CHAPTER II
THE room remained shut up and the shutters had allowed gradual streaks of daylight to form a fan on the ceiling. The confined air stupefied them so that they continued their night’s slumber: Lénore and Henri in each other’s arms, Alzire with her head back, lying on her hump; while Father Bonnemort, having the bed of Zacharie and Jeanlin to himself, snored with open mouth. No sound came from the closet where Maheude had gone to sleep again while suckling Estelle, her breast hanging to one side, the child lying across her belly, overcome also and stifling in the soft flesh of the bosom.
The clock below struck six. Along the front of the settlement one heard the sound of doors, then the clatter of sabots along the pavements; the screening women were going to the pit. And silence again fell until seven o’clock. Then the shutters were drawn back, yawns and coughs were heard through the walls. For a long time a coffee-mill scraped, but no one awoke in the room.
Suddenly a sound of blows and shouts, far away, made Alzire sit up. She was conscious of the time, and ran barefooted to shake her mother.
“Mother, mother, it is late! You have to go out. Take care, you are crushing Estelle.”
And she saved the child, half-stifled beneath the enormous mass of the breasts.
“Good gracious!” stammered Maheude, rubbing her eyes, “I'm so knocked up I could sleep all day. Dress Lénore and Henri, I’ll take them with me; and you can take care of Estelle; I don’t want to drag her along for fear of hurting her, this dog’s weather.”
She hastily washed herself and put on an old blue skirt, her cleanest, and another garment of grey wool in which she had made two patches the evening before.
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