n called each
other names and brandished their fists threateningly. Three loud slaps
rang out.

Madame Boche, meanwhile, was trying to discover the wash-house boy.

"Charles! Charles! Wherever has he got to?"

And she found him in the front rank, looking on with his arms folded.
He was a big fellow, with an enormous neck. He was laughing and enjoying
the sight of the skin which the two women displayed. The little blonde
was as fat as a quail. It would be fun if her chemise burst open.

"Why," murmured he, blinking his eye, "she's got a strawberry birthmark
under her arm."

"What! You're there!" cried Madame Boche, as she caught sight of him.
"Just come and help us separate them. You can easily separate them, you
can!"

"Oh, no! thank you, not if I know it," said he coolly. "To get my eye
scratched like I did the other day, I suppose! I'm not here for that
sort of thing; I have enough to do without that. Don't be afraid, a
little bleeding does 'em good; it'll soften 'em."

The concierge then talked of fetching the police; but the mistress of
the wash-house, the delicate young woman with the red, inflamed eyes,
would not allow her to do this. She kept saying:

"No, no, I won't; it'll compromise my establishment."

The struggle on the ground continued. All on a sudden, Virginie raised
herself up on her knees. She had just gotten hold of a beetle and held
it on high. She had a rattle in her throat and in an altered voice, she
exclaimed,

"Here's something that'll settle you! Get your dirty linen ready!"

Gervaise quickly thrust out her hand, and also seized a beetle, and held
it up like a club; and she too spoke in a choking voice,

"Ah! you want to wash. Let me get hold of your skin that I may beat it
into dish-cloths!"

For a moment they remained there, on their knees, menacing each other.
Their hair all over their faces, their breasts heaving, muddy, swelling
with rage, they watched one another, as they waited and took breath.
Gervaise gave the first blow. Her beetle glided off Virginie's shoulder,
and she at once threw herself on one side to avoid the latter's beetle,
which grazed her hip. Then, warming to their work they struck at each
other like washerwomen beating clothes, roughly, and in time. Whenever
there was a hit, the sound was deadened, so that one might have thought
it a blow in a tub full of water. The other women around them no longer
laughed. Several had gone off saying that it quite upset