s--the dressmaker in her muslin costume,
sprinkled with pink flowers, the laundress in her white cambric dress
with blue spots, her wrists bare, and wearing round her neck a little
grey silk scarf tied in a bow. People turned round to see them pass,
looking so fresh and lively, dressed in their Sunday best on a week day
and jostling the crowd which hung about the Rue des Poissonniers, on
that warm June evening. But it was not a question of amusing themselves.
They went straight to the door of each wineshop, looked in and sought
amongst the people standing before the counter. Had that animal Coupeau
gone to the Arc de Triomphe to get his dram? They had already done the
upper part of the street, looking in at all the likely places; at
the "Little Civet," renowned for its preserved plums; at old mother
Baquet's, who sold Orleans wine at eight sous; at the "Butterfly," the
coachmen's house of call, gentlemen who were not easy to please. But no
Coupeau. Then as they were going down towards the Boulevard, Gervaise
uttered a faint cry on passing the eating-house at the corner kept by
Francois.

"What's the matter?" asked Goujet.

The laundress no longer laughed. She was very pale, and laboring under
so great an emotion that she had almost fallen. Virginie understood it
all as she caught a sight of Lantier seated at one of Francois's tables
quietly dining. The two women dragged the blacksmith along.

"My ankle twisted," said Gervaise as soon as she was able to speak.

At length they discovered Coupeau and Poisson at the bottom of the
street inside Pere Colombe's l'Assommoir. They were standing up in the
midst of a number of men; Coupeau, in a grey blouse, was shouting with
furious gestures and banging his fists down on the counter. Poisson, not
on duty that day and buttoned up in an old brown coat, was listening
to him in a dull sort of way and without uttering a word, bristling his
carroty moustaches and beard the while. Goujet left the women on the
edge of the pavement, and went and laid his hand on the zinc-worker's
shoulder. But when the latter caught sight of Gervaise and Virginie
outside he grew angry. Why was he badgered with such females as those?
Petticoats had taken to tracking him about now! Well! He declined to
stir, they could go and eat their beastly dinner all by themselves. To
quiet him Goujet was obliged to accept a drop of something; and even
then Coupeau took a fiendish delight in dawdling a good five minu