, after that when Madame Boches swept the corridors on Saturdays, she always left a pile of trash before the Lorilleuxs’ door.
“It isn’t to be wondered at!” Madame Lorilleux would exclaim,
“Clump-clump’s always stuffing them, the gluttons!
Ah! they’re all alike; but they had better not annoy me!
I’ll complain to the landlord.
Only yesterday I saw that sly old Boche chasing after Madame Gaudron’s skirts.
Just fancy! A woman of that age, and who has half a dozen children, too; it’s positively disgusting!
If I catch them at anything of the sort again, I’ll tell Madame Boche, and she’ll give them both a hiding.
It’ll be something to laugh at.”
Mother Coupeau continued to visit the two houses, agreeing with everybody and even managing to get asked oftener to dinner, by complaisantly listening one night to her daughter and the next night to her daughter-in-law.
However, Madame Lerat did not go to visit the Coupeaus because she had argued with Gervaise about a Zouave who had cut the nose of his mistress with a razor.
She was on the side of the Zouave, saying it was evidence of a great passion, but without explaining further her thought.
Then, she had made Madame Lorilleux even more angry by telling her that Clump-clump had called her “Cow Tail” in front of fifteen or twenty people.
Yes, that’s what the Boches and all the neighbors called her now, “Cow Tail.”
Gervaise remained calm and cheerful among all these goings-on.
She often stood by the door of her shop greeting friends who passed by with a nod and a smile.
It was her pleasure to take a moment between batches of ironing to enjoy the street and take pride in her own stretch of sidewalk.
She felt that the Rue de la Goutte d’Or was hers, and the neighboring streets, and the whole neighborhood.
As she stood there, with her blonde hair slightly damp from the heat of the shop, she would look left and right, taking in the people, the buildings, and the sky.
To the left Rue de la Goutte d’Or was peaceful and almost empty, like a country town with women idling in their doorways.
While, to the right, only a short distance away, Rue des Poissonniers had a noisy throng of people and vehicles.
The stretch of gutter before her own shop became very important in her mind. It was like a wide river which she longed to see neat and clean.
It was a lively river, colored by the dye shop with the most fanciful of hues which contrasted with the black mud beside it. Then there were the shops: a large grocery with a display of dried fruits protected by mesh nets; a shop selling work clothes which had white tunics and blue smocks hanging before it with arms that waved at the slightest breeze. Cats were purring on the counters of the fruit store and the tripe shop.