rom
a distance. Only twenty years. _Mon Dieu!_ and yet she had fallen to
street-walking. Then the sight of the lodging house oppressed her and
she walked up the Boulevard in the direction of Montmartre.

The night was gathering, but children were still playing on the heaps of
sand between the benches. The march past continued, the workgirls went
by, trotting along and hurrying to make up for the time they had lost in
looking in at the shop windows; one tall girl, who had stopped, left her
hand in that of a big fellow, who accompanied her to within three doors
of her home; others as they parted from each other, made appointments
for the night at the "Great Hall of Folly" or the "Black Ball." In
the midst of the groups, piece-workmen went by, carrying their clothes
folded under their arms. A chimney sweep, harnessed with leather braces,
was drawing a cart along, and nearly got himself crushed by an omnibus.
Among the crowd which was now growing scantier, there were several
women running with bare heads; after lighting the fire, they had come
downstairs again and were hastily making their purchases for dinner;
they jostled the people they met, darted into the bakers' and the pork
butchers', and went off again with all despatch, their provisions in
their hands. There were little girls of eight years old, who had been
sent out on errands, and who went along past the shops, pressing long
loaves of four pounds' weight, as tall as they were themselves, against
their chests, as if these loaves had been beautiful yellow dolls; at
times these little ones forgot themselves for five minutes or so, in
front of some pictures in a shop window, and rested their cheeks against
the bread. Then the flow subsided, the groups became fewer and farther
between, the working classes had gone home; and as the gas blazed now
that the day's toil was over, idleness and amusement seemed to wake up.

Ah! yes; Gervaise had finished her day! She was wearier even than all
this mob of toilers who had jostled her as they went by. She might lie
down there and croak, for work would have nothing more to do with her,
and she had toiled enough during her life to say: "Whose turn now? I've
had enough." At present everyone was eating. It was really the end, the
sun had blown out its candle, the night would be a long one. _Mon Dieu!_
To stretch one's self at one's ease and never get up again; to think one
had put one's tools by for good and that one could ruminate