L'Assommoir: Chapter 10

Chapter 10

DISASTERS AND CHANGES

The new lodging of the Coupeaus was next that of the Bijards. Almost
opposite their door was a closet under the stairs which went up to
the roof--a mere hole without light or ventilation, where Father Bru
slept.

A chamber and a small room, about as large as one's hand, were all the
Coupeaus had now. Nana's little bed stood in the small room, the door
of which had to be left open at night, lest the child should stifle.

When it came to the final move Gervaise felt that she could not
separate from the commode which she had spent so much time in
polishing when first married and insisted on its going to their new
quarters, where it was much in the way and stopped up half the window,
and when Gervaise wished to look out into the court she had not room
for her elbows.

The first few days she spent in tears. She felt smothered and cramped;
after having had so much room to move about in it seemed to her that
she was smothering. It was only at the window she could breathe. The
courtyard was not a place calculated to inspire cheerful thoughts.
Opposite her was the window which years before had elicited her
admiration, where every successive summer scarlet beans had grown to
a fabulous height on slender strings. Her room was on the shady side,
and a pot of mignonette would die in a week on her sill.

No, life had not been what she hoped, and it was all very hard to
bear.

Instead of flowers to solace her declining years she would have but
thorns. One day as she was looking down into the court she had the
strangest feeling imaginable. She seemed to see herself standing just
near the loge of the concierge, looking up at the house and examining
it for the first time.

This glimpse of the past made her feel faint. It was at least thirteen
years since she had first seen this huge building--this world within
a world. The court had not changed. The facade was simply more dingy.
The same clothes seemed to be hanging at the windows to dry. Below
there were the shavings from the cabinetmaker's shop, and the gutter
glittered with blue water, as blue and soft in tone as the water she
remembered.

But she--alas, how changed was she! She no longer looked up to the
sky. She was no longer hopeful, courageous and ambitious. She was
living under the very roof in crowded discomfort, where never a ray
of sunshine could reach her, and her tears fell fast in utter
discouragement.

Nevertheless, when Gervaise became accustomed to her new surroundings
she grew more content. The pieces of furniture she had sold to
Virginie had facilitated her installation. When the fine weather came
Coupeau had an opportunity of going into the country to work. He went
and lived three months without drinking--cured for the time being by
the fresh, pure air. It does a man sometimes an infinite deal of good
to be taken away from all his old haunts and from Parisian streets,
which always seem to exhale a smell of brandy and of wine.

He came back as fresh as a rose, and he brought four hundred francs
with which he paid the Poissons the amount for which they had become
security as well as several other small but pressing debts. Gervaise
had now two or three streets open to her again, which for some time
she had not dared to enter.

She now went out to iron by the day and had gone back to her old
mistress, Mme Fauconnier, who was a kindhearted creature and ready
to do anything for anyone who flattered her adroitly.

With diligence and economy Gervaise could have managed to live
comfortably and pay all her debts, but this prospect did not charm her
particularly. She suffered acutely in seeing the Poissons in her old
shop. She was by no means of a jealous or envious disposition, but
it was not agreeable to her to hear the admiration expressed for her
successors by her husband's sisters. To hear them one would suppose
that never had so beautiful a shop been seen before. They spoke of
the filthy condition of the place when Virginie moved in--who had
paid, they declared, thirty francs for cleaning it.

Virginie, after some hesitation, had decided on a small stock of
groceries--sugar, tea and coffee, also bonbons and chocolate. Lantier
had advised these because he said the profit on them was immense. The
shop was repainted, and shelves and cases were put in, and a counter
with scales such as are seen at confectioners'. The little inheritance
that Poisson held in reserve was seriously encroached upon. But
Virginie was triumphant, for she had her way, and the Lorilleuxs
did not spare Gervaise the description of a case or a jar.

It was said in the street that Lantier had deserted Gervaise,
that she gave him no peace running after him, but this was not true,
for he went and came to her apartment as he pleased. Scandal was
connecting his name and Virginie's. They said Virginie had taken the
clearstarcher's lover as well as her shop! The Lorilleuxs talked of
nothing when Gervaise was present but Lantier, Virginie and the shop.
Fortunately Gervaise was not inclined to jealousy, and Lantier's
infidelities had hitherto left her undisturbed, but she did not accept
this new affair with equal tranquillity. She colored or turned pale
as she heard these allusions, but she would not allow a word to pass
her lips, as she was fully determined never to gratify her enemies
by allowing them to see her discomfiture; but a dispute was heard by
the neighbors about this time between herself and Lantier, who went
angrily away and was not seen by anyone in the Coupeau quarters for
more than a fortnight.

