L'Assommoir: Chapter 11

Chapter 11

LITTLE NANA

Nana was growing fast--fair, fresh and dimpled--her skin velvety, like
a peach, and eyes so bright that men often asked her if they might not
light their pipes at them. Her mass of blonde hair--the color of ripe
wheat--looked around her temples as if it were powdered with gold.
She had a quaint little trick of sticking out the tip of her tongue
between her white teeth, and this habit, for some reason, exasperated
her mother.

She was very fond of finery and very coquettish. In this house, where
bread was not always to be got, it was difficult for her to indulge
her caprices in the matter of costume, but she did wonders. She
brought home odds and ends of ribbons from the shop where she worked
and made them up into bows and knots with which she ornamented her
dirty dresses. She was not overparticular in washing her feet, but
she wore her boots so tight that she suffered martyrdom in honor of
St Crispin, and if anyone asked her what the matter was when the pain
flushed her face suddenly, she always and promptly laid it to the
score of the colic.

Summer was the season of her triumphs. In a calico dress that cost
five or six francs she was as fresh and sweet as a spring morning and
made the dull street radiant with her youth and her beauty. She went
by the name of "The Little Chicken." One gown, in particular, suited
her to perfection. It was white with rose-colored dots, without
trimming of any kind. The skirt was short and showed her feet. The
sleeves were very wide and displayed her arms to the elbows. She
turned the neck away and fastened it with pins--in a corner in the
corridor, dreading her father's jests--to exhibit her pretty rounded
throat. A rose-colored ribbon, knotted in the rippling masses of her
hair, completed her toilet. She was a charming combination of child
and woman.

Sundays at this period of her life were her days for coquetting with
the public. She looked forward to them all the week through with a
longing for liberty and fresh air.

Early in the morning she began her preparations and stood for hours in
her chemise before the bit of broken mirror nailed by the window, and
as everyone could see her, her mother would be very much vexed and ask
how long she intended to show herself in that way.

But she, quite undisturbed, went on fastening down the little curls on
her forehead with a little sugar and water and then sewed the buttons
on her boots or took a stitch or two in her frock, barefooted all this
time and with her chemise slipping off her rounded shoulders.

Her father declared he would exhibit her as the "Wild Girl," at two
sous a head.

She was very lovely in this scanty costume, the color flushing her
cheeks in her indignation at her father's sometimes coarse remarks.
She did not dare answer him, however, but bit off her thread in silent
rage. After breakfast she went down to the courtyard. The house was
wrapped in Sunday quiet; the workshops on the lower floor were closed.
Through some of the open windows the tables were seen laid for
dinners, the families being on the fortifications "getting an
appetite."

Five or six girls--Nana, Pauline and others--lingered in the courtyard
for a time and then took flight altogether into the streets and thence
to the outer boulevards. They walked in a line, filling up the whole
sidewalk, with ribbons fluttering in their uncovered hair.

They managed to see everybody and everything through their downcast
lids. The streets were their native heath, as it were, for they had
grown up in them.

Nana walked in the center and gave her arm to Pauline, and as they
were the oldest and tallest of the band, they gave the law to the
others and decided where they should go for the day and what they
should do.

Nana and Pauline were deep ones. They did nothing without
premeditation. If they ran it was to show their slender ankles, and
when they stopped and panted for breath it was sure to be at the side
of some youths--young workmen of their acquaintance--who smoked in
their faces as they talked. Nana had her favorite, whom she always
saw at a great distance--Victor Fauconnier--and Pauline adored a
young cabinetmaker, who gave her apples.

Toward sunset the great pleasure of the day began. A band of
mountebanks would spread a well-worn carpet, and a circle was formed
to look on. Nana and Pauline were always in the thickest of the
crowd, their pretty fresh dresses crushed between dirty blouses, but
insensible to the mingled odors of dust and alcohol, tobacco and dirt.
They heard vile language; it did not disturb them; it was their own
tongue--they heard little else. They listened to it with a smile,
their delicate cheeks unflushed.

The only thing that disturbed them was the appearance of their
fathers, particularly if these fathers seemed to have been drinking.
They kept a good lookout for this disaster.

"Look!" cried Pauline. "Your father is coming, Nana."

Then the girl would crouch on her knees and bid the others stand
close around her, and when he had passed on after an inquiring look
she would jump up and they would all utter peals of laughter.

But one day Nana was kicked home by her father, and Boche dragged
Pauline away by her ear.

