streamed the light, soft and warm, after the storm. The trees, bathed
in the setting sun, imparted a cool, green tinge to the dingy room,
and the shadows of the waving branches and quivering leaves danced
over the cloth.

There were two fly-specked mirrors at either end of the room, which
indefinitely lengthened the table spread with thick china. Every time
the _garcons_ opened the door into the kitchen there came a strong
smell of burning fat.

"Don't let us all talk at once!" said Boche as a dead silence fell on
the room, broken by the abrupt entrance of Mes-Bottes.

"You are nice people!" he exclaimed. "I have been waiting for you
until I am wet through and have a fishpond in each pocket."

This struck the circle as the height of wit, and they all laughed
while he ordered the _garcon_ to and fro. He devoured three plates of
soup and enormous slices of bread. The head of the establishment came
and looked in in considerable anxiety; a laugh ran around the room.
Mes-Bottes recalled to their memories a day when he had eaten twelve
hard-boiled eggs and drunk twelve glasses of wine while the clock was
striking twelve.

There was a brief silence. A waiter placed on the table a rabbit stew
in a deep dish. Coupeau turned round.

"Say, boy, is that a gutter rabbit? It mews still."

And the low mewing of a cat seemed, indeed, to come from the dish.