Coupeau behaved very oddly. This blind and complacent husband, who
had closed his eyes to all that was going on at home, was filled with
virtuous indignation at Lantier's indifference. Then Coupeau went so
far as to tease Gervaise in regard to this desertion of her lovers.
She had had bad luck, he said, with hatters and blacksmiths--why did
she not try a mason?

He said this as if it were a joke, but Gervaise had a firm conviction
that he was in deadly earnest. A man who is tipsy from one year's end
to the next is not apt to be fastidious, and there are husbands who at
twenty are very jealous and at thirty have grown very complacent under
the influence of constant tippling.

Lantier preserved an attitude of calm indifference. He kept the peace
between the Poissons and the Coupeaus. Thanks to him, Virginie and
Gervaise affected for each other the most tender regard. He ruled the
brunette as he had ruled the blonde, and he would swallow her shop as
he had that of Gervaise.

It was in June of this year that Nana partook of her first Communion.
She was about thirteen, slender and tall as an asparagus plant, and
her air and manner were the height of impertinence and audacity.

She had been sent away from the catechism class the year before on
account of her bad conduct. And if the cure did not make a similar
objection this year it was because he feared she would never come
again and that his refusal would launch on the Parisian _pave_
another castaway.

Nana danced with joy at the mere thought of what the Lorilleuxs--as
her godparents--had promised, while Mme Lerat gave the veil and cup,
Virginie the purse and Lantier a prayer book, so that the Coupeaus
looked forward to the day without anxiety.

The Poissons--probably through Lantier's advice--selected this
occasion for their housewarming. They invited the Coupeaus and the
Boche family, as Pauline made her first Communion on that day, as
well as Nana.

The evening before, while Nana stood in an ecstasy of delight before
her presents, her father came in in an abominable condition. His
virtuous resolutions had yielded to the air of Paris; he had fallen
into evil ways again, and he now assailed his wife and child with the
vilest epithets, which did not seem to shock Nana, for they could fall
from her tongue on occasion with facile glibness.

"I want my soup," cried Coupeau, "and you two fools are chattering
over those fal-lals! I tell you, I will sit on them if I am not waited
upon, and quickly too."

Gervaise answered impatiently, but Nana, who thought it better taste
just then--all things considered--to receive with meekness all her
father's abuse, dropped her eyes and did not reply.

"Take that rubbish away!" he cried with growing impatience. "Put it
out of my sight or I will tear it to bits."

Nana did not seem to hear him. She took up the tulle cap and asked her
mother what it cost, and when Coupeau tried to snatch the cap Gervaise
pushed him away.

"Let the child alone!" she said. "She is doing no harm!"

Then her husband went into a perfect rage:

"Mother and daughter," he cried, "a nice pair they make. I understand
very well what all this row is for: it is merely to show yourself in a
new gown. I will put you in a bag and tie it close round your throat,
and you will see if the cure likes that!"

Nana turned like lightning to protect her treasures. She looked her
father full in the face, and, forgetting the lessons taught her by
her priest, she said in a low, concentrated voice:

"Beast!" That was all.

After Coupeau had eaten his soup he fell asleep and in the morning
woke quite amiable. He admired his daughter and said she looked quite
like a young lady in her white robe. Then he added with a sentimental
air that a father on such days was naturally proud of his child.
When they were ready to go to the church and Nana met Pauline in
the corridor, she examined the latter from head to foot and smiled
condescendingly on seeing that Pauline had not a particle of chic.

The two families started off together, Nana and Pauline in front,
each with her prayer book in one hand and with the other holding down
her veil, which swelled in the wind like a sail. They did not speak
to each other but keenly enjoyed seeing the shopkeepers run to their
doors to see them, keeping their eyes cast down devoutly but their
ears wide open to any compliment they might hear.

Nana's two aunts walked side by side, exchanging their opinions
in regard to Gervaise, whom they stigmatized as an irreligious
ne'er-do-well whose child would never have gone to the Holy
Communion if it had depended on her.

At the church Coupeau wept all the time. It was very silly, he knew,
but he could not help it. The voice of the cure was pathetic; the
little girls looked like white-robed angels; the organ thrilled him,
and the incense gratified his senses. There was one especial anthem
which touched him deeply. He was not the only person who wept, he
was glad to see, and when the ceremony was over he left the church
feeling that it was the happiest day of his life. But an hour later
he quarreled with Lorilleux in a wineshop because the latter was so
hardhearted.

The housewarming at the Poissons' that night was very gay. Lantier
sat between Gervaise and Virginie and was equally civil and attentive
to both. Opposite was Poisson with his calm, impassive face, a look
he had cultivated since he began his career as a police officer.

