However, at both corners of the Rue des Poissonniers, by the doors of the two wine merchants who were just putting up their shutters, some men slowed down and, before they entered, paused outside in the street, glancing sideways towards Paris, their arms dangling loosely, already deciding to take the day off work. Inside, standing at the counters, groups of men were buying drinks for one another, hanging around, filling the rooms, spitting, coughing, rinsing out their gullets with tots of brandy.

Gervaise was watching the door of Père Colombe’s, on the left of the street, where she thought she had seen Lantier, when a fat woman, bareheaded, shouted up to her from the middle of the road:

‘Hey there, Madame Lantier! You’re an early riser!’

Gervaise leaned forward.

‘Why, hallo, Madame Boche… Yes, I’ve got heaps of work today!’

‘Don’t I know about it! And it doesn’t get done by itself!’

So a conversation was struck up, from window to pavement. Madame Boche was the concierge in the house where the restaurant, the Veau à Deux Têtes, occupied the ground floor. Gervaise had often waited in her office for Lantier to come, to avoid sitting down on her own among all those men, eating at nearby tables. The concierge said she was going a few doors away to the Rue de la Charbonnière to wake up a tailor whom her husband had been trying to persuade to mend a coat for him. Then she talked about one of her tenants who had come back the night before with a woman and kept everybody awake until three in the morning. But even as she chatted away, she kept a keen eye on the young woman, apparently devoured by curiosity and only standing there under the window so that she could satisfy it.

‘Is Monsieur Lantier still in bed, then?’ she asked, suddenly.

‘Yes, he’s asleep,’ Gervaise answered, though she could not help blushing.

Madame Boche saw the tears welling up again in Gervaise’s eyes and, doubtless having got what she came for, was going on her way, with a remark about what lazy beasts men were, when she came back and shouted:

‘It’s this morning you go to the wash-house, isn’t it? I’ve got some to do myself, so I’ll keep you a place by me and we can have a chat.’ Then, as though suddenly feeling sorry for her, she added: ‘My poor girl, you really didn’t ought to stay there, you’ll catch your death… You’re all blue with cold.’

Gervaise insisted on staying at the window another two interminable hours, until eight o’clock. The shops had opened, the stream of workmen’s overalls flowing down from the heights dried up, and only a few latecomers were striding quickly past the gates, while in the wine shops the same men still stood, drinking, coughing and spitting. Working girls had taken the place of the men: polishers, stylists, florists, huddled in their flimsy dresses as they trotted along the outer boulevards; they came in clusters of three or four, with lively chatter and little laughs, their shining eyes glancing around them; but occasionally, one, thin, all alone, pale and serious-looking, would hug the perimeter wall, skirting the streams of filth… Then, the office-workers went past, blowing on their fingers or eating their penny rolls as they walked along; lanky young men, in coats one size too small, their eyes bleary and glazed with sleep, and little old men who waddled along, ashen-faced and worn out by long hours at their desks, looking at their watches so as to time their arrival to the second. And the boulevards had resumed their morning calm: those men of more considerable means in the neighbourhood took their walk in the sun; mothers in dirty dresses, wearing no hats, rocked their babies in their arms or changed their nappies on the benches; and a bunch of snotty, scruffy kids scrapped and rolled about on the ground in a welter of whimpering, laughter and tears. At once, Gervaise felt she was suffocating, losing hope, spiralling into a pit of anxiety. It seemed as though everything were over, time had ended, Lantier would never come home. Her eyes wandered distractedly from the old abattoirs, black with their killing and their stench, to the pale new hospital where, through the rows of still gaping holes waiting for window-panes, one could see the naked wards where death would come for its victims. Opposite, beyond the perimeter wall, she was dazzled by the blazing sky in which the rising sun had started to cast its rays over the mighty awakening of the city.

The young woman was sitting on a chair, her hands dangling at her side, past weeping, when Lantier calmly walked through the door.

‘You’re back, you’re back!’ she shouted, trying to throw her arms round him.

‘Yes, I’m back. So what?’ he replied. ‘You’re not going to start your nonsense again, I hope!’

He thrust her aside, then, in a gesture of annoyance, threw his black felt hat across the room on to the chest of drawers. Lantier was a young man of twenty-six, short, good-looking, with a dark complexion and a thin moustache, which he twirled constantly with a mechanical gesture. He had on a workman’s overall and an old, stained coat, taken in at the waist. He spoke with a marked southern accent.

Gervaise had slumped back into the chair and was complaining softly, in short bursts: ‘I didn’t sleep a wink… I thought you must have come to some harm… Where did you go? Where did you spend the night? For God’s sake, don’t ever do it again, I’ll go out of my mind… Tell me, Auguste, where did you go?’

‘I was busy, right?’ he said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘Damn it all! I went to La Glacière at eight, to see that friend of ours who is meant to be setting up a milliner’s. It was late, so I thought I might as well stop over… In any case, I don’t like being spied on, so get off my back!’

The young woman began to sob again. Lantier had raised his voice and made brusque gestures, knocking aside the chairs, which woke up the children. They sat up in bed, half naked, ruffling their hair with their little hands; and, when they heard their mother crying, howled dreadfully, themselves weeping from half-opened eyes.

‘Ah, now the music’s started!’ Lantier yelled, in fury. ‘I warn the lot of you, I’ll be off again! And this time it will be for good… Won’t you shut up? OK, that’s it. I’m going back where I came from.’

He was already picking up his hat from the chest of drawers. But Gervaise rushed forward, stammering: ‘No, no!’ She stifled the children’s tears with hugs, kissing them on the head and muttering endearments as she put them back to bed. Quickly appeased, they started to laugh and pinch one another. Meanwhile, the father, without even taking his boots off, had slumped down on to the bed, looking exhausted, his face blotchy after a sleepless night. He didn’t fall asleep, but stayed there with his eyes open, looking around the room.

‘A fine state this place is in,’ he muttered. Then, after staring at Gervaise for a moment, he added unkindly: ‘Have you given up washing yourself then?’

Gervaise was only twenty-two, tall, rather thin, with fine features, though already drawn: she had had a hard life.