There she would meet Pauline, the Boches' daughter, and Victor, the son of Gervaise's old employer--a big booby of ten who delighted in playing with very little girls.

Madame Fauconnier who had not quarreled with the Coupeaus would herself send her son.

In the house, too, there was an extraordinary swarm of brats, flights of children who rolled down the four staircases at all hours of the day and alighted on the pavement of the courtyard like troops of noisy pillaging sparrows.

Madame Gaudron was responsible for nine of them, all with uncombed hair, runny noses, hand-me-down clothes, saggy stockings and ripped jackets.

Another woman on the sixth floor had seven of them.