But the queens of the fete were the two little girls, Nana and
Pauline, who sat very erect lest they should crush and deface their
pretty white dresses. At dessert there was a serious discussion in
regard to the future of the children. Mme Boche said that Pauline
would at once enter a certain manufactory, where she would receive
five or six francs per week. Gervaise had not decided yet, for Nana
had shown no especial leaning in any direction. She had a good deal
of taste, but she was butter-fingered and careless.

"I should make a florist of her," said Mme Lerat. "It is clean work
and pretty work too."

Whereupon ensued a warm discussion. The men were especially careful
of their language out of deference to the little girls, but Mme Lerat
would not accept the lesson: she flattered herself she could say what
she pleased in such a way that it could not offend the most fastidious
ears.

Women, she declared, who followed her trade were more virtuous than
others. They rarely made a slip.

"I have no objection to your trade," interrupted Gervaise. "If Nana
likes to make flowers let her do so. Say, Nana, would you like it?"

The little girl did not look up from her plate, into which she was
dipping a crust of bread. She smiled faintly as she replied:

"Yes, Mamma; if you desire it I have no objection."

The decision was instantly made, and Coupeau wished his sister to
take her the very next day to the place where she herself worked,
Rue du Caire, and the circle talked gravely of the duties of life.
Boche said that Pauline and Nana were now women, since they had been
to Communion, and they ought to be serious and learn to cook and to
mend. They alluded to their future marriages, their homes and their
children, and the girls touched each other under the table, giggled
and grew very red. Lantier asked them if they did not have little
husbands already, and Nana blushingly confessed that she loved Victor
Fauconnier and never meant to marry anyone else.

Mme Lorilleux said to Mme Boche on their way home:

"Nana is our goddaughter now, but if she goes into that flower
business, in six months she will be on the _pave_, and we will
have nothing to do with her."

Gervaise told Boche that she thought the shop admirably arranged. She
had looked forward to an evening of torture and was surprised that
she had not experienced a pang.

Nana, as she undressed, asked her mother if the girl on the next
floor, who had been married the week before, wore a dress of muslin
like hers.

But this was the last bright day in that household. Two years passed
away, and their prospects grew darker and their demoralization and
degradation more evident. They went without food and without fire,
but never without brandy.

They found it almost impossible to meet their rent, and a certain
January came when they had not a penny, and Father Boche ordered
them to leave.

It was frightfully cold, with a sharp wind blowing from the north.

M. Marescot appeared in a warm overcoat and his hands encased in warm
woolen gloves and told them they must go, even if they slept in the
gutter. The whole house was oppressed with woe, and a dreary sound of
lamentation arose from most of the rooms, for half the tenants were
behindhand. Gervaise sold her bed and paid the rent. Nana made nothing
as yet, and Gervaise had so fallen off in her work that Mme Fauconnier
had reduced her wages. She was irregular in her hours and often
absented herself from the shop for several days together but was none
the less vexed to discover that her old employee, Mme Putois, had been
placed above her. Naturally at the end of the week Gervaise had little
money coming to her.

As to Coupeau, if he worked he brought no money home, and his wife had
ceased to count upon it. Sometimes he declared he had lost it through
a hole in his pocket or it had been stolen, but after a while he
ceased to make any excuses.

But if he had no cash in his pockets it was because he had spent it
all in drink. Mme Boche advised Gervaise to watch for him at the door
of the place where he was employed and get his wages from him before
he had spent them all, but this did no good, as Coupeau was warned
by his friends and escaped by a rear door.

The Coupeaus were entirely to blame for their misfortunes, but this
is just what people will never admit. It is always ill luck or the
cruelty of God or anything, in short, save the legitimate result
of their own vices.

Gervaise now quarreled with her husband incessantly. The warmth of
affection of husband and wife, of parents for their children and
children for their parents had fled and left them all shivering,
each apart from the other.

All three, Coupeau, Gervaise and Nana, watched each other with eyes
of baleful hate. It seemed as if some spring had broken--the great
mainspring that binds families together.

Gervaise did not shudder when she saw her husband lying drunk in the
gutter. She would not have pushed him in, to be sure, but if he were
out of the way it would be a good thing for everybody. She even went
so far as to say one day in a fit of rage that she would be glad to
see him brought home on a shutter. Of what good was he to any human
being? He ate and he drank and he slept. His child learned to hate
him, and she read the accidents in the papers with the feelings of
an unnatural daughter. What a pity it was that her father had not
been the man who was killed when that omnibus tipped over!

