Then your troubles will be over.”
Everyone thought mother Coupeau was asleep, but she shook her head in protest.
She knew another way and it was infallible.
You had to eat a hard-cooked egg every two hours, and put spinach leaves on your loins.
Squint-eyed Augustine set up a hen-cackling when she heard this.
They had forgotten about her.
Gervaise lifted up the petticoat that was being ironed and found her rolling on the floor with laughter.
She jerked her upright.
What was she laughing about?
Was it right for her to be eavesdropping when older people were talking, the little goose?
Anyway it was time for her to deliver the laundry to a friend of Madame Lerat at Les Batignolles.
So Gervaise hung a basket on her arm and pushed her toward the door.
Augustine went off, sobbing and sniveling, dragging her feet in the snow.
Meanwhile mother Coupeau, Madame Putois and Clemence were discussing the effectiveness of hard-cooked eggs and spinach leaves.
Then Virginie said softly:
“Mon Dieu! you have a fight, and then you make it up, if you have a generous heart.”
She leaned toward Gervaise with a smile and added, “Really, I don’t hold any grudge against you for that business at the wash-house. You remember it, don’t you?”
This was what Gervaise had been dreading.
She guessed that the subject of Lantier and Adele would now come up.
Virginie had moved close to Gervaise so as not to be overheard by the others.
Gervaise, lulled by the excessive heat, felt so limp that she couldn’t even summon the willpower to change the subject.
She foresaw what the tall brunette would say and her heart was stirred with an emotion which she didn’t want to admit to herself.
“I hope I’m not hurting your feelings,” Virginie continued.
“Often I’ve had it on the tip of my tongue.
But since we are now on the subject, word of honor, I don’t have any grudge against you.”
She stirred her remaining coffee and then took a small sip.
Gervaise, with her heart in her throat, wondered if Virginie had really forgiven her as completely as she said, for she seemed to observe sparks in her dark eyes.
“You see,” Virginie went on, “you had an excuse.
They played a really rotten, dirty trick on you. To be fair about it, if it had been me, I’d have taken a knife to her.”
She drank another small sip, then added rapidly without a pause:
“Anyway, it didn’t bring them happiness, mon Dieu!
Not a bit of it.
They went to live over at La Glaciere, in a filthy street that was always muddy.
I went two days later to have lunch with them.
I can tell you, it was quite a trip by bus.
Well, I found them already fighting.
Really, as I came in they were boxing each other’s ears.
Fine pair of love birds!
Adele isn’t worth the rope to hang her.
I say that even if she is my own sister.
It would take too long to relate all the nasty tricks she played on me, and anyhow, it’s between the two of us. As for Lantier — well, he’s no good either.
He’d beat the hide off you for anything, and with his fist closed too.
They fought all the time.
The police even came once.”
Virginie went on about other fights. Oh, she knew of things that would make your hair stand up.
Gervaise listened in silence, her face pale.
It was nearly seven years since she had heard a word about Lantier. She hadn’t realized what a strong curiosity she had as to what had become of the poor man, even though he had treated her badly.
And she never would have believed that just the mention of his name could put such a glowing warmth in the pit of her stomach.
She certainly had no reason to be jealous of Adele any more but she rejoiced to think of her body all bruised from the beatings.
She could have listened to Virginie all night, but she didn’t ask any questions, not wanting to appear much interested.