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 ha