the table is between us! Do you dislike me so very much that you can't
stay and talk with me for five minutes?"

She put down her basket, unwilling to seem disobliging, and they
talked for some time in a friendly sort of way. She had breakfasted
before she left home, and he had swallowed his soup in the greatest
haste and laid in wait for her as she came out. Gervaise, as she
listened to him, watched from the windows--between the bottles of
brandied fruit--the movement of the crowd in the street, which at
this hour--that of the Parisian breakfast--was unusually lively.
Workmen hurried into the baker's and, coming out with a loaf under
their arms, they went into the Veau a Deux Tetes, three doors higher
up, to breakfast at six sous. Next the baker's was a shop where fried
potatoes and mussels with parsley were sold. A constant succession of
shopgirls carried off paper parcels of fried potatoes and cups filled
with mussels, and others bought bunches of radishes. When Gervaise
leaned a little more toward the window she saw still another shop,
also crowded, from which issued a steady stream of children holding
in their hands, wrapped in paper, a breaded cutlet or a sausage,
still warm.

A group formed around the door of the Assommoir.

"Say, Bibi-la-Grillade," asked a voice, "will you stand a drink all
around?"

Five workmen went in, and the same voice said:

"Father Colombe, be honest now. Give us honest glasses, and no
nutshells, if you please."