“Ah, well, that’s a fine way to burst in upon one!” murmured Madame Lorilleux.
“One must have a rare cheek.”
And she turned her back and resumed drawing her gold wire, affecting to ignore her sister-in-law’s presence.
But Lorilleux raised his pale face and cried:
“What’s that you say?”
Then, as he had heard perfectly well, he continued:
“More back-bitings, eh? She’s nice, mother Coupeau, to go and cry starvation everywhere! Yet only the day before yesterday she dined here.
We do what we can.
We haven’t got all the gold of Peru.
Only if she goes about gossiping with others she had better stay with them, for we don’t like spies.”
He took up the piece of chain and turned his back also, adding as though with regret:
“When everyone gives five francs a month, we’ll give five francs.”
Gervaise had calmed down and felt quite chilled by the wooden looking faces of the Lorilleux.
She had never once set foot in their rooms without experiencing a certain uneasiness.
With her eyes fixed on the floor, staring at the holes of the wooden grating through which the waste gold fell she now explained herself in a reasonable manner.
Mother Coupeau had three children; if each one gave five francs it would only make fifteen francs, and really that was not enough, one could not live on it; they must at least triple the sum.
But Lorilleux cried out.
Where did she think he could steal fifteen francs a month?
It was quite amusing, people thought he was rich simply because he had gold in his place.
He began then to criticize mother Coupeau: she had to have her morning coffee, she took a sip of brandy now and then, she was as demanding as if she were rich.
Mon Dieu!
Sure, everyone liked the good things of life.
But if you’ve never saved a sou, you had to do what other folks did and do without.
Besides, mother Coupeau wasn’t too old to work.
She could see well enough when she was trying to pick a choice morsel from the platter.
She was just an old spendthrift trying to get others to provide her with comforts.
Even had he had the means, he would have considered it wrong to support any one in idleness.
Gervaise remained conciliatory, and peaceably argued against all this bad reasoning. She tried to soften the Lorilleuxs.
But the husband ended by no longer answering her. The wife was now at the forge scouring a piece of chain in the little, long-handled brass saucepan full of lye-water. She still affectedly turned her back, as though a hundred leagues away.
And Gervaise continued speaking, watching them pretending to be absorbed in their labor in the midst of the black dust of the workshop, their bodies distorted, their clothes patched and greasy, both become stupidly hardened like old tools in the pursuit of their narrow mechanical task.
Then suddenly anger again got the better of her and she exclaimed:
“Very well, I’d rather it was so; keep your money!
I’ll give mother Coupeau a home, do you hear?
I picked up a cat the other evening, so I can at least do the same for your mother.
And she shall be in want of nothing; she shall have her coffee and her drop of brandy!
Good heavens! what a vile family!”
At these words Madame Lorilleux turned round.
She brandished the saucepan as though she was about to throw the lye-water in her sister-in-law’s face. She stammered with rage:
“Be off, or I shall do you an injury!
And don’t count on the five francs because I won’t give a radish!
No, not a radish!
Ah well, yes, five francs!
Mother would be your servant and you would enjoy yourself with my five francs!
If she goes to live with you, tell her this, she may croak, I won’t even send her a glass of water.
Now off you go!
Clear out!”
“What a monster of a woman!” said Gervaise violently slamming the door.
On the morrow she brought mother Coupeau to live with her, putting her bed in the inner room where Nana slept.
The moving did not take long, for all the furniture mother Coupeau had was her bed, an ancient walnut wardrobe which was put in the dirty-clothes room, a table, and two chairs.
They sold the table and had the chairs recaned.