Meanwhile, at one side the drying machines were hard at work; within their cast-iron cylinders bundles of laundry were being wrung dry by the centrifugal force of the steam engine, which was still puffing, steaming, jolting the wash-house with the ceaseless labor of its iron limbs.
When Gervaise turned into the entry of the Hotel Boncoeur, her tears again mastered her.

It was a dark, narrow passage, with a gutter for the dirty water running alongside the wall; and the stench which she again encountered there caused her to think of the fortnight she had passed in the place with Lantier--a fortnight of misery and quarrels, the recollection of which was now a bitter regret.

It seemed to bring her abandonment home to her.
Upstairs the room was bare, in spite of the sunshine which entered through the open window.

That blaze of light, that kind of dancing golden dust, exposed the lamentable condition of the blackened ceiling, and of the walls half denuded of paper, all the more.

The only thing left hanging in the room was a woman's small neckerchief, twisted like a piece of string.