That same evening Coupeau brought in a mason

That same evening Coupeau brought in a mason, a painter and a carpenter,homepage, all friends and boon companions of his, who would do this little job at night, after their day's work was over.

The cutting of the door, the painting and the cleaning would come to about one hundred francs, and Coupeau agreed to pay them as fast as his tenant paid him.

The next question was how to furnish the room? Gervaise left Mamma Coupeau's wardrobe in it. She added a table and two chairs from her own room. She was compelled to buy a bed and dressing table and divers other things, which amounted to one hundred and thirty francs. This she must pay for ten francs each month. So that for nearly a year they could derive no benefit from their new lodger,mont blanc pens.

It was early in June that Lantier took possession of his new quarters,fake uggs. Coupeau had offered the night before to help him with his trunk in order to avoid the thirty sous for a fiacre. But the other seemed embarrassed and said his trunk was heavy, and it seemed as if he preferred to keep it a secret even now where he resided.

He came about three o'clock. Coupeau was not there, and Gervaise, standing at her shop door, turned white as she recognized the trunk on the fiacre. It was their old one with which they had traveled from Plassans. Now it was banged and battered and strapped with cords.

She saw it brought in as she had often seen it in her dreams, and she vaguely wondered if it were the same fiacre which had taken him and Adele away. Boche welcomed Lantier cordially,link. Gervaise stood by in silent bewilderment, watching them place the trunk in her lodger's room. Then hardly knowing what she said, she murmured:

"We must take a glass of wine together----"

Lantier, who was busy untying the cords on his trunk, did not look up, and she added:

"You will join us, Monsieur Boche!"

And she went for some wine and glasses. At that moment she caught sight of Poisson passing the door. She gave him a nod and a wink which he perfectly understood: it meant, when he was on duty, that he was offered a glass of wine. He went round by the courtyard in order not to be seen. Lantier never saw him without some joke in regard to his political convictions, which, however, had not prevented the men from becoming excellent friends.

To one of these jests Boche now replied:

"Did you know," he said, "that when the emperor was in London he was a policeman, and his special duty was to carry all the intoxicated women to the station house?"

Gervaise had filled three glasses on the table. She did not care for any wine; she was sick at heart as she stood looking at Lantier kneeling on the floor by the side of the trunk. She was wild to know what it contained. She remembered that in one corner was a pile of stockings, a shirt or two and an old hat. Were those things still there? Was she to be confronted with those tattered relics of the past?

Lantier did not lift the lid, however; he rose and, going to the table, held his glass high in his hands.

"To your health, madame!" he said.