In addition to her own sorrows and privations, Gervaise, whose
heart was not yet altogether hard, was condemned to hear now of the
sufferings of others. The corner of the house in which she lived
seemed to be consecrated to those who were as poor as herself. No
smell of cooking filled the air, which, on the contrary, was laden
with the shrill cries of hungry children, heavy with the sighs of
weary, heartbroken mothers and with the oaths of drunken husbands
and fathers.

Gervaise pitied Father Bru from the bottom of her heart; he lay the
greater part of the time rolled up in the straw in his den under the
staircase leading to the roof. When two or three days elapsed without
his showing himself someone opened the door and looked in to see if
he were still alive.

Yes, he was living; that is, he was not dead. When Gervaise had bread
she always remembered him. If she had learned to hate men because
of her husband her heart was still tender toward animals, and Father
Bru seemed like one to her. She regarded him as a faithful old dog.
Her heart was heavy within her whenever she thought of him, alone,
abandoned by God and man, dying by inches or drying, rather, as an
orange dries on the chimney piece.

Gervaise was also troubled by the vicinity of the undertaker
Bazonge--a wooden partition alone separated their rooms. When he came
in at night she could hear him throw down his glazed hat, which fell
with a dull thud, like a shovelful of clay, on the table. The black
cloak hung against the wall rustled like the wings of some huge
bird of prey. She could hear his every movement, and she spent most
of her time listening to him with morbid horror, while he--all
unconscious--hummed his vulgar songs and tipsily staggered to his
bed, under which the poor woman's sick fancy pictured a dead body
concealed.

She had read in some paper a dismal tale of some undertaker who took
home with him coffin after coffin--children's coffins--in order to
make one trip to the cemetery suffice. When she heard his step the
whole corridor was pervaded to her senses with the odor of dead
humanity.

She would as lief have resided at Pere-Lachaise and watched the moles
at their work. The man terrified her; his incessant laughter dismayed
her. She talked of moving but at the same time was reluctant to do
so, for there was a strange fascination about Bazonge after all. Had
he not told her once that he would come for her and lay her down to
sleep in the shadow of waving branches, where she would know neither
hunger nor toil?

She wished she could try it for a month. And she thought how delicious
it would be in midwinter, just at the time her quarter's rent was due.
But, alas, this was not possible! The rest and the sleep must be
eternal; this thought chilled her, and her longing for death faded
away before the unrelenting severity of the bonds exacted by Mother
Earth.

One night she was sick and feverish, and instead of throwing herself
out of the window as she was tempted to do, she rapped on the
partition and called loudly:

"Father Bazonge! Father Bazonge!"

The undertaker was kicking off his slippers, singing a vulgar song
as he did so.

"What is the matter?" he answered.

But at his voice Gervaise awoke as from a nightmare. What had she
done? Had she really tapped? she asked herself, and she recoiled from
his side of the wall in chill horror. It seemed to her that she felt
the undertaker's hands on her head. No! No! She was not ready. She
told herself that she had not intended to call him. It was her elbow
that had knocked the wall accidentally, and she shivered from head
to foot at the idea of being carried away in this man's arms.

"What is the matter?" repeated Bazonge. "Can I serve you in any way,
madame?"

"No! No! It is nothing!" answered the laundress in a choked voice.
"I am very much obliged."

While the undertaker slept she lay wide awake, holding her breath and
not daring to move, lest he should think she called him again.

She said to herself that under no circumstances would she ever appeal
to him for assistance, and she said this over and over again with the
vain hope of reassuring herself, for she was by no means at ease in
her mind.

Gervaise had before her a noble example of courage and fortitude in
the Bijard family. Little Lalie, that tiny child--about as big as
a pinch of salt--swept and kept her room like wax; she watched over
the two younger children with all the care and patience of a mother.
This she had done since her father had kicked her mother to death.
She had entirely assumed that mother's place, even to receiving the
blows which had fallen formerly on that poor woman. It seemed to be a
necessity of his nature that when he came home drunk he must have some
woman to abuse. Lalie was too small, he grumbled; one blow of his fist
covered her whole face, and her skin was so delicate that the marks of
his five fingers would remain on her cheek for days!

He would fly at her like a wolf at a poor little kitten for the merest
trifle. Lalie never answered, never rebelled and never complained.
She merely tried to shield her face and suppressed all shrieks, lest
the neighbors should come; her pride could not endure that. When her
father was tired kicking her about the room she lay where he left her
until she had strength to rise, and then she went steadily about her
work, washing the children and making her soup, sweeping and dusting
until everything was clean. It was a part of her plan of life to be
beaten every day.

