Keith [on semi hiatus]’s Reviews > The Earth > Status Update

As for me, it's my business, isn't it? The day he decides to strangle me in one of these fits of rage he's been having recently, then I'll see if the good Lord will forgive me.

'We'll be in the money now that God's doing the work for us. Yes, damn it, this sort of day, when you just sit doing nothing, is worth all those days working like a black and getting nothing for it.'

She was slipping down and leaning against his shoulder. And so The stayed for another hour, with all kinds of ideas running vaguely through his head. Lustful thoughts came into his mind but not for long. She was too young and it seemed to him that, if he waited, she alone would grow older and come closer to him.

But he livened up when she told him how, for fun, she had once gone to have a look at the brothel at the junction of the Rue Davignes and the Rue Loiseau in Châteaudun, a ramshackle little house with closed, rotting shutters.

And as there were not enough people for dancing, the men preferred to go on drinking spirits and smoking, tapping out the dottles of their pipes onto the tablecloth.

...their sides with laughter.
'You'd better drink a lot,' Fanny said to Delhomme, with a loud laugh, forgetting her usual reserve.

When it was quite dark, they lit six tallow candles. They had been eating since three and they finally launched onto the dessert at about ten o'clock. From then on they drank coffee, not one or two cups but big bowlfuls of it all the time. The jokes became more pointed: coffee gives you energy, just the thing to liven men up who sleep too soundly; and each time one of the married guests took a gulp, everyone held...

The men, Buteau, Jean who had been best man, old Fouan and Delhomme, together with his son Nénesse, all in tail-coats and black trousers with tall silk hats, which never once left their heads, were playing cork penny in the courtyard. Monsieur Charles arrived alone, having taken Élodie back to her school in Châteaudun the day before; and without joining in, he watched the game and made some judicious comments.