In the middle of the room, on the tile floor, lay Madame Bijard, all bloody, her skirts, still soaked with the water of the wash-house, clinging to her thighs, her hair straggling in disorder.

She was breathing heavily, with a rattle in her throat, as she muttered prolonged ohs! each time she received a blow from the heel of Bijard's boot.

He had knocked her down with his fists, and now he stamped upon her.
"Ah, strumpet! Ah, strumpet! Ah strumpet!" grunted he in a choking voice, accompanying each blow with the word, taking a delight in repeating it, and striking all the harder the more he found his voice failing him.
Then when he could no longer speak, he madly continued to kick with a dull sound, rigid in his ragged blue blouse and overalls, his face turned purple beneath his dirty beard, and his bald forehead streaked with big red blotches.

The neighbors on the landing related that he was beating her because she had refused him twenty sous that morning.
Boche's voice was heard at the foot of the staircase.

He was calling Madame Boche, saying: "Come down; let them kill each other, it'll be so much scum the less." Meanwhile, Pere Bru had followed Gervaise into the room.