In a few weeks' time she had successively entered the service of eight washerwomen; she only lasted two or three days in each place before she got the sack, so badly did she iron the things entrusted to her, careless and dirty, her mind failing to such a point that she quite forgot her own craft.

At last realizing her own incapacity she abandoned ironing; and went out washing by the day at the wash-house in the Rue Neuve, where she still jogged on, floundering about in the water, fighting with filth, reduced to the roughest but simplest work, a bit lower on the down-hill slopes.

The wash-house scarcely beautified her.
A real mud-splashed dog when she came out of it, soaked and showing her blue skin.

At the same time she grew stouter and stouter, despite her frequent dances before the empty sideboard, and her leg became so crooked that she could no longer walk beside anyone without the risk of knocking him over, so great indeed was her limp.
Naturally enough when a woman falls to this point all her pride leaves her.

Gervaise had divested herself of all her old self-respect, coquetry and need of sentiment, propriety and politeness.