The girls would ordinarily return to the courtyard in the twilight and
establish themselves there with the air of not having been away, and
each invented a story with which to greet their questioning parents.
Nana now received forty sous per day at the place where she had been
apprenticed. The Coupeaus would not allow her to change, because she
was there under the supervision of her aunt, Mme Lerat, who had been
employed for many years in the same establishment.

The girl went off at an early hour in her little black dress, which
was too short and too tight for her, and Mme Lerat was bidden,
whenever she was after her time, to inform Gervaise, who allowed her
just twenty minutes, which was quite long enough. But she was often
seven or eight minutes late, and she spent her whole day coaxing her
aunt not to tell her mother. Mme Lerat, who was fond of the girl and
understood the follies of youth, did not tell, but at the same time
she read Nana many a long sermon on her follies and talked of her own
responsibility and of the dangers a young girl ran in Paris.

"You must tell me everything," she said. "I am too indulgent to you,
and if evil should come of it I should throw myself into the Seine.
Understand me, my little kitten; if a man should speak to you you must
promise to tell me every word he says. Will you swear to do this?"

Nana laughed an equivocal little laugh. Oh yes, she would promise. But
men never spoke to her; she walked too fast for that. What could they
say to her? And she explained her irregularity in coming--her five or
ten minutes delay--with an innocent little air. She had stopped at a
window to look at pictures or she had stopped to talk to Pauline. Her
aunt might follow her if she did not believe her.

"Oh, I will watch her. You need not be afraid!" said the widow to her
brother. "I will answer for her, as I would for myself!"

The place where the aunt and niece worked side by side was a large
room with a long table down the center. Shelves against the wall were
piled with boxes and bundles--all covered with a thick coating of
dust. The gas had blackened the ceiling. The two windows were so large
that the women, seated at the table, could see all that was going on
in the street below.

Mme Lerat was the first to make her appearance in the morning, but in
another fifteen minutes all the others were there. One morning in July
Nana came in last, which, however, was the usual case.

"I shall be glad when I have a carriage!" she said as she ran to the
window without even taking off her hat--a shabby little straw.

"What are you looking at?" asked her aunt suspiciously. "Did your
father come with you?"

"No indeed," answered Nana carelessly; "nor am I looking at anything.
It is awfully warm, and of all things in the world, I hate to be in a
hurry."

The morning was indeed frightfully hot. The workwomen had closed the
blinds, leaving a crack, however, through which they could inspect the
street, and they took their seats on each side of the table--Mme Lerat
at the farther end. There were eight girls, four on either side, each
with her little pot of glue, her pincers and other tools; heaps of
wires of different lengths and sizes lay on the table, spools of
cotton and of different-colored papers, petals and leaves cut out of
silk, velvet and satin. In the center, in a goblet, one of the girls
had placed a two-sou bouquet,--which was slowly withering in the heat.

"Did you know," said Leonie as she picked up a rose leaf with her
pincers, "how wretched poor Caroline is with that fellow who used
to call for her regularly every night?"

Before anyone could answer Leonie added:

"Hush! Here comes Madame."

And in sailed Mme Titreville, a tall, thin woman, who usually remained
below in the shop. Her employees stood in dread terror of her, as she
was never known to smile. She went from one to another, finding fault
with all; she ordered one woman to pull a marguerite to pieces and
make it over and then went out as stiffly and silently as she had
come in.

"Houp! Houp!" said Nana under her breath, and a giggle ran round the
table.

"Really, young ladies," said Mme Lerat, "you will compel me to severe
measures."

But no one was listening, and no one feared her. She was very
tolerant. They could say what they pleased, provided they put it
in decent language.

Nana was certainly in a good school! Her instincts, to be sure,
were vicious, but these instincts were fostered and developed in
this place, as is too often the case when a crowd of girls are
herded together. It was the story of a basket of apples, the good
ones spoiled by those that were already rotten. If two girls were
whispering in a corner, ten to one they were telling some story that
could not be told aloud.

Nana was not yet thoroughly perverted, but the curiosity which had
been her distinguishing characteristic as a child had not deserted
her, and she scarcely took her eyes from a girl by the name of Lisa,
about whom strange stories were told.

"How warm it is!" she exclaimed, suddenly rising and pushing open the
blinds. Leonie saw a man standing on the sidewalk opposite.

"Who is that old fellow?" she said. "He has been there a full quarter
of an hour."

