nn the timeworn pack of cards,
thick with the grease of five years' contact with half-wiped-off tables,
started a game of bezique with his wife.

The good sisters, taking up simultaneously the long rosaries hanging from
their waists, made the sign of the cross, and began to mutter in unison
interminable prayers, their lips moving ever more and more swiftly, as if
they sought which should outdistance the other in the race of orisons;
from time to time they kissed a medal, and crossed themselves anew, then
resumed their rapid and unintelligible murmur.

Cornudet sat still, lost in thought.

Ah the end of three hours Loiseau gathered up the cards, and remarked
that he was hungry.

His wife thereupon produced a parcel tied with string, from which she
extracted a piece of cold veal. This she cut into neat, thin slices, and
both began to eat.

"We may as well do the same," said the countess. The rest agreed, and she
unpacked the provisions which had been prepared for herself, the count,
and the Carre-Lamadons. In one of those oval dishes, the lids of which
are decorated with an earthenware hare, by way of showing that a game pie
lies within, was a succulent delicacy consisting of the brown flesh of
the game larded with streaks of bacon and flavored with other meats
chopped fine. A solid wedge of Gruyere cheese, which had been wrapped in
a newspaper, bore the imprint: "Items of News," on its rich, oily
surface.

The two good sisters brought to light a hunk of sausage smelling strongly
of garlic; and Cornudet, plunging both hands at once into the capacious
pockets of his loose overcoat, produced from one four hard-boiled eggs
and from the other a crust of bread. He removed the shells, threw them
into the straw beneath his feet, and began to devour the eggs, letting
morsels of the bright yellow yolk fall in his mighty beard, where they
looked like stars.

Boule de Suif, in the haste and confusion of her departure, had not
thought of anything, and, stifling with rage, she watched all these
people placidly eating. At first, ill-suppressed wrath shook her whole
person, and she opened her lips to shriek the truth at them, to overwhelm
them with a volley of insults; but she could not utter a word, so choked
was she with indignation.

No one looked at her, no one thought of her. She felt herself swallowed
up in the scorn of these virtuous creatures, who had first sacrificed,
then rejected her as a thing useless and unclean.