Gervaise had conceived a strong affection for this little neighbor.
She treated her like a woman who knew something of life. It must be
admitted that Lalie was large for her years. She was fair and pale,
with solemn eyes for her years and had a delicate mouth. To have heard
her talk one would have thought her thirty. She could make and mend,
and she talked of the children as if she had herself brought them into
the world. She made people laugh sometimes when she talked, but more
often she brought tears to their eyes.

Gervaise did everything she could for her, gave her what she could
and helped the energetic little soul with her work. One day she was
altering a dress of Nana's for her, and when the child tried it on
Gervaise was chilled with horror at seeing her whole back purple and
bruised, the tiny arm bleeding--all the innocent flesh of childhood
martyrized by the brute--her father.

Bazonge might get the coffin ready, she thought, for the little girl
could not bear this long. But Lalie entreated her friend to say
nothing, telling her that her father did not know what he was doing,
that he had been drinking. She forgave him with her whole heart,
for madmen must not be held accountable for their deeds. After that
Gervaise was on the watch whenever she heard Bijard coming up the
stairs. But she never caught him in any act of absolute brutality.
Several times she had found Lalie tied to the foot of the bedstead--an
idea that had entered her father's brain, no one knew why, a whim of
his disordered brain, disordered by liquor, which probably arose from
his wish to tyrannize over the child, even when he was no longer
there.

Lalie sometimes was left there all day and once all night. When
Gervaise insisted on untying her the child entreated her not to touch
the knots, saying that her father would be furious if he found the
knots had been tampered with.

And really, she said with an angelic smile, she needed rest, and the
only thing that troubled her was not to be able to put the room in
order. She could watch the children just as well, and she could think,
so that her time was not entirely lost. When her father let her free,
her sufferings were not over, for it was sometimes more than an hour
before she could stand--before the blood circulated freely in her
stiffened limbs.

Her father had invented another cheerful game. He heated some sous red
hot on the stove and laid them on the chimney piece. He then summoned
Lalie and bade her go buy some bread. The child unsuspiciously took up
the sous, uttered a little shriek and dropped them, shaking her poor
burned fingers.

Then he would go off in a rage. What did she mean by such nonsense?
She had thrown away the money and lost it, and he threatened her with
a hiding if she did not find the money instantly. The poor child
hesitated; he gave her a cuff on the side of the head. With silent
tears streaming down her cheeks she would pick up the sous and toss
them from hand to hand to cool them as she went down the long flights
of stairs.

There was no limit to the strange ingenuity of the man. One afternoon,
for example, Lalie had completed playing with the children. The window
was open, and the air shook the door so that it sounded like gentle
raps.

"It is Mr Wind," said Lalie; "come in, Mr Wind. How are you today?"

And she made a low curtsy to Mr Wind. The children did the same in
high glee, and she was quite radiant with happiness, which was not
often the case.

"Come in, Mr Wind!" she repeated, but the door was pushed open by
a rough hand and Bijard entered. Then a sudden change came over the
scene. The two children crouched in a corner, while Lalie stood in the
center of the floor, frozen stiff with terror, for Bijard held in his
hand a new whip with a long and wicked-looking lash. He laid this whip
on the bed and did not kick either one of the children but smiled in
the most vicious way, showing his two lines of blackened, irregular
teeth. He was very drunk and very noisy.

"What is the matter with you fools? Have you been struck dumb? I heard
you all talking and laughing merrily enough before I came in. Where
are your tongues now? Here! Take off my shoes!"

Lalie, considerably disheartened at not having received her customary
kick, turned very pale as she obeyed. He was sitting on the side of
the bed. He lay down without undressing and watched the child as she
moved about the room. Troubled by this strange conduct, the child
ended by breaking a cup. Then without disturbing himself he took up
the whip and showed it to her.

"Look here, fool," he said grimly: "I bought this for you, and it cost
me fifty sous, but I expect to get a good deal more than fifty sous'
worth of good out of it. With this long lash I need not run about
after you, for I can reach you in every corner of the room. You will
break the cups, will you? Come, now, jump about a little and say good
morning to Mr Wind again!"

He did not even sit up in the bed but, with his head buried in the
pillow, snapped the whip with a noise like that made by a postilion.
The lash curled round Lalie's slender body; she fell to the floor,
but he lashed her again and compelled her to rise.

"This is a very good thing," he said coolly, "and saves my getting
chilled on cold mornings. Yes, I can reach you in that corner--and
in that! Skip now! Skip!"

A light foam was on his lips, and his suffused eyes were starting
from their sockets. Poor little Lalie darted about the room like a
terrified bird, but the lash tingled over her shoulders, coiled around
her slender legs and stung like a viper. She was like an India-rubber
ball bounding from the floor, while her beast of a father laughed
aloud and asked her if she had had enough.

