while the clock was striking twelve! There are not many who can do that.
And Mademoiselle Remanjou, deeply moved, watched My-Boots chew whilst
Monsieur Madinier, seeking for a word to express his almost respectful
astonishment, declared that such a capacity was extraordinary.

There was a brief silence. A waiter had just placed on the table a
ragout of rabbits in a vast dish as deep as a salad-bowl. Coupeau, who
liked fun, started another joke.

"I say, waiter, that rabbit's from the housetops. It still mews."

And in fact, a faint mew perfectly imitated seemed to issue from the
dish. It was Coupeau who did that with his throat, without opening his
lips; a talent which at all parties, met with decided success, so much
so that he never ordered a dinner abroad without having a rabbit ragout.
After that he purred. The ladies pressed their napkins to their mouths
to try and stop their laughter. Madame Fauconnier asked for a head,
she only liked that part. Mademoiselle Remanjou had a weakness for the
slices of bacon. And as Boche said he preferred the little onions
when they were nicely broiled, Madame Lerat screwed up her lips, and
murmured:

"I can understand that."

She was a dried up stick, living the cloistered life of a hard-working
woman imprisoned within her daily routine, who had never had a man stick
his nose into her room since the death of her husband; yet she had
an obsession with double meanings and indecent allusions that were
sometimes so far off the mark that only she understood them.