"Some fool who has nothing better to do, I suppose," said Mme Lerat.
"Nana, will you come back to your work? I have told you that you
should not go to that window."

Nana took up her violets, and they all began to watch this man. He was
well dressed, about fifty, pale and grave. For a full hour he watched
the windows.

"Look!" said Leonie. "He has an eyeglass. Oh, he is very chic. He is
waiting for Augustine." But Augustine sharply answered that she did
not like the old man.

"You make a great mistake then," said Mme Lerat with her equivocal
smile.

Nana listened to the conversation which followed--reveling in
indecency--as much at home in it as a fish is in water. All the time
her fingers were busy at work. She wound her violet stems and fastened
in the leaves with a slender strip of green paper. A drop of gum--and
then behold a bunch of delicate fresh verdure which would fascinate
any lady. Her fingers were especially deft by nature. No instruction
could have imparted this quality.

The gentleman had gone away, and the workshop settled down into quiet
once more. When the bell rang for twelve Nana started up and said she
would go out and execute any commissions. Leonie sent for two sous'
worth of shrimp, Augustine for some fried potatoes, Sophie for a
sausage and Lisa for a bunch of radishes. As she was going out, her
aunt said quietly:

"I will go with you. I want something."

Lo, in the lane running up by the shop was the mysterious stranger.
Nana turned very red, and her aunt drew her arm within her own and
hurried her along.

So then he had come for her! Was not this pretty behavior for a girl
of her age? And Mme Lerat asked question after question, but Nana knew
nothing of him, she declared, though he had followed her for five
days.

Mme Lerat looked at the man out of the corners of her eyes. "You must
tell me everything," she said.

While they talked they went from shop to shop, and their arms grew
full of small packages, but they hurried back, still talking of the
gentleman.

"It may be a good thing," said Mme Lerat, "if his intentions are only
honorable."

The workwomen ate their breakfast on their knees; they were in no
hurry, either, to return to their work, when suddenly Leonie uttered
a low hiss, and like magic each girl was busy. Mme Titreville entered
the room and again made her rounds.

Mme Lerat did not allow her niece after this day to set foot on the
street without her. Nana at first was inclined to rebel, but, on the
whole, it rather flattered her vanity to be guarded like a treasure.
They had discovered that the man who followed her with such
persistency was a manufacturer of buttons, and one night the aunt
went directly up to him and told him that he was behaving in a most
improper manner. He bowed and, turning on his heel, departed--not
angrily, by any means--and the next day he did as usual.

One day, however, he deliberately walked between the aunt and the
niece and said something to Nana in a low voice. This frightened Mme
Lerat, who went at once to her brother and told him the whole story,
whereupon he flew into a violent rage, shook the girl until her teeth
chattered and talked to her as if she were the vilest of the vile.

"Let her be!" said Gervaise with all a woman's sense. "Let her be!
Don't you see that you are putting all sorts of things into her head?"

And it was quite true; he had put ideas into her head and had taught
her some things she did not know before, which was very astonishing.
One morning he saw her with something in a paper. It was _poudre de
riz_, which, with a most perverted taste, she was plastering upon
her delicate skin. He rubbed the whole of the powder into her hair
until she looked like a miller's daughter. Another time she came in
with red ribbons to retrim her old hat; he asked her furiously where
she got them.

Whenever he saw her with a bit of finery her father flew at her with
insulting suspicion and angry violence. She defended herself and her
small possessions with equal violence. One day he snatched from her
a little cornelian heart and ground it to dust under his heel.

She stood looking on, white and stern; for two years she had longed
for this heart. She said to herself that she would not bear such
treatment long. Coupeau occasionally realized that he had made a
mistake, but the mischief was done.

He went every morning with Nana to the shop door and waited outside
for five minutes to be sure that she had gone in. But one morning,
having stopped to talk with a friend on the corner for some time, he
saw her come out again and vanish like a flash around the corner. She
had gone up two flights higher than the room where she worked and had
sat down on the stairs until she thought him well out of the way.

When he went to Mme Lerat she told him that she washed her hands of
the whole business; she had done all she could, and now he must take
care of his daughter himself. She advised him to marry the girl at
once or she would do worse.

All the people in the neighborhood knew Nana's admirer by sight. He
had been in the courtyard several times, and once he had been seen
on the stairs.

The Lorilleuxs threatened to move away if this sort of thing went on,
and Mme Boche expressed great pity for this poor gentleman whom this
scamp of a girl was leading by the nose.

