couple of steps, drawing herself up to her full height, and
yelling louder than ever:

"Here! Come a bit nearer, just to see how I'll settle you! Don't you
come annoying us here. Do I even know her, the hussy? If she'd wetted
me, I'd have pretty soon shown her battle, as you'd have seen. Let her
just say what I've ever done to her. Speak, you vixen; what's been done
to you?"

"Don't talk so much," stammered Gervaise. "You know well enough. Some
one saw my husband last night. And shut up, because if you don't I'll
most certainly strangle you."

"Her husband! That's a good one! As if cripples like her had husbands!
If he's left you it's not my fault. Surely you don't think I've stolen
him, do you? He was much too good for you and you made him sick. Did
you keep him on a leash? Has anyone here seen her husband? There's a
reward."

The laughter burst forth again. Gervaise contented herself with
continually murmuring in a low tone of voice:

"You know well enough, you know well enough. It's your sister. I'll
strangle her--your sister."

"Yes, go and try it on with my sister," resumed Virginie sneeringly.
"Ah! it's my sister! That's very likely. My sister looks a trifle
different to you; but what's that to me? Can't one come and wash one's
clothes in peace now? Just dry up, d'ye hear, because I've had enough of
it!"

But it was she who returned to the attack, after giving five or six
strokes with her beetle, intoxicated by the insults she had been giving
utterance to, and worked up into a passion. She left off and recommenced
again, speaking in this way three times:

"Well, yes! it's my sister. There now, does that satisfy you? They adore
each other. You should just see them bill and coo! And he's left you
with your children. Those pretty kids with scabs all over their faces!
You got one of them from a gendarme, didn't you? And you let three
others die because you didn't want to pay excess baggage on your
journey. It's your Lantier who told us that. Ah! he's been telling some
fine things; he'd had enough of you!"

"You dirty jade! You dirty jade! You dirty jade!" yelled Gervaise,
beside herself, and again seized with a furious trembling. She turned
round, looking once more about the ground; and only observing the little
tub, she seized hold of it by the legs, and flung the whole of the
bluing at Virginie's face.

"The beast! She's spoilt my dress!" cried the latter, whose shoulder
was sopping wet and whose left