re hung around, impregnated
with a soapy odor, a damp insipid smell, continuous though at moments
overpowered by the more potent fumes of the chemicals. Along the
washing-places, on either side of the central alley, were rows of
women, with bare arms and necks, and skirts tucked up, showing colored
stockings and heavy lace-up shoes. They were beating furiously,
laughing, leaning back to call out a word in the midst of the din, or
stooping over their tubs, all of them brutal, ungainly, foul of speech,
and soaked as though by a shower, with their flesh red and reeking.

All around the women continuously flowed a river from hot-water buckets
emptied with a sudden splash, cold-water faucets left dripping, soap
suds spattering, and the dripping from rinsed laundry which was hung up.
It splashed their feet and drained away across the sloping flagstones.
The din of the shouting and the rhythmic beating was joined by
the patter of steady dripping. It was slightly muffled by the
moisture-soaked ceiling. Meanwhile, the steam engine could be heard as
it puffed and snorted ceaselessly while cloaked in its white mist. The
dancing vibration of its flywheel seemed to regulate the volume of the
noisy turbulence.

Gervaise passed slowly along the alley, looking to the right and left,
carrying her laundry bundle under one arm, with one hip thrust high and
limping more than usual. She was jostled by several women in the hubbub.

"This way, my dear!" cried Madame Boche, in her loud voice. Then,
when the young woman had joined her at the very end on the left,
the concierge, who was furiously rubbing a dirty sock, began to talk
incessantly, without leaving off her work. "Put your things there,
I've kept your place. Oh, I sha'n't be long over what I've got. Boche
scarcely dirties his things at all. And you, you won't be long either,
will you? Your bundle's quite a little one. Before twelve o'clock we
shall have finished, and we can go off to lunch. I used to send my
things to a laundress in the Rue Poulet, but she destroyed everything
with her chlorine and her brushes; so now I do the washing myself. It's
so much saved; it only costs the soap. I say, you should have put those
shirts to soak. Those little rascals of children, on my word! One would
think their bodies were covered with soot."

Gervaise, having undone her bundle, was spreading out the little ones'
shirts, and as Madame Boche advised her to take a pailful of lye, she
answered,