liked to work. Indeed! A woman of her age ought to know how to
turn herself round. And he accused her of having always been a glutton.
Nevertheless, as one ought to hold out a helping hand, even to folks
who don't deserve it, he tried to find her a little work. Thus he had
prevailed upon Virginie to let Gervaise come once a week to scrub the
shop and the rooms. That was the sort of thing she understood and
on each occasion she earned her thirty sous. Gervaise arrived on the
Saturday morning with a pail and a scrubbing brush, without seeming
to suffer in the least at having to perform a dirty, humble duty, a
charwoman's work in the dwelling-place where she had reigned as the
beautiful fair-haired mistress. It was a last humiliation, the end of
her pride.

One Saturday she had a hard job of it. It had rained for three days and
the customers seemed to have brought all the mud of the neighborhood
into the shop on the soles of their boots. Virginie was at the counter
doing the grand, with her hair well combed, and wearing a little white
collar and a pair of lace cuffs. Beside her, on the narrow seat covered
with red oil-cloth, Lantier did the dandy, looking for the world as if
he were at home, as if he were the real master of the place, and from
time to time he carelessly dipped his hand into a jar of peppermint
drops, just to nibble something sweet according to his habit.

"Look here, Madame Coupeau!" cried Virginie, who was watching the
scrubbing with compressed lips, "you have left some dirt over there in
the corner. Scrub that rather better please."

Gervaise obeyed. She returned to the corner and began to scrub again.
She bent double on her knees in the midst of the dirty water, with
her shoulders protruding, her arms stiff and purple with cold. Her old
skirt, fairly soaked, stuck to her figure. And there on the floor she
looked a dirty, ill-combed drab, the rents in her jacket showing her
puffy form, her fat, flabby flesh which heaved, swayed and floundered
about as she went about her work; and all the while she perspired to
such a point that from her moist face big drops of sweat fell on to the
floor.

"The more elbow grease one uses, the more it shines," said Lantier,
sententiously, with his mouth full of peppermint drops.

Virginie, who sat back with the demeanor of a princess, her eyes partly
open, was still watching the scrubbing, and indulging in remarks. "A
little more on the right there. Take care of the w