make
a fool of her perhaps! It was all very well for ladies to pretend to be
unable to move. When one was not rich one had no time for that sort of
thing. Three days after her confinement she was ironing petticoats at
Madame Fauconnier's, banging her irons and all in a perspiration from
the great heat of the stove.

On the Saturday evening, Madame Lorilleux brought her presents for her
godchild--a cup that cost thirty-five sous, and a christening dress,
plaited and trimmed with some cheap lace, which she had got for six
francs, because it was slightly soiled. On the morrow, Lorilleux, as
godfather, gave the mother six pounds of sugar. They certainly did
things properly! At the baptism supper which took place at the Coupeaus
that evening, they did not come empty-handed. Lorilleux carried a bottle
of fine wine under each arm and his wife brought a large custard pie
from a famous pastry shop on Chaussee Clignancourt. But the Lorilleuxs
made sure that the entire neighborhood knew they had spent twenty
francs. As soon as Gervaise learned of their gossiping, furious, she
stopped giving them credit for generosity.

It was at the christening feast that the Coupeaus ended by becoming
intimately acquainted with their neighbors on the opposite side of
the landing. The other lodging in the little house was occupied by two
persons, mother and son, the Goujets as they were called. Until then the
two families had merely nodded to each other on the stairs and in the
street, nothing more; the Coupeaus thought their neighbors seemed rather
bearish. Then the mother, having carried up a pail of water for Gervaise
on the morrow of her confinement, the latter had thought it the proper
thing to invite them to the feast, more especially as she considered
them very respectable people. And naturally, they there became well
acquainted with each other.

The Goujets came from the Departement du Nord. The mother mended lace;
the son, a blacksmith, worked at an iron bolt factory. They had lived
in their lodging for five years. Behind the quiet peacefulness of their
life, a long standing sorrow was hidden. Goujet the father, one day when
furiously drunk at Lille, had beaten a comrade to death with an iron bar
and had afterwards strangled himself in prison with his handkerchief.
The widow and child, who had come to Paris after their misfortune,
always felt the tragedy hanging over their heads, and atoned for it by
a strict honesty and an unvarying g