Then there was no need to shut themselves in like selfish people.
Coupeau, noticing the little clockmaker looked very thirsty, held up a bottle; and as the other nodded his head, he carried him the bottle and a glass.
A fraternity was established in the street.
They drank to anyone who passed. They called in any chaps who looked the right sort.
The feast spread, extending from one to another, to the degree that the entire neighborhood of the Goutte-d’Or sniffed the grub, and held its stomach, amidst a rumpus worthy of the devil and all his demons.
For some minutes, Madame Vigouroux, the charcoal-dealer, had been passing to and fro before the door.
“Hi!
Madame Vigouroux!
Madame Vigouroux!” yelled the party.
She entered with a broad grin on her face, which was washed for once, and so fat that the body of her dress was bursting.
The men liked pinching her, because they might pinch her all over without ever encountering a bone.
Boche made room for her beside him and reached slyly under the table to grab her knee.
But she, being accustomed to that sort of thing, quietly tossed off a glass of wine, and related that all the neighbors were at their windows, and that some of the people of the house were beginning to get angry.
“Oh, that’s our business,” said Madame Boche.
“We’re the concierges, aren’t we?
Well, we’re answerable for good order. Let them come and complain to us, we’ll receive them in a way they don’t expect.”
In the back-room there had just been a furious fight between Nana and Augustine, on account of the Dutch oven, which both wanted to scrape out.
For a quarter of an hour, the Dutch oven had rebounded over the tile floor with the noise of an old saucepan.
Nana was now nursing little Victor, who had a goose-bone in his throat.
She pushed her fingers under his chin, and made him swallow big lumps of sugar by way of a remedy.
That did not prevent her keeping an eye on the big table.
At every minute she came and asked for wine, bread, or meat, for Etienne and Pauline, she said.
“Here! Burst!” her mother would say to her.
“Perhaps you’ll leave us in peace now!”
The children were scarcely able to swallow any longer, but they continued to eat all the same, banging their forks down on the table to the tune of a canticle, in order to excite themselves.
In the midst of the noise, however, a conversation was going on between Pere Bru and mother Coupeau.
The old fellow, who was ghastly pale in spite of the wine and the food, was talking of his sons who had died in the Crimea.
Ah! if the lads had only lived, he would have had bread to eat every day.
But mother Coupeau, speaking thickly, leant towards him and said:
“Ah! one has many worries with children!
For instance, I appear to be happy here, don’t I? Well! I cry more often than you think. No, don’t wish you still had your children.”
Pere Bru shook his head.
“I can’t get work anywhere,” murmured he.
“I’m too old.
When I enter a workshop the young fellows joke, and ask me if I polished Henri IV.’s boots. To-day it’s all over; they won’t have me anywhere. Last year I could still earn thirty sous a day painting a bridge.
I had to lie on my back with the river flowing under me.
I’ve had a bad cough ever since then. Now, I’m finished.”
He looked at his poor stiff hands and added: “It’s easy to understand, I’m no longer good for anything.
They’re right; were I in their place I should do the same. You see, the misfortune is that I’m not dead.
Yes, it’s my fault.
One should lie down and croak when one’s no longer able to work.”
“Really,” said Lorilleux, who was listening, “I don’t understand why the Government doesn’t come to the aid of the invalids of labor. I was reading that in a newspaper the other day.”
But Poisson thought it his duty to defend the Government.
“Workmen are not soldiers,” declared he.
“The Invalides is for soldiers.
You must not ask for what is impossible.”
Dessert was now served.
In the centre of the table was a Savoy cake in the form of a temple, with a dome fluted with melon slices; and this dome was surmounted by an artificial rose, close to which was a silver paper butterfly, fluttering at the end of a wire.
Two drops of gum in the centre of the flower imitated dew.
Then, to the left, a piece of cream cheese floated in a deep dish; whilst in another dish to the right, were piled up some large crushed strawberries, with the juice running from them.