her petticoats. She would hesitate a moment, look at her neighbors, and
then quietly sit upright again. All faces were pale and drawn. Loiseau
declared he would give a thousand francs for a knuckle of ham. His wife
made an involuntary and quickly checked gesture of protest. It always
hurt her to hear of money being squandered, and she could not even
understand jokes on such a subject.

"As a matter of fact, I don't feel well," said the count. "Why did I not
think of bringing provisions?" Each one reproached himself in similar
fashion.

Cornudet, however, had a bottle of rum, which he offered to his
neighbors. They all coldly refused except Loiseau, who took a sip, and
returned the bottle with thanks, saying: "That's good stuff; it warms
one up, and cheats the appetite." The alcohol put him in good humor,
and he proposed they should do as the sailors did in the song: eat
the fattest of the passengers. This indirect allusion to Boule de Suif
shocked the respectable members of the party. No one replied; only
Cornudet smiled. The two good sisters had ceased to mumble their rosary,
and, with hands enfolded in their wide sleeves, sat motionless, their
eyes steadfastly cast down, doubtless offering up as a sacrifice to
Heaven the suffering it had sent them.

At last, at three o'clock, as they were in the midst of an apparently
limitless plain, with not a single village in sight, Boule de Suif
stooped quickly, and drew from underneath the seat a large basket
covered with a white napkin.

From this she extracted first of all a small earthenware plate and a
silver drinking cup, then an enormous dish containing two whole chickens
cut into joints and imbedded in jelly. The basket was seen to contain
other good things: pies, fruit, dainties of all sorts-provisions, in
fine, for a three days' journey, rendering their owner independent of
wayside inns. The necks of four bottles protruded from among the food.
She took a chicken wing, and began to eat it daintily, together with one
of those rolls called in Normandy "Regence."

All looks were directed toward her. An odor of food filled the air,
causing nostrils to dilate, mouths to water, and jaws to contract
painfully. The scorn of the ladies for this disreputable female grew
positively ferocious; they would have liked to kill her, or throw, her
and her drinking cup, her basket, and her provisions, out of the coach
into the snow of the road below.

But Loiseau's gaze was fixed