the Rue du Faubourg-Poissonniere, came bands of
people, rendered breathless by their uphill walk. As the omnivans and
the cabs rolled by less noiselessly among the vans and trucks returning
home empty at a gallop, an ever-increasing swarm of blouses and
blue vests covered the pavement. Commissionaires returned with their
crotchets on their backs. Two workmen took long strides side by side,
talking to each other in loud voices, with any amount of gesticulation,
but without looking at one another; others who were alone in overcoats
and caps walked along the curbstones with lowered noses; others again
came in parties of five or six, following each other, with pale eyes and
their hands in their pockets and not exchanging a word. Some still had
their pipes, which had gone out between their teeth. Four masons poked
their white faces out of the windows of a cab which they had hired
between them, and on the roof of which their mortar-troughs rocked to
and fro. House-painters were swinging their pots; a zinc-worker was
returning laden with a long ladder, with which he almost poked people's
eyes out; whilst a belated plumber, with his box on his back, played
the tune of "The Good King Dagobert" on his little trumpet. Ah! the sad
music, a fitting accompaniment to the tread of the flock, the tread of
the weary beasts of burden.

Suddenly on raising her eyes she noticed the old Hotel Boncoeur in front
of her. After being an all-night cafe, which the police had closed
down, the little house was now abandoned; the shutters were covered with
posters, the lantern was broken, and the whole building was rotting and
crumbling away from top to bottom, with its smudgy claret-colored paint,
quite moldy. The stationer's and the tobacconist's were still there. In
the rear, over some low buildings, you could see the leprous facades of
several five-storied houses rearing their tumble-down outlines against
the sky. The "Grand Balcony" dancing hall no longer existed; some
sugar-cutting works, which hissed continually, had been installed in the
hall with the ten flaming windows. And yet it was here, in this dirty
den--the Hotel Boncoeur--that the whole cursed life had commenced.
Gervaise remained looking at the window of the first floor, from which
hung a broken shutter, and recalled to mind her youth with Lantier,
their first rows and the ignoble way in which he had abandoned her.
Never mind, she was young then, and it all seemed gay to her, seen f