They were already
turning into a passage, when Beauchene, seeing the door of the women's
workshop open, determined to pass that way, so that he might give his
customary look around. It was a long, spacious place, where the
polishers, in smocks of black serge, sat in double rows polishing and
grinding their pieces at little work-boards. Nearly all of them were
young, a few were pretty, but most had low and common faces. An animal
odor and a stench of rancid oil pervaded the place.
The regulations required perfect silence there during work. Yet all the
girls were gossiping. As soon, however, as the master's approach was
signalled the chatter abruptly ceased. There was but one girl who, having
her head turned, and thus seeing nothing of Beauchene, went on furiously
abusing a companion, with whom she had previously started a dispute. She
and the other were sisters, and, as it happened, daughters of old
Moineaud. Euphrasie, the younger one, she who was shouting, was a skinny
creature of seventeen, light-haired, with a long, lean, pointed face,
uncomely and malignant; whereas the elder, Norine, barely nineteen, was a
pretty girl, a blonde like her sister, but having a milky skin, and
withal plump and sturdy, showing real shoulders, arms, and hips, and one
of those bright sunshiny faces, with wild hair and black eyes, all the
freshness of the Parisian hussy, aglow with the fleeting charm of youth.
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