e could have taken a train and gone away, far
away from this poverty and suffering. She might have started an entirely
new life! Then she turned to look at the posters on the bridge sidings.
One was on pretty blue paper and offered a fifty-franc reward for a lost
dog. Someone must have really loved that dog!

Gervaise slowly resumed her walk. In the smoky fog which was falling,
the gas lamps were being lighted up; and the long avenues, which had
grown bleak and indistinct, suddenly showed themselves plainly again,
sparkling to their full length and piercing through the night, even to
the vague darkness of the horizon. A great gust swept by; the widened
spaces were lighted up with girdles of little flames, shining under the
far-stretching moonless sky. It was the hour when, from one end of the
Boulevard to the other, the dram-shops and the dancing-halls flamed
gayly as the first glasses were merrily drunk and the first dance began.
It was the great fortnightly pay-day, and the pavement was crowded with
jostling revelers on the spree. There was a breath of merrymaking in
the air--deuced fine revelry, but not objectionable so far. Fellows were
filling themselves in the eating-houses; through the lighted windows you
could see people feeding, with their mouths full and laughing without
taking the trouble to swallow first. Drunkards were already installed
in the wineshops, squabbling and gesticulating. And there was a cursed
noise on all sides, voices shouting amid the constant clatter of feet on
the pavement.

"Say, are you coming to sip?" "Make haste, old man; I'll pay for a glass
of bottled wine." "Here's Pauline! Shan't we just laugh!" The doors
swung to and fro, letting a smell of wine and a sound of cornet playing
escape into the open air. There was a gathering in front of Pere
Colombe's l'Assommoir, which was lighted up like a cathedral for high
mass. _Mon Dieu!_ you would have said a real ceremony was going on,
for several capital fellows, with rounded paunches and swollen cheeks,
looking for all the world like professional choristers, were singing
inside. They were celebrating Saint-Pay, of course--a very amiable
saint, who no doubt keeps the cash box in Paradise. Only, on seeing how
gaily the evening began, the retired petty tradesmen who had taken their
wives out for a stroll wagged their heads, and repeated that there
would be any number of drunken men in Paris that night. And the night
stretched very dark, dead-