“Look here, Madame Coupeau!” cried Virginie, who was watching the scrubbing with compressed lips, “you have left some dirt over there in the corner. Scrub that rather better please.”
Gervaise obeyed. She returned to the corner and began to scrub again. She bent double on her knees in the midst of the dirty water, with her shoulders protruding, her arms stiff and purple with cold. Her old skirt, fairly soaked, stuck to her figure. And there on the floor she looked a dirty, ill-combed drab, the rents in her jacket showing her puffy form, her fat, flabby flesh which heaved, swayed and floundered about as she went about her work; and all the while she perspired to such a point that from her moist face big drops of sweat fell on to the floor.
“The more elbow grease one uses, the more it shines,” said Lantier, sententiously, with his mouth full of peppermint drops.
Virginie, who sat back with the demeanor of a princess, her eyes partly open, was still watching the scrubbing, and indulging in remarks. “A little more on the right there. Take care of the wainscot. You know I was not very well pleased last Saturday. There were some stains left.”
And both together, the hatter and the groceress assumed a more important air, as if they had been on a throne whilst Gervaise dragged herself through the black mud at their feet. Virginie must have enjoyed herself, for a yellowish flame darted from her cat’s eyes, and she looked at Lantier with an insidious smile. At last she was revenged for that hiding she had received at the wash-house, and which she had never forgotten.
Whenever Gervaise ceased scrubbing, a sound of sawing could be heard from the back room. Through the open doorway, Poisson’s profile stood out against the pale light of the courtyard. He was off duty that day and was profiting by his leisure time to indulge in his mania for making little boxes. He was seated at a table and was cutting out arabesques in a cigar box with extraordinary care.
“Say, Badingue!” cried Lantier, who had given him this surname again, out of friendship. “I shall want that box of yours as a present for a young lady.”
Virginie gave him a pinch and he reached under the counter to run his fingers like a creeping mouse up her leg.
“Quite so,” said the policeman. “I was working for you, Auguste, in view of presenting you with a token of friendship.”
“Ah, if that’s the case, I’ll keep your little memento!” rejoined Lantier with a laugh. “I’ll hang it round my neck with a ribbon.”