rhaps eating
oysters at that very moment. Then everything became cloudy; and, albeit,
she remained with open eyes, it required too great an effort for her
to think. The only sensation that remained to her, in her utter
annihilation, was that it was frightfully cold, so sharply, mortally
cold, she had never known the like before. Why, even dead people could
not feel so cold in their graves. With an effort she raised her head,
and something seemed to lash her face. It was the snow, which had at
last decided to fall from the smoky sky--fine thick snow, which the
breeze swept round and round. For three days it had been expected and
what a splendid moment it chose to appear.

Woken up by the first gusts, Gervaise began to walk faster. Eager to get
home, men were running along, with their shoulders already white. And as
she suddenly saw one who, on the contrary, was coming slowly towards her
under the trees, she approached him and again said: "Sir, just listen--"

The man has stopped. But he did not seem to have heard her. He held out
his hand, and muttered in a low voice: "Charity, if you please!"

They looked at one another. Ah! _Mon Dieu!_ They were reduced to
this--Pere Bru begging, Madame Coupeau walking the streets! They
remained stupefied in front of each other. They could join hands as
equals now. The old workman had prowled about the whole evening, not
daring to stop anyone, and the first person he accosted was as hungry as
himself. Lord, was it not pitiful! To have toiled for fifty years and be
obliged to beg! To have been one of the most prosperous laundresses
in the Rue de la Goutte-d'Or and to end beside the gutter! They still
looked at one another. Then, without saying a word, they went off in
different directions under the lashing snow.

It was a perfect tempest. On these heights, in the midst of this open
space, the fine snow revolved round and round as if the wind came from
the four corners of heaven. You could not see ten paces off, everything
was confused in the midst of this flying dust. The surroundings had
disappeared, the Boulevard seemed to be dead, as if the storm had
stretched the silence of its white sheet over the hiccoughs of the last
drunkards. Gervaise still went on, blinded, lost. She felt her way by
touching the trees. As she advanced the gas-lamps shone out amidst the
whiteness like torches. Then, suddenly, whenever she crossed an open
space, these lights failed her; she was enveloped in t