Gervaise had been calm and smiling all day, but she had quietly watched her husband with the Lorilleuxs. She thought Coupeau was afraid of his sister--cowardly, in fact. The evening previous he had said he did not care a sou for their opinion on any subject and that they had the tongues of vipers, but now he was with them, he was like a whipped hound, hung on their words and anticipated their wishes. This troubled his wife, for it augured ill, she thought, for their future happiness. "We won't wait any longer for Mes-Bottes," cried Coupeau. "We are all here but him, and his scent is good! Surely he can't be waiting for us still at St-Denis!" The guests, in good spirits once more, took their seats with a great clatter of chairs. Gervaise was between Lorilleux and Madinier, and Coupeau between Mme Fauconnier and his sister Mme Lorilleux. The others seated themselves. "No one has asked a blessing," said Boche as the ladies pulled the tablecloth well over their skirts to protect them from spots. But Mme Lorilleux frowned at this poor jest. The vermicelli soup, which was cold and greasy, was eaten with noisy haste. Two _garcons_ served them, wearing aprons of a very doubtful white and greasy vests. Through the four windows, open on the courtyard and its acacias, streamed the light, soft and warm, after the storm. The trees, bathed in the setting sun, imparted a cool, green tinge to the dingy room, and the shadows of the waving branches and quivering leaves danced over the cloth. There were two fly-specked mirrors at either end of the room, which indefinitely lengthened the table spread with thick china. Every time the _garcons_ opened the door into the kitchen there came a strong smell of burning fat. "Don't let us all talk at once!" said Boche as a dead silence fell on the room, broken by the abrupt entrance of Mes-Bottes. "You are nice people!" he exclaimed. "I have been waiting for you until I am wet through and have a fishpond in each pocket." This struck the circle as the height of wit, and they all laughed while he ordered the _garcon_ to and fro. He devoured three plates of soup and enormous slices of bread. The head of the establishment came and looked in in considerable anxiety; a laugh ran around the room. Mes-Bottes recalled to their memories a day when he had eaten twelve hard-boiled eggs and drunk twelve glasses of wine while the clock was striking twelve. There was a brief silence. A waiter placed on the table a rabbit stew in a deep dish. Coupeau turned round. "Say, boy, is that a gutter rabbit? It mews still." And the low mewing of a cat seemed, indeed, to come from the dish. This delicate joke was perpetrated by Coupeau in the throat, without the smallest movement of his lips. This feat always met with such success that he never ordered a meal anywhere without a rabbit stew. The ladies wiped their eyes with their napkins because they laughed so much.