Yes, that gentleman there.
Tell him as loud as you can:
‘I wish it!’“
“I wish it!” stuttered Etienne, his voice thick with sleep.
Everyone laughed.
But Lantier resumed his grave and impressive air.
He squeezed Coupeau’s hand across the table as he said:
“I accept. It’s in all good fellowship on both sides, is it not?
Yes, I accept for the child’s sake.”
The next day when the landlord, Monsieur Marescot, came to spend an hour with the Boches, Gervaise mentioned the matter to him.
He refused angrily at first.
Then, after a careful inspection of the premises, particularly gazing upward to verify that the upper floors would not be weakened, he finally granted permission on condition there would be no expense to him.
He had the Coupeaus sign a paper saying they would restore everything to its original state on the expiration of the lease.
Coupeau brought in some friends of his that very evening — a mason, a carpenter and a painter.
They would do this job in the evenings as a favor to him.
Still, installing the door and cleaning up the room cost over one hundred francs, not counting the wine that kept the work going.
Coupeau told his friends he’d pay them something later, out of the rent from his tenant.
Then the furniture for the room had to be sorted out.
Gervaise left mother Coupeau’s wardrobe where it was, and added a table and two chairs taken from her own room.
She had to buy a washing-stand and a bed with mattress and bedclothes, costing one hundred and thirty francs, which she was to pay off at ten francs a month.
Although Lantier’s twenty francs would be used to pay off these debts for ten months, there would be a nice little profit later.
It was during the early days of June that the hatter moved in.
The day before, Coupeau had offered to go with him and fetch his box, to save him the thirty sous for a cab.
But the other became quite embarrassed, saying that the box was too heavy, as though he wished up to the last moment to hide the place where he lodged.
He arrived in the afternoon towards three o’clock.
Coupeau did not happen to be in.
And Gervaise, standing at the shop door became quite pale on recognizing the box outside the cab.
It was their old box, the one with which they had journeyed from Plassans, all scratched and broken now and held together by cords.
She saw it return as she had often dreamt it would and it needed no great stretch of imagination to believe that the same cab, that cab in which that strumpet of a burnisher had played her such a foul trick, had brought the box back again.
Meanwhile Boche was giving Lantier a helping hand.
The laundress followed them in silence and feeling rather dazed.
When they had deposited their burden in the middle of the room she said for the sake of saying something:
“Well! That’s a good thing finished, isn’t it?”
Then pulling herself together, seeing that Lantier, busy in undoing the cords was not even looking at her, she added:
“Monsieur Boche, you must have a drink.”
And she went and fetched a quart of wine and some glasses.
Just then Poisson passed along the pavement in uniform. She signaled to him, winking her eye and smiling.
The policeman understood perfectly.
When he was on duty and anyone winked their eye to him it meant a glass of wine.
He would even walk for hours up and down before the laundry waiting for a wink.
Then so as not to be seen, he would pass through the courtyard and toss off the liquor in secret.
“Ah! ah!” said Lantier when he saw him enter, “it’s you, Badingue.”
He called him Badingue for a joke, just to show how little he cared for the Emperor.
Poisson put up with it in his stiff way without one knowing whether it really annoyed him or not.
Besides the two men, though separated by their political convictions, had become very good friends.
“You know that the Emperor was once a policeman in London,” said Boche in his turn.
“Yes, on my word!
He used to take the drunken women to the station-house.”
Gervaise had filled three glasses on the table.
She would not drink herself, she felt too sick at heart, but she stood there longing to see what the box contained and watching Lantier remove the last cords.