Was that lousy Bourguignon going to stop them from having a drink?
Weren't they free any more?
He could well wait another five minutes.

Lantier came in to share in the round and they stood together at the counter.

My-Boots, with his smock black with dirt and his cap flattened on his head had recently been proclaimed king of pigs and drunks after he had eaten a salad of live beetles and chewed a piece of a dead cat.
"Say there, old Borgia," he called to Pere Colombe, "give us some of your yellow stuff, first class mule's wine." And when Pere Colombe, pale and quiet in his blue-knitted waistcoat, had filled the four glasses, these gentlemen tossed them off, so as not to let the liquor get flat.
"That does some good when it goes down," murmured Bibi-the-Smoker.
The comic My-Boots had a story to tell.

He was so drunk on the Friday that his comrades had stuck his pipe in his mouth with a handful of plaster.

Anyone else would have died of it; he merely strutted about and puffed out his chest.
"Do you gentlemen require anything more ?" asked Pere Colombe in his oily voice.
"Yes, fill us up again," said Lantier.