going to town on the maid's arm.

In a word everything tended to attach her to the place. Her intimacy
with the _cremiere_ was strengthened by all the mysterious bonds of
friendship between women of the people, by the continual chatter, the
daily exchange of the trivial affairs of life, the conversation for the
sake of conversing, the repetition of the same _bonjour_ and the same
_bonsoir_, the division of caresses among the same animals, the naps
side by side and chair against chair. The shop at last became her
regular place for idling away her time, a place where her thoughts, her
words, her body and her very limbs were marvelously at ease. There came
a time when her happiness consisted in sitting drowsily of an evening in
a straw arm-chair, beside Mere Jupillon--sound asleep with her
spectacles on her nose--and holding the dogs rolled in a ball in the
skirt of her dress; and while the lamp, almost dying, burned pale upon
the counter, she would sit idly there, letting her glance lose itself at
the back of the shop, and gradually grow dim, with her ideas, as her
eyes rested vaguely upon a triumphal arch of snail shells joined
together with old moss, beneath which stood a little copper Napoleon,
with his hands behind his back.

VIII

Madame Jupillon, who claimed to have been married and signed herself
_Widow Jupillon_, had a son. He was still a child. She had placed him at
Saint-Nicholas, the great religious establishment where, for thirty
francs a month, rudimentary instruction and a trade are furnished to the
children of the common people, and to many natural children. Germinie
fell into the way of accompanying Madame Jupillon when she went to see
_Bibi_ on Thursdays. This visit became a means of distraction to her,
something to look forward to. She would urge the mother to hurry, would
always arrive first at the omnibus office, and was content to sit with
her arms resting on a huge basket of provisions all the way.

It happened that Mere Jupillon had trouble with her leg--a carbuncle
that prevented her from walking for nearly eighteen months. Germinie
went alone to Saint-Nicholas, and as she was promptly and easily led to
devote herself to others, she took as deep an interest in that child as
if he were connected with her in some way. She did not miss a single
Thursday and always arrived with her hands full of the last week's
desserts, and with cakes and fruit and sweetmeats she had bought. She
would kiss