At last, at the end of ten years of idleness, Antoine considered that he had been working too hard.  His constant dream was to devise some expedient by which he might live at his ease without having to do anything.  His idleness would never have rested content with bread and water; he was not like certain lazy persons who are willing to put up with hunger provided they can keep their hands in their pockets.  He liked good feeding and nothing to do.  He talked at one time of taking a situation as servant in some nobleman’s house in the Saint-Marc quarter.  But one of his friends, a groom, frightened him by describing the exacting ways of his masters.  Finally Macquart, sick of his baskets, and seeing the time approach when he would be compelled to purchase the requisite osier, was on the point of selling himself as an army substitute and resuming his military life, which he preferred a thousand times to that of an artisan, when he made the acquaintance of a woman, an acquaintance which modified his plans.

Josephine Gavaudan, who was known throughout the town by the familiar diminutive of Fine, was a tall, strapping wench of about thirty.  With a square face of masculine proportions, and a few terribly long hairs about her chin and lips, she was cited as a doughty woman, one who could make the weight of her fist felt.  Her broad shoulders and huge arms consequently inspired the town urchins with marvellous respect; and they did not even dare to smile at her moustache.  Notwithstanding all this, Fine had a faint voice, weak and clear like that of a child.  Those who were acquainted with her asserted that she was as gentle as a lamb, in spite of her formidable appearance.  As she was very hard-working, she might have put some money aside if she had not had a partiality for liqueurs.  She adored aniseed, and very often had to be carried home on Sunday evenings.

On week days she would toil with the stubbornness of an animal.  She had three or four different occupations; she sold fruit or boiled chestnuts in the market, according to the season; went out charring for a few well-to-do people; washed up plates and dishes at houses when parties were given, and employed her spare time in mending old chairs.  She was more particularly known in the town as a chair-mender.  In the South large numbers of straw-bottomed chairs are used.

Antoine Macquart formed an acquaintance with Fine at the market.  When he went to sell his baskets in the winter he would stand beside the stove on which she cooled her chestnuts and warm himself.  He was astonished at her courage, he who was frightened of the least work.  By degrees he discerned, beneath the apparent roughness of this strapping creature, signs of timidity and kindliness.  He frequently saw her give handfuls of chestnuts to the ragged urchins who stood in ecstasy round her smoking pot.  At other times, when the market inspector hustled her, she very nearly began to cry, apparently forgetting