The door opened and Gervaise entered. She had heard the noise. She
stood aghast at the scene and then was seized with noble rage.

"Let her be!" she cried. "I will go myself and summon the police."

Bijard growled like an animal who is disturbed over his prey.

"Why do you meddle?" he exclaimed. "What business is it of yours?"

And with another adroit movement he cut Lalie across the face. The
blood gushed from her lip. Gervaise snatched a chair and flew at the
brute, but the little girl held her skirts and said it did not hurt
much; it would be over soon, and she washed the blood away, speaking
gently to the frightened children.

When Gervaise thought of Lalie she was ashamed to complain. She wished
she had the courage of this child. She knew that she had lived on dry
bread for weeks and that she was so weak she could hardly stand, and
the tears came to the woman's eyes as she saw the precocious mite who
had known nothing of the innocent happiness of her years. And Gervaise
took this slender creature for example, whose eyes alone told the
story of her misery and hardships, for in the Coupeau family the
vitriol of the Assommoir was doing its work of destruction. Gervaise
had seen a whip. Gervaise had learned to dread it, and this dread
inspired her with tenderest pity for Lalie. Coupeau had lost the
flesh and the bloated look which had been his, and he was thin and
emaciated. His complexion was gradually acquiring a leaden hue. His
appetite was utterly gone. It was with difficulty that he swallowed
a mouthful of bread. His stomach turned against all solid food, but
he took his brandy every day. This was his meat as well as his drink,
and he touched nothing else.

When he crawled out of his bed in the morning he stood for a good
fifteen minutes, coughing and spitting out a bitter liquid that rose
in his throat and choked him.

He did not feel any better until he had taken what he called "a good
drink," and later in the day his strength returned. He felt strange
prickings in the skin of his hands and feet. But lately his limbs
had grown heavy. This pricking sensation gave place to the most
excruciating cramps, which he did not find very amusing. He rarely
laughed now but often stopped short and stood still on the sidewalk,
troubled by a strange buzzing in his ears and by flashes of light
before his eyes. Everything looked yellow to him; the houses seemed to
be moving away from him. At other times, when the sun was full on his
back, he shivered as if a stream of ice water had been poured down
between his shoulders. But the thing he liked the least about himself
was a nervous trembling in his hands, the right hand especially.

Had he become an old woman then? he asked himself with sudden fury.
He tried with all his strength to lift his glass and command his
nerves enough to hold it steady. But the glass had a regular tremulous
movement from right to left and left to right again, in spite of all
his efforts.

Then he emptied it down his throat, saying that when he had swallowed
a dozen more he would be all right and as steady as a monument.
Gervaise told him, on the contrary, that he must leave off drinking
if he wished to leave off trembling.

He grew very angry and drank quarts in his eagerness to test the
question, finally declaring that it was the passing omnibusses that
jarred the house and shook his hand.

In March Coupeau came in one night drenched to the skin. He had been
caught out in a shower. That night he could not sleep for coughing.
In the morning he had a high fever, and the physician who was sent
for advised Gervaise to send him at once to the hospital.

And Gervaise made no objection; once she had refused to trust her
husband to these people, but now she consigned him to their tender
mercies without a regret; in fact, she regarded it as a mercy.

Nevertheless, when the litter came she turned very pale and, if she
had had even ten francs in her pocket, would have kept him at home.
She walked to the hospital by the side of the litter and went into
the ward where he was placed. The room looked to her like a miniature
Pere-Lachaise, with its rows of beds on either side and its path down
the middle. She went slowly away, and in the street she turned and
looked up. How well she remembered when Coupeau was at work on those
gutters, cheerily singing in the morning air! He did not drink in
those days, and she, at her window in the Hotel Boncoeur, had
watched his athletic form against the sky, and both had waved their
handkerchiefs. Yes, Coupeau had worked more than a year on this
hospital, little thinking that he was preparing a place for himself.
Now he was no longer on the roof--he had built a dismal nest within.
Good God, was she and the once-happy wife and mother one and the same?
How long ago those days seemed!

The next day when Gervaise went to make inquiries she found the bed
empty. A sister explained that her husband had been taken to the
asylum of Sainte-Anne, because the night before he had suddenly become
unmanageable from delirium and had uttered such terrible howls that it
disturbed the inmates of all the beds in that ward. It was the alcohol
in his system, she said, which attacked his nerves now, when he was so
reduced by the inflammation on his lungs that he could not resist it.

The clearstarcher went home, but how or by what route she never knew.
Her husband was mad--she heard these words reverberating through her
brain. Life was growing very strange. Nana simply said that he must,
of course, be left at the asylum, for he might murder them both.