At first Nana thought the whole thing a great joke, but at the end of
a month she began to be afraid of him. Often when she stopped before
the jeweler's he would suddenly appear at her side and ask her what
she wanted.

She did not care so much for jewelry or ornaments as she did for many
other things. Sometimes as the mud was spattered over her from the
wheels of a carriage she grew faint and sick with envious longings
to be better dressed, to go to the theater, to have a pretty room all
to herself. She longed to see another side of life, to know something
of its pleasures. The stranger invariably appeared at these moments,
but she always turned and fled, so great was her horror of him.

But when winter came existence became well-nigh intolerable. Each
evening Nana was beaten, and when her father was tired of this
amusement her mother scolded. They rarely had anything to eat and
were always cold. If the girl bought some trifling article of dress
it was taken from her.

No! This life could not last. She no longer cared for her father. He
had thoroughly disgusted her, and now her mother drank too. Gervaise
went to the Assommoir nightly--for her husband, she said--and remained
there. When Nana saw her mother sometimes as she passed the window,
seated among a crowd of men, she turned livid with rage, because youth
has little patience with the vice of intemperance. It was a dreary
life for her--a comfortless home and a drunken father and mother. A
saint on earth could not have remained there; that she knew very well,
and she said she would make her escape some fine day, and then perhaps
her parents would be sorry and would admit that they had pushed her
out of the nest.

One Saturday Nana, coming in, found her mother and father in a
deplorable condition--Coupeau lying across the bed and Gervaise
sitting in a chair, swaying to and fro. She had forgotten the dinner,
and one untrimmed candle lighted the dismal scene.

"Is that you, girl?" stammered Gervaise. "Well, your father will
settle with you!"

Nana did not reply. She looked around the cheerless room, at the
cold stove, at her parents. She did not step across the threshold.
She turned and went away.

And she did not come back! The next day when her father and mother
were sober, they each reproached the other for Nana's flight.

This was really a terrible blow to Gervaise, who had no longer the
smallest motive for self-control, and she abandoned herself at once
to a wild orgy that lasted three days. Coupeau gave his daughter up
and smoked his pipe quietly. Occasionally, however, when eating his
dinner, he would snatch up a knife and wave it wildly in the air,
crying out that he was dishonored and then, laying it down as
suddenly, resumed eating his soup.

In this great house, whence each month a girl or two took flight, this
incident astonished no one. The Lorilleuxs were rather triumphant at
the success of their prophecy. Lantier defended Nana.

"Of course," he said, "she has done wrong, but bless my heart, what
would you have? A girl as pretty as that could not live all her days
in such poverty!"

"You know nothing about it!" cried Mme Lorilleux one evening when they
were all assembled in the room of the concierge. "Wooden Legs sold her
daughter out and out. I know it! I have positive proof of what I say.
The time that the old gentleman was seen on the stairs he was going to
pay the money. Nana and he were seen together at the Ambigu the other
night! I tell you, I know it!"

They finished their coffee. This tale might or might not be true; it
was not improbable, at all events. And after this it was circulated
and generally believed in the _Quartier_ that Gervaise had sold
her daughter.

The clearstarcher, meanwhile, was going from bad to worse. She had
been dismissed from Mme Fauconnier's and in the last few weeks had
worked for eight laundresses, one after the other--dismissed from
all for her untidiness.

As she seemed to have lost all skill in ironing, she went out by the
day to wash and by degrees was entrusted with only the roughest work.
This hard labor did not tend to beautify her either. She continued to
grow stouter and stouter in spite of her scanty food and hard labor.

Her womanly pride and vanity had all departed. Lantier never seemed
to see her when they met by chance, and she hardly noticed that the
liaison which had stretched along for so many years had ended in a
mutual disenchantment.

Lantier had done wisely, so far as he was concerned, in counseling
Virginie to open the kind of shop she had. He adored sweets and could
have lived on pralines and gumdrops, sugarplums and chocolate.

Sugared almonds were his especial delight. For a year his principal
food was bonbons. He opened all the jars, boxes and drawers when he
was left alone in the shop; and often, with five or six persons
standing around, he would take off the cover of a jar on the counter
and put in his hand and crunch down an almond. The cover was not put
on again, and the jar was soon empty. It was a habit of his, they all
said; besides, he was subject to a tickling in his throat!

