where she worked in the Rue du Caire. And they all talked very gravely
of the duties of life. Boche said that Nana and Pauline were women now
that they had partaken of communion. Poisson added that for the future
they ought to know how to cook, mend socks and look after a house.
Something was even said of their marrying, and of the children they
would some day have. The youngsters listened, laughing to themselves,
elated by the thought of being women. What pleased them the most was
when Lantier teased them, asking if they didn't already have little
husbands. Nana eventually admitted that she cared a great deal for
Victor Fauconnier, son of her mother's employer.

"Ah well," said Madame Lorilleux to the Boches, as they were all
leaving, "she's our goddaughter, but as they're going to put her into
artificial flower-making, we don't wish to have anything more to do with
her. Just one more for the boulevards. She'll be leading them a merry
chase before six months are over."

On going up to bed, the Coupeaus agreed that everything had passed off
well and that the Poissons were not at all bad people. Gervaise even
considered the shop was nicely got up. She was surprised to discover
that it hadn't pained her at all to spend an evening there. While Nana
was getting ready for bed she contemplated her white dress and asked her
mother if the young lady on the third floor had had one like it when she
was married last month.

This was their last happy day. Two years passed by, during which they
sank deeper and deeper. The winters were especially hard for them. If
they had bread to eat during the fine weather, the rain and cold came
accompanied by famine, by drubbings before the empty cupboard, and by
dinner-hours with nothing to eat in the little Siberia of their larder.
Villainous December brought numbing freezing spells and the black misery
of cold and dampness.

The first winter they occasionally had a fire, choosing to keep warm
rather than to eat. But the second winter, the stove stood mute with
its rust, adding a chill to the room, standing there like a cast-iron
gravestone. And what took the life out of their limbs, what above all
utterly crushed them was the rent. Oh! the January quarter, when there
was not a radish in the house and old Boche came up with the bill! It
was like a bitter storm, a regular tempest from the north. Monsieur
Marescot then arrived the following Saturday, wrapped up in a good warm
overcoat, his b