to the door, with her iron in her hand, and
look up and down the street to see if her old man was coming.

It might be that Coupeau had broken a leg, or fallen under a wagon and
been crushed and that might be good riddance to bad rubbish. She saw no
reason for cherishing in her heart any affection for a filthy character
like him, but it was irritating, all the same, to have to wonder every
night whether he would come in or not. When it got dark, Lantier again
suggested the music-hall, and this time she accepted. She decided it
would be silly to deny herself a little pleasure when her husband had
been out on the town for three days. If he wasn't coming in, then she
might as well go out herself. Let the entire dump burn up if it felt
like it. She might even put a torch to it herself. She was getting tired
of the boring monotony of her present life.

They ate their dinner quickly. Then, when she went off at eight o'clock,
arm-in-arm with the hatter, Gervaise told mother Coupeau and Nana to go
to bed at once. The shop was shut and the shutters up. She left by the
door opening into the courtyard and gave Madame Boche the key, asking
her, if her pig of a husband came home, to have the kindness to put him
to bed. The hatter was waiting for her under the big doorway, arrayed
in his best and whistling a tune. She had on her silk dress. They walked
slowly along the pavement, keeping close to each other, lighted up by
the glare from the shop windows which showed them smiling and talking
together in low voices.

The music-hall was in the Boulevard de Rochechouart. It had originally
been a little cafe and had been enlarged by means of a kind of wooden
shed erected in the courtyard. At the door a string of glass globes
formed a luminous porch. Tall posters pasted on boards stood upon the
ground, close to the gutter.

"Here we are," said Lantier. "To-night, first appearance of Mademoiselle
Amanda, serio-comic."

Then he caught sight of Bibi-the-Smoker, who was also reading the
poster. Bibi had a black eye; some punch he had run up against the day
before.

"Well! Where's Coupeau?" inquired the hatter, looking about. "Have you,
then, lost Coupeau?"

"Oh! long ago, since yesterday," replied the other. "There was a bit of
a free-for-all on leaving mother Baquet's. I don't care for fisticuffs.
We had a row, you know, with mother Baquet's pot-boy, because he wanted
to make us pay for a quart twice over. Then I left. I went and had