"No, no, I will not. It would injure my house!" she said over and over again. Both women lay on the ground. Suddenly Virginie struggled up to her knees. She had got possession of one of the beaters, which she brandished. Her voice was hoarse and low as she muttered: "This will be as good for you as for your dirty linen!" Gervaise, in her turn, snatched another beater, which she held like a club. Her voice also was hoarse and low. "I will beat your skin," she muttered, "as I would my coarse towels." They knelt in front of each other in utter silence for at least a minute, with hair streaming, eyes glaring and distended nostrils. They each drew a long breath. Gervaise struck the first blow with her beater full on the shoulders of her adversary and then threw herself over on the side to escape Virginie's weapon, which touched her on the hip. Thus started, they struck each other as laundresses strike their linen, in measured cadence. The women about them ceased to laugh; many went away, saying they were faint. Those who remained watched the scene with a cruel light in their eyes. Mme Boche had taken Claude and Etienne to the other end of the room, whence came the dreary sound of their sobs which were heard through the dull blows of the beaters. Suddenly Gervaise uttered a shriek. Virginie had struck her just above the elbow on her bare arm, and the flesh began to swell at once. She rushed at Virginie; her face was so terrible that the spectators thought she meant to kill her. "Enough! Enough!" they cried. With almost superhuman strength she seized Virginie by the waist, bent her forward with her face to the brick floor and, notwithstanding her struggles, lifted her skirts and showed the white and naked skin. Then she brought her beater down as she had formerly done at Plassans under the trees on the riverside, where her employer had washed the linen of the garrison. Each blow of the beater fell on the soft flesh with a dull thud, leaving a scarlet mark. "Oh! Oh!" murmured Charles with his eyes nearly starting from his head. The women were laughing again by this time, but soon the cry began again of "Enough! Enough!" Gervaise did not even hear. She seemed entirely absorbed, as if she were fulfilling an appointed task, and she talked with strange, wild gaiety, recalling one of the rhymes of her childhood: "Pan! Pan! Margot au lavoir, Pan! Pan! a coups de battoir; Pan! Pan! va laver son coeur, Pan! Pan! tout noir de douleur "Take that for yourself and that for your sister and this for Lantier. And now I shall begin all over again. That is for Lantier--that for your sister--and this for yourself! "Pan! Pan! Margot au lavoir! Pan! Pan! a coups de battoir."