He ended by losing his
temper; he insisted on having a loaf placed on the table beside him. The
landlord, very anxious, came for a moment and looked in at the door. The
party, which was expecting him, again wriggled with laughter. It seemed
to upset the caterer. What a rum card he was that My-Boots! One day he
had eaten a dozen hard-boiled eggs and drank a dozen glasses of wine
while the clock was striking twelve! There are not many who can do that.
And Mademoiselle Remanjou, deeply moved, watched My-Boots chew whilst
Monsieur Madinier, seeking for a word to express his almost respectful
astonishment, declared that such a capacity was extraordinary.

There was a brief silence. A waiter had just placed on the table a
ragout of rabbits in a vast dish as deep as a salad-bowl. Coupeau, who
liked fun, started another joke.

"I say, waiter, that rabbit's from the housetops. It still mews."

And in fact, a faint mew perfectly imitated seemed to issue from the
dish. It was Coupeau who did that with his throat, without opening his
lips; a talent which at all parties, met with decided success, so much
so that he never ordered a dinner abroad without having a rabbit ragout.
After that he purred. The ladies pressed their napkins to their mouths
to try and stop their laughter. Madame Fauconnier asked for a head,
she only liked that part. Mademoiselle Remanjou had a weakness for the
slices of bacon. And as Boche said he preferred the little onions
when they were nicely broiled, Madame Lerat screwed up her lips, and
murmured:

"I can understand that."

She was a dried up stick, living the cloistered life of a hard-working
woman imprisoned within her daily routine, who had never had a man stick
his nose into her room since the death of her husband; yet she had
an obsession with double meanings and indecent allusions that were
sometimes so far off the mark that only she understood them.

As Boche leaned toward her and, in a whisper, asked for an explanation,
she resumed:

"Little onions, why of course. That's quite enough, I think."

The general conversation was becoming grave. Each one was talking of his
trade. Monsieur Madinier raved about the cardboard business. There were
some real artists. For an example, he mentioned Christmas gift boxes, of
which he'd seen samples that were marvels of splendor.

Lorilleux sneered at this; he was extremely vain because of working with
gold, feeling that it gave a sort of sheen to his fin