He talked a great deal to Poisson of an invention of his which was
worth a fortune--an umbrella and hat in one; that is to say, a hat
which, at the first drops of a shower, would expand into an umbrella.

Lantier suggested to Virginie that she should have Gervaise come in
once each week to wash the floors, shop and the rooms. This she did
and received thirty sous each time. Gervaise appeared on Saturday
mornings with her bucket and brush, without seeming to suffer a single
pang at doing this menial work in the house where she had lived as
mistress.

One Saturday Gervaise had hard work. It had rained for three days, and
all the mud of the streets seemed to have been brought into the shop.
Virginie stood behind the counter with collar and cuffs trimmed with
lace. Near her on a low chair lounged Lantier, and he was, as usual,
eating candy.

"Really, Madame Coupeau," cried Virginie, "can't you do better than
that? You have left all the dirt in the corners. Don't you see? Oblige
me by doing that over again."

Gervaise obeyed. She went back to the corner and scrubbed it again.
She was on her hands and knees, with her sleeves rolled up over her
arms. Her old skirt clung close to her stout form, and the sweat
poured down her face.

"The more elbow grease she uses, the more she shines," said Lantier
sententiously with his mouth full.

Virginie, leaning back in her chair with the air of a princess,
followed the progress of the work with half-closed eyes.

"A little more to the right. Remember, those spots must all be taken
out. Last Saturday, you know, I was not pleased."

And then Lantier and Virginie fell into a conversation, while Gervaise
crawled along the floor in the dirt at their feet.

Mme Poisson enjoyed this, for her cat's eyes sparkled with malicious
joy, and she glanced at Lantier with a smile. At last she was avenged
for that mortification at the lavatory, which had for years weighed
heavy on her soul.

"By the way," said Lantier, addressing himself to Gervaise, "I saw
Nana last night."

Gervaise started to her feet with her brush in her hand.

"Yes, I was coming down La Rue des Martyrs. In front of me was a young
girl on the arm of an old gentleman. As I passed I glanced at her face
and assure you that it was Nana. She was well dressed and looked
happy."

"Ah!" said Gervaise in a low, dull voice.

Lantier, who had finished one jar, now began another.

"What a girl that is!" he continued. "Imagine that she made me a sign
to follow with the most perfect self-possession. She got rid of her
old gentleman in a cafe and beckoned me to the door. She asked me to
tell her about everybody."

"Ah!" repeated Gervaise.

She stood waiting. Surely this was not all. Her daughter must have
sent her some especial message. Lantier ate his sugarplums.

"I would not have looked at her," said Virginie. "I sincerely trust,
if I should meet her, that she would not speak to me for, really,
it would mortify me beyond expression. I am sorry for you, Madame
Gervaise, but the truth is that Poisson arrests every day a dozen
just such girls."

Gervaise said nothing; her eyes were fixed on vacancy. She shook her
head slowly, as if in reply to her own thoughts.

"Pray make haste," exclaimed Virginie fretfully. "I do not care to
have this scrubbing going on until midnight."

Gervaise returned to her work. With her two hands clasped around the
handle of the brush she pushed the water before her toward the door.
After this she had only to rinse the floor after sweeping the dirty
water into the gutter.

When all was accomplished she stood before the counter waiting for
her money. When Virginie tossed it toward her she did not take it up
instantly.

"Then she said nothing else?" Gervaise asked.

"She?" Lantier exclaimed. "Who is she? Ah yes, I remember. Nana! No,
she said nothing more."

And Gervaise went away with her thirty sous in her hand, her skirts
dripping and her shoes leaving the mark of their broad soles on the
sidewalk.

In the _Quartier_ all the women who drank like her took her part
and declared she had been driven to intemperance by her daughter's
misconduct. She, too, began to believe this herself and assumed at
times a tragic air and wished she were dead. Unquestionably she had
suffered from Nana's departure. A mother does not like to feel that
her daughter will leave her for the first person who asks her to do
so.

But she was too thoroughly demoralized to care long, and soon she had
but one idea: that Nana belonged to her. Had she not a right to her
own property?

She roamed the streets day after day, night after night, hoping to
see the girl. That year half the _Quartier_ was being demolished. All
one side of the Rue des Poissonniers lay flat on the ground. Lantier
and Poisson disputed day after day on these demolitions. The one
declared that the emperor wanted to build palaces and drive the lower
classes out of Paris, while Poisson, white with rage, said the emperor
would pull down the whole of Paris merely to give work to the people.