On Sunday only could Gervaise go to Sainte-Anne. It was a long
distance off. Fortunately there was an omnibus which went very near.
She got out at La Rue Sante and bought two oranges that she might not
go quite empty-handed.

But when she went in, to her astonishment she found Coupeau sitting
up. He welcomed her gaily.

"You are better!" she exclaimed.

"Yes, nearly well," he replied, and they talked together awhile, and
she gave him the oranges, which pleased and touched him, for he was a
different man now that he drank tisane instead of liquor. She did not
dare allude to his delirium, but he spoke of it himself.

"Yes," he said, "I was in a pretty state! I saw rats running all over
the floor and the walls, and you were calling me, and I saw all sorts
of horrible things! But I am all right now. Once in a while I have a
bad dream, but everybody does, I suppose."

Gervaise remained with him until night. When the house surgeon made
his rounds at six o'clock he told him to hold out his hands. They
scarcely trembled--an almost imperceptible motion of the tips of his
fingers was all. But as the room grew darker Coupeau became restless.
Two or three times he sat up and peered into the remote corners.

Suddenly he stretched out his arms and seemed to crush some creature
on the wall.

"What is it?" asked Gervaise, terribly frightened.

"Rats!" he said quietly. "Only rats!"

After a long silence he seemed to be dropping off to sleep, with
disconnected sentences falling from his lips.

"Dirty beasts! Look out, one is under your skirts!" He pulled the
covering hastily over his head, as if to protect himself against the
creature he saw.

Then starting up in mad terror, he screamed aloud. A nurse ran to the
bed, and Gervaise was sent away, mute with horror at this scene.

But when on the following Sunday she went again to the hospital,
Coupeau was really well. All his dreams had vanished. He slept like
a child, ten hours without lifting a finger. His wife, therefore, was
allowed to take him away. The house surgeon gave him a few words of
advice before he left, assuring him if he continued to drink he would
be a dead man in three months. All depended on himself. He could live
at home just as he had lived at Sainte-Anne's and must forget that
such things as wine and brandy existed.

"He is right," said Gervaise as they took their seats in the omnibus.

"Of course he is right," answered her husband. But after a moment's
silence he added:

"But then, you know, a drop of brandy now and then never hurts a man:
it aids digestion."

That very evening he took a tiny drop and for a week was very
moderate; he had no desire, he said, to end his days at Bicetre.
But he was soon off his guard, and one day his little drop ended in
a full glass, to be followed by a second, and so on. At the end of
a fortnight he had fallen back in the old rut.

Gervaise did her best, but, after all, what can a wife do in such
circumstances?

She had been so startled by the scene at the asylum that she had
fully determined to begin a regular life again and hoped that he would
assist her and do the same himself. But now she saw that there was
no hope, that even the knowledge of the inevitable results could not
restrain her husband now.

Then the hell on earth began again; hopeless and intolerant, Nana
asked indignantly why he had not remained in the asylum. All the money
she made, she said, should be spent in brandy for her father, for the
sooner it was ended, the better for them all.

Gervaise blazed out one day when he lamented his marriage and told him
that it was for her to curse the day when she first saw him. He must
remember that she had refused him over and over again. The scene was
a frightful one and one unexampled in the Coupeau annals.

Gervaise, now utterly discouraged, grew more indolent every day. Her
room was rarely swept. The Lorilleuxs said they could not enter it, it
was so dirty. They talked all day long over their work of the downfall
of Wooden Legs. They gloated over her poverty and her rags.

"Well! Well!" they murmured. "A great change has indeed come to that
beautiful blonde who was so fine in her blue shop."

Gervaise suspected their comments on her and her acts to be most
unkind, but she determined to have no open quarrel. It was for her
interest to speak to them when they met, but that was all the
intercourse between them.

On Saturday Coupeau had told his wife he would take her to the circus;
he had earned a little money and insisted on indulging himself. Nana
was obliged to stay late at the place where she worked and would sleep
with her aunt Mme Lerat.

Seven o'clock came, but no Coupeau. Her husband was drinking with his
comrades probably. She had washed a cap and mended an old gown with
the hope of being presentable. About nine o'clock, in a towering rage,
she sallied forth on an empty stomach to find Coupeau.

"Are you looking for your husband?" said Mme Boche. "He is at the
Assommoir. Boche has just seen him there."

Gervaise muttered her thanks and went with rapid steps to the
Assommoir.

A fine rain was falling. The gas in the tavern was blazing brightly,
lighting up the mirrors, the bottles and glasses. She stood at the
window and looked in. He was sitting at a table with his comrades.
The atmosphere was thick with smoke, and he looked stupefied and
half asleep.

