e of
his business than the hatter.

This beast of a Lantier had the quiet cheek which pleases ladies. As
Poisson turned his back he was seized with the idea of printing a kiss
on Madame Poisson's left eye. As a rule he was stealthily prudent, but
when he had been disputing about politics he risked everything, so as to
show the wife his superiority. These gloating caresses, cheekily stolen
behind the policeman's back, revenged him on the Empire which had turned
France into a house of quarrels. Only on this occasion he had forgotten
Gervaise's presence. She had just finished rinsing and wiping the shop,
and she stood near the counter waiting for her thirty sous. However, the
kiss on Virginie's eye left her perfectly calm, as being quite natural,
and as part of a business she had no right to mix herself up in.
Virginie seemed rather vexed. She threw the thirty sous on to the
counter in front of Gervaise. The latter did not budge but stood there
waiting, still palpitating with the effort she had made in scrubbing,
and looking as soaked and as ugly as a dog fished out of the sewer.

"Then she didn't tell you anything?" she asked the hatter at last.

"Who?" he cried. "Ah, yes; you mean Nana. No, nothing else. What a
tempting mouth she has, the little hussy! Real strawberry jam!"

Gervaise went off with her thirty sous in her hand. The holes in her
shoes spat water forth like pumps; they were real musical shoes, and
played a tune as they left moist traces of their broad soles along the
pavement.

In the neighborhood the feminine tipplers of her own class now related
that she drank to console herself for her daughter's misconduct. She
herself, when she gulped down her dram of spirits on the counter,
assumed a dramatic air, and tossed the liquor into her mouth, wishing
it would "do" for her. And on the days when she came home boozed she
stammered that it was all through grief. But honest folks shrugged
their shoulders. They knew what that meant: ascribing the effects of the
peppery fire of l'Assommoir to grief, indeed! At all events, she ought
to have called it bottled grief. No doubt at the beginning she couldn't
digest Nana's flight. All the honest feelings remaining in her revolted
at the thought, and besides, as a rule a mother doesn't like to have
to think that her daughter, at that very moment, perhaps, is being
familiarly addressed by the first chance comer. But Gervaise was already
too stultified with a sick head an