table waiting for Olivier Michaud and his wife who always arrived late.
When the party was complete, Madame Raquin poured out the tea. Camille
emptied the box of dominoes on the oilcloth table cover, and everyone
became deeply interested in their hands. Henceforth nothing could be
heard but the jingle of dominoes. At the end of each game, the players
quarrelled for two or three minutes, then mournful silence was resumed,
broken by the sharp clanks of the dominoes.

Therese played with an indifference that irritated Camille. She took
Francois, the great tabby cat that Madame Raquin had brought from
Vernon, on her lap, caressing it with one hand, whilst she placed her
dominoes with the other. These Thursday evenings were a torture to her.
Frequently she complained of being unwell, of a bad headache, so as not
to play, and remain there doing nothing, and half asleep. An elbow on
the table, her cheek resting on the palm of her hand, she watched the
guests of her aunt and husband through a sort of yellow, smoky mist
coming from the lamp. All these faces exasperated her. She looked from
one to the other in profound disgust and secret irritation.

Old Michaud exhibited a pasty countenance, spotted with red blotches,
one of those death-like faces of an old man fallen into second
childhood; Grivet had the narrow visage, the round eyes, the thin lips
of an idiot. Olivier, whose bones were piercing his cheeks, gravely
carried a stiff, insignificant head on a ridiculous body; as to Suzanne,
the wife of Olivier, she was quite pale, with expressionless eyes, white
lips, and a soft face. And Therese could not find one human being, not
one living being among these grotesque and sinister creatures, with whom
she was shut up; sometimes she had hallucinations, she imagined herself
buried at the bottom of a tomb, in company with mechanical corpses, who,
when the strings were pulled, moved their heads, and agitated their