, as her basket was blocking the
staircase, the laundress wished to show how polite she, too, could be.

"I beg your pardon," she said.

"You are completely excused," replied the tall brunette.

And they remained conversing together on the stairs, reconciled at once
without having ventured on a single allusion to the past. Virginie,
then twenty-nine years old, had become a superb woman of strapping
proportions, her face, however, looking rather long between her two
plaits of jet black hair. She at once began to relate her history just
to show off. She had a husband now; she had married in the spring an
ex-journeyman cabinetmaker, who recently left the army, and who had
applied to be admitted into the police, because a post of that kind is
more to be depended upon and more respectable. She had been out to buy
the mackerel for him.

"He adores mackerel," said she. "We must spoil them, those naughty men,
mustn't we? But come up. You shall see our home. We are standing in a
draught here."

After Gervaise had told of her own marriage and that she had formerly
occupied the very apartment Virginie now had, Virginie urged her even
more strongly to come up since it is always nice to visit a spot where
one had been happy.

Virginie had lived for five years on the Left Bank at Gros-Caillou. That
was where she had met her husband while he was still in the army.
But she got tired of it, and wanted to come back to the Goutte-d'Or
neighborhood where she knew everyone. She had only been living in the
rooms opposite the Goujets for two weeks. Oh! everything was still a
mess, but they were slowly getting it in order.

Then, still on the staircase, they finally told each other their names.

"Madame Coupeau."

"Madame Poisson."

And from that time forth, they called each other on every possible
occasion Madame Poisson and Madame Coupeau, solely for the pleasure of
being madame, they who in former days had been acquainted when occupying
rather questionable positions. However, Gervaise felt rather mistrustful
at heart. Perhaps the tall brunette had made it up the better to avenge
herself for the beating at the wash-house by concocting some plan worthy
of a spiteful hypocritical creature. Gervaise determined to be upon her
guard. For the time being, as Virginie behaved so nicely, she would be
nice also.

In the room upstairs, Poisson, the husband, a man of thirty-five, with
a cadaverous-looking countenance and carroty moustaches