She shivered and wondered why she should stay there and, so thinking,
turned away, only to come back twice to look again.

The water lay on the uneven sidewalk in pools, reflecting all the
lights from the Assommoir. Finally she determined on a bold step: she
opened the door and deliberately walked up to her husband. After all,
why should she not ask him why he had not kept his promise of taking
her to the circus? At any rate, she would not stay out there in the
rain and melt away like a cake of soap.

"She is crazy!" said Coupeau when he saw her. "I tell you, she is
crazy!"

He and all his friends shrieked with laughter, but no one condescended
to say what it was that was so very droll. Gervaise stood still, a
little bewildered by this unexpected reception. Coupeau was so amiable
that she said:

"Come, you know it is not too late to see something."

"Sit down a minute," said her husband, not moving from his seat.

Gervaise saw she could not stand there among all those men, so she
accepted the offered chair. She looked at the glasses, whose contents
glittered like gold. She looked at these dirty, shabby men and at the
others crowding around the counter. It was very warm, and the pipe
smoke thickened the air.

Gervaise felt as if she were choking; her eyes smarted, and her head
was heavy with the fumes of alcohol. She turned around and saw the
still, the machine that created drunkards. That evening the copper
was dull and glittered only in one round spot. The shadows of the
apparatus on the wall behind were strange and weird--creatures with
tails, monsters opening gigantic jaws as if to swallow the whole
world.

"What will you take to drink?" said Coupeau.

"Nothing," answered his wife. "You know I have had no dinner!"

"You need it all the more then! Have a drop of something!"

As she hesitated Mes-Bottes said gallantly:

"The lady would like something sweet like herself."

"I like men," she answered angrily, "who do not get tipsy and talk
like fools! I like men who keep their promises!"

Her husband laughed.

"You had better drink your share," he said, "for the devil a bit of
a circus will you see tonight."

She looked at him fixedly. A heavy frown contracted her eyebrows. She
answered slowly:

"You are right; it is a good idea. We can drink up the money
together."

Bibi brought her a glass of anisette. As she sipped it she remembered
all at once the brandied fruit she had eaten in the same place with
Coupeau when he was courting her. That day she had left the brandy and
took only the fruit, and now she was sitting there drinking liqueur.

But the anisette was good. When her glass was empty she refused
another, and yet she was not satisfied.

She looked around at the infernal machine behind her--a machine that
should have been buried ten fathoms deep in the sea. Nevertheless, it
had for her a strange fascination, and she longed to quench her thirst
with that liquid fire.

"What is that you have in your glasses?" she asked.

"That, my dear," answered her husband, "is Father Colombe's own
especial brew. Taste it."

And when a glass of the vitriol was brought to her Coupeau bade her
swallow it down, saying it was good for her.

After she had drunk this glass Gervaise was no longer conscious of the
hunger that had tormented her. Coupeau told her they could go to the
circus another time, and she felt she had best stay where she was. It
did not rain in the Assommoir, and she had come to look upon the scene
as rather amusing. She was comfortable and sleepy. She took a third
glass and then put her head on her folded arms, supporting them on the
table, and listened to her husband and his friends as they talked.

Behind her the still was at work with constant drip-drip, and she felt
a mad desire to grapple with it as with some dangerous beast and tear
out its heart. She seemed to feel herself caught in those copper fangs
and fancied that those coils of pipe were wound around her own body,
slowly but surely crushing out her life.

The whole room danced before her eyes, for Gervaise was now in the
condition which had so often excited her pity and indignation with
others. She vaguely heard a quarrel arise and a crash of chairs and
tables, and then Father Colombe promptly turned everyone into the
street.

It was still raining and a cold, sharp wind blowing. Gervaise lost
Coupeau, found him and then lost him again. She wanted to go home,
but she could not find her way. At the corner of the street she took
her seat by the side of the gutter, thinking herself at her washtub.
Finally she got home and endeavored to walk straight past the door
of the concierge, within whose room she was vaguely conscious of
the Poissons and Lorilleuxs holding up their hands in disgust at
her condition.

She never knew how she got up those six flights of stairs. But when
she turned into her own corridor little Lalie ran toward her with
loving, extended arms.

"Dear Madame Gervaise," she cried, "Papa has not come in; please
come and see my children. They are sleeping so sweetly!"

But when she looked up in the face of the clearstarcher she recoiled,
trembling from head to foot. She knew only too well that alcoholic
smell, those wandering eyes and convulsed lips.

Then as Gervaise staggered past her without speaking the child's arms
fell at her side, and she looked after her friend with sad and solemn
eyes.

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