“I must ask your pardon for troubling you about the sixty francs,” at length murmured the laundress. “I was half crazy, I thought of you—”
“Oh! don’t mention it; you’re fully forgiven,” interrupted the blacksmith. “And you know, I am quite at your service if any misfortune should overtake you. But don’t say anything to mamma, because she has her ideas, and I don’t wish to cause her annoyance.”
She gazed at him. He seemed to her such a good man, and sad-looking, and so handsome. She was on the verge of accepting his former proposal, to go away with him and find happiness together somewhere else. Then an evil thought came to her. It was the idea of borrowing the six months’ back rent from him.
She trembled and resumed in a caressing tone of voice:
“We’re still friends, aren’t we?”
He shook his head as he answered:
“Yes, we’ll always be friends. It’s just that, you know, all is over between us.”
And he went off with long strides, leaving Gervaise bewildered, listening to his last words which rang in her ears with the clang of a big bell. On entering the wine shop, she seemed to hear a hollow voice within her which said, “All is over, well! All is over; there is nothing more for me to do if all is over!” Sitting down, she swallowed a mouthful of bread and cheese, and emptied a glass full of wine which she found before her.
The wine shop was a single, long room with a low ceiling occupied by two large tables on which loaves of bread, large chunks of Brie cheese and bottles of wine were set out. They ate informally, without a tablecloth. Near the stove at the back the undertaker’s helpers were finishing their lunch.
“Mon Dieu!” exclaimed Monsieur Madinier, “we each have our time. The old folks make room for the young ones. Your lodging will seem very empty to you now when you go home.”