Coupeau listened quietly, saying only at intervals: "You are hurting my feelings. Yes, hurting my feelings." "Yes, I see that," she answered, "and I am really very sorry for you. If I had any idea of leading a different life from that which I follow today it might as well be with you as with another. You have the look of a good-natured man. But what is the use? I have now been with Madame Fauconnier for a fortnight. The children are going to school, and I am very happy, for I have plenty to do. Don't you see, therefore, that it is best for us to remain as we are?" And she stooped to pick up her basket. "You are keeping me here to talk," she said, "and they are waiting for me at my employer's. You will find some other woman, Monsieur Coupeau, far prettier than I, who will not have two children to bring up!" He looked at the clock and made her sit down again. "Wait!" he cried. "It is still thirty-five minutes of eleven. I have twenty-five minutes still, and don't be afraid of my familiarity, for the table is between us! Do you dislike me so very much that you can't stay and talk with me for five minutes?" She put down her basket, unwilling to seem disobliging, and they talked for some time in a friendly sort of way. She had breakfasted before she left home, and he had swallowed his soup in the greatest haste and laid in wait for her as she came out. Gervaise, as she listened to him, watched from the windows--between the bottles of brandied fruit--the movement of the crowd in the street, which at this hour--that of the Parisian breakfast--was unusually lively. Workmen hurried into the baker's and, coming out with a loaf under their arms, they went into the Veau a Deux Tetes, three doors higher up, to breakfast at six sous. Next the baker's was a shop where fried potatoes and mussels with parsley were sold. A constant succession of shopgirls carried off paper parcels of fried potatoes and cups filled with mussels, and others bought bunches of radishes. When Gervaise leaned a little more toward the window she saw still another shop, also crowded, from which issued a steady stream of children holding in their hands, wrapped in paper, a breaded cutlet or a sausage, still warm. A group formed around the door of the Assommoir. "Say, Bibi-la-Grillade," asked a voice, "will you stand a drink all around?" Five workmen went in, and the same voice said: "Father Colombe, be honest now. Give us honest glasses, and no nutshells, if you please." Presently three more workmen entered together, and finally a crowd of blouses passed in between the dusty oleanders. "You have no business to ask such questions," said Gervaise to Coupeau; "of course I loved him. But after the manner in which he deserted me--" They were speaking of Lantier. Gervaise had never seen him again; she supposed him to be living with Virginie's sister, with a friend who was about to start a manufactory for hats.