From the very first the old lady took over the sweeping. She washed the dishes and made herself useful, happy to have settled her problem.
The Lorilleux were furious enough to explode, especially since Madame Lerat was now back on good terms with the Coupeaus.
One day the two sisters, the flower-maker and the chainmaker came to blows about Gervaise because Madame Lerat dared to express approval of the way she was taking care of their mother. When she noticed how this upset the other, she went on to remark that Gervaise had magnificent eyes, eyes warm enough to set paper on fire.
The two of them commenced slapping each other and swore they never would see each other again.
Nowadays Madame Lerat often spent her evenings in the shop, laughing to herself at Clemence’s spicy remarks.
Three years passed by.
There were frequent quarrels and reconciliations.
Gervaise did not care a straw for the Lorilleux, the Boches and all the others who were not of her way of thinking.
If they did not like it, they could forget it.
She earned what she wished, that was her principal concern.
The people of the neighborhood had ended by greatly esteeming her, for one did not find many customers so kind as she was, paying punctually, never caviling or higgling.
She bought her bread of Madame Coudeloup, in the Rue des Poissonniers; her meat of stout Charles, a butcher in the Rue Polonceau; her groceries at Lehongre’s, in the Rue de la Goutte-d’Or, almost opposite her own shop.
Francois, the wine merchant at the corner of the street, supplied her with wine in baskets of fifty bottles.
Her neighbor Vigouroux, whose wife’s hips must have been black and blue, the men pinched her so much, sold coke to her at the same price as the gas company.
And, in all truth, her tradespeople served her faithfully, knowing that there was everything to gain by treating her well.
Besides, whenever she went out around the neighborhood, she was greeted everywhere.
She felt quite at home. Sometimes she put off doing a laundry job just to enjoy being outdoors among her good friends. On days when she was too rushed to do her own cooking and had to go out to buy something already cooked, she would stop to gossip with her arms full of bowls.
The neighbor she respected the most was still the watchmaker. Often she would cross the street to greet him in his tiny cupboard of a shop, taking pleasure in the gaiety of the little cuckoo clocks with their pendulums ticking away the hours in chorus.
CHAPTER VI
One afternoon in the autumn Gervaise, who had been taking some washing home to a customer in the Rue des Portes-Blanches, found herself at the bottom of the Rue des Poissonniers just as the day was declining.
It had rained in the morning, the weather was very mild and an odor rose from the greasy pavement; and the laundress, burdened with her big basket, was rather out of breath, slow of step, and inclined to take her ease as she ascended the street with the vague preoccupation of a longing increased by her weariness.
She would have liked to have had something to eat.
Then, on raising her eyes she beheld the name of the Rue Marcadet, and she suddenly had the idea of going to see Goujet at his forge. He had no end of times told her to look in any day she was curious to see how iron was wrought.
Besides in the presence of other workmen she would ask for Etienne, and make believe that she had merely called for the youngster.
The factory was somewhere on this end of the Rue Marcadet, but she didn’t know exactly where and street numbers were often lacking on those ramshackle buildings separated by vacant lots.
She wouldn’t have lived on this street for all the gold in the world. It was a wide street, but dirty, black with soot from factories, with holes in the pavement and deep ruts filled with stagnant water.
On both sides were rows of sheds, workshops with beams and brickwork exposed so that they seemed unfinished, a messy collection of masonry.
Beside them were dubious lodging houses and even more dubious taverns.
All she could recall was that the bolt factory was next to a yard full of scrap iron and rags, a sort of open sewer spread over the ground, storing merchandise worth hundreds of thousands of francs, according to Goujet.
The street was filled with a noisy racket. Exhaust pipes on roofs puffed out violent jets of steam; an automatic sawmill added a rhythmic screeching; a button factory shook the ground with the rumbling of its machines.
She was looking up toward the Montmartre height, hesitant, uncertain whether to continue, when a gust of wind blew down a mass of sooty smoke that covered the entire street.
She closed her eyes and held her breath. At that moment she heard the sound of hammers in cadence.
Without realizing it, she had arrived directly in front of the bolt factory which she now recognized by the vacant lot beside it full of piles of scrap iron and old rags.
She still hesitated, not knowing where to enter.
A broken fence opened a passage which seemed to lead through the heaps of rubbish from some buildings recently pulled down.
Two planks had been thrown across a large puddle of muddy water that barred the way.
She ended by venturing along them, turned to the left and found herself lost in the depths of a strange forest of old carts, standing on end with their shafts in the air, and of hovels in ruins, the wood-work of which was still standing.
Toward the back, stabbing through the half-light of sundown, a flame gleamed red.
The clamor of the hammers had ceased.
She was advancing carefully when a workman, his face blackened with coal-dust and wearing a goatee passed near her, casting a side-glance with his pale eyes.
“Sir,” asked she, “it’s here is it not that a boy named Etienne works? He’s my son.”
“Etienne, Etienne,” repeated the workman in a hoarse voice as he twisted himself about.
“Etienne; no I don’t know him.”
An alcoholic reek like that from old brandy casks issued from his mouth.
Meeting a woman in this dark corner seemed to be giving the fellow ideas, and so Gervaise drew back saying:
“But yet it’s here that Monsieur Goujet works, isn’t it?”
“Ah! Goujet, yes!” said the workman;
“I know Goujet!
If you come for Goujet, go right to the end.”
And turning round he called out at the top of his voice, which had a sound of cracked brass: