For a quarter of an hour, the Dutch oven had rebounded over the tile floor with the noise of an old saucepan.

Nana was now nursing little Victor, who had a goose-bone in his throat.

She pushed her fingers under his chin, and made him swallow big lumps of sugar by way of a remedy.

That did not prevent her keeping an eye on the big table.
At every minute she came and asked for wine, bread, or meat, for Etienne and Pauline, she said.
"Here! Burst!" her mother would say to her.

"Perhaps you'll leave us in peace now!" The children were scarcely able to swallow any longer, but they continued to eat all the same, banging their forks down on the table to the tune of a canticle, in order to excite themselves.
In the midst of the noise, however, a conversation was going on between Pere Bru and mother Coupeau.