red with a broad grin on her face, which was washed for once,
and so fat that the body of her dress was bursting. The men liked
pinching her, because they might pinch her all over without ever
encountering a bone. Boche made room for her beside him and reached
slyly under the table to grab her knee. But she, being accustomed to
that sort of thing, quietly tossed off a glass of wine, and related that
all the neighbors were at their windows, and that some of the people of
the house were beginning to get angry.

"Oh, that's our business," said Madame Boche. "We're the concierges,
aren't we? Well, we're answerable for good order. Let them come and
complain to us, we'll receive them in a way they don't expect."

In the back-room there had just been a furious fight between Nana and
Augustine, on account of the Dutch oven, which both wanted to scrape
out. For a quarter of an hour, the Dutch oven had rebounded over the
tile floor with the noise of an old saucepan. Nana was now nursing
little Victor, who had a goose-bone in his throat. She pushed her
fingers under his chin, and made him swallow big lumps of sugar by way
of a remedy. That did not prevent her keeping an eye on the big table.
At every minute she came and asked for wine, bread, or meat, for Etienne
and Pauline, she said.

"Here! Burst!" her mother would say to her. "Perhaps you'll leave us in
peace now!"

The children were scarcely able to swallow any longer, but they
continued to eat all the same, banging their forks down on the table to
the tune of a canticle, in order to excite themselves.

In the midst of the noise, however, a conversation was going on between
Pere Bru and mother Coupeau. The old fellow, who was ghastly pale in
spite of the wine and the food, was talking of his sons who had died in
the Crimea. Ah! if the lads had only lived, he would have had bread to
eat every day. But mother Coupeau, speaking thickly, leant towards him
and said:

"Ah! one has many worries with children! For instance, I appear to be
happy here, don't I? Well! I cry more often than you think. No, don't
wish you still had your children."

Pere Bru shook his head.

"I can't get work anywhere," murmured he. "I'm too old. When I enter a
workshop the young fellows joke, and ask me if I polished Henri IV.'s
boots. To-day it's all over; they won't have me anywhere. Last year I
could still earn thirty sous a day painting a bridge. I had to lie on
my back with the river flowing