to go out: she was a good and courageous woman, and might count upon him
on any day of trouble.

As soon as he was gone, Gervaise again returned to the window. At the
Barriere, the tramp of the drove still continued in the morning air:
locksmiths in short blue blouses, masons in white jackets, house
painters in overcoats over long smocks. From a distance the crowd looked
like a chalky smear of neutral hue composed chiefly of faded blue and
dingy gray. When one of the workers occasionally stopped to light his
pipe the others kept plodding past him, without sparing a laugh or a
word to a comrade. With cheeks gray as clay, their eyes were continually
drawn toward Paris which was swallowing them one by one.

At both corners of the Rue des Poissonniers however, some of the men
slackened their pace as they neared the doors of the two wine-dealers
who were taking down their shutters; and, before entering, they stood on
the edge of the pavement, looking sideways over Paris, with no strength
in their arms and already inclined for a day of idleness. Inside various
groups were already buying rounds of drinks, or just standing around,
forgetting their troubles, crowding up the place, coughing, spitting,
clearing their throats with sip after sip.

Gervaise was watching Pere Colombe's wineshop to the left of the street,
where she thought she had seen Lantier, when a stout woman, bareheaded
and wearing an apron called to her from the middle of the roadway:

"Hey, Madame Lantier, you're up very early!"

Gervaise leaned out. "Why! It's you, Madame Boche! Oh! I've got a lot of
work to-day!"