Gervaise did not like the improvements, either, or the changes in
the dingy _Quartier_, to which she was accustomed. It was, in fact,
a little hard for her to see all these embellishments just when she
was going downhill so fast over the piles of brick and mortar, while
she was wandering about in search of Nana.

She heard of her daughter several times. There are always plenty of
people to tell you things you do not care to hear. She was told that
Nana had left her elderly friend for the sake of some young fellow.

She heard, too, that Nana had been seen at a ball in the Grand Salon,
Rue de la Chapelle, and Coupeau and she began to frequent all these
places, one after another, whenever they had the money to spend.

But at the end of a month they had forgotten Nana and went for their
own pleasure. They sat for hours with their elbows on a table, which
shook with the movements of the dancers, amused by the sight.

One November night they entered the Grand Salon, as much to get warm
as anything else. Outside it was hailing, and the rooms were naturally
crowded. They could not find a table, and they stood waiting until
they could establish themselves. Coupeau was directly in the mouth of
the passage, and a young man in a frock coat was thrown against him.
The youth uttered an exclamation of disgust as he began to dust off
his coat with his handkerchief. The blouse worn by Coupeau was
assuredly none of the cleanest.

"Look here, my good fellow," cried Coupeau angrily, "those airs
are very unnecessary. I would have you to know that the blouse of
a workingman can do your coat no harm if it has touched it!"

The young man turned around and looked at Coupeau from head to foot.

"Learn," continued the angry workman, "that the blouse is the only
wear for a man!"

Gervaise endeavored to calm her husband, who, however, tapped his
ragged breast and repeated loudly:

"The only wear for a man, I tell you!"

The youth slipped away and was lost in the crowd.

Coupeau tried to find him, but it was quite impossible; the crowd was
too great. The orchestra was playing a quadrille, and the dancers were
bringing up the dust from the floor in great clouds, which obscured
the gas.

"Look!" said Gervaise suddenly.

"What is it?"

"Look at that velvet bonnet!"

Quite at the left there was a velvet bonnet, black with plumes,
only too suggestive of a hearse. They watched these nodding plumes
breathlessly.

"Do you not know that hair?" murmured Gervaise hoarsely. "I am sure
it is she!"

In one second Coupeau was in the center of the crowd. Yes, it was
Nana, and in what a costume! She wore a ragged silk dress, stained
and torn. She had no shawl over her shoulders to conceal the fact that
half the buttonholes on her dress were burst out. In spite of all her
shabbiness the girl was pretty and fresh. Nana, of course, danced on
unsuspiciously. Her airs and graces were beyond belief. She curtsied
to the very ground and then in a twinkling threw her foot over her
partner's head. A circle was formed, and she was applauded
vociferously.

At this moment Coupeau fell on his daughter.

"Don't try and keep me back," he said, "for have her I will!"

Nana turned and saw her father and mother.

Coupeau discovered that his daughter's partner was the young man for
whom he had been looking. Gervaise pushed him aside and walked up to
Nana and gave her two cuffs on her ears. One sent the plumed hat on
the side; the other left five red marks on that pale cheek. The
orchestra played on. Nana neither wept nor moved.

The dancers began to grow very angry. They ordered the Coupeau party
to leave the room.

"Go," said Gervaise, "and do not attempt to leave us, for so sure
as you do you will be given in charge of a policeman."

The young man had prudently disappeared.

Nana's old life now began again, for after the girl had slept for
twelve hours on a stretch, she was very gentle and sweet for a week.
She wore a plain gown and a simple hat and declared she would like
to work at home. She rose early and took a seat at her table by five
o'clock the first morning and tried to roll her violet stems, but her
fingers had lost their cunning in the six months in which they had
been idle.

Then the gluepot dried up; the petals and the paper were dusty and
spotted; the mistress of the establishment came for her tools and
materials and made more than one scene. Nana relapsed into utter
indolence, quarreling with her mother from morning until night.
Of course an end must come to this, so one fine evening the girl
disappeared.

The Lorilleuxs, who had been greatly amused by the repentance and
return of their niece, now nearly died laughing. If she returned again
they would advise the Coupeaus to put her in a cage like a canary.

The Coupeaus pretended to be rather pleased, but in their hearts they
raged, particularly as they soon learned that Nana was frequently seen
in the _Quartier_. Gervaise declared this was done by the girl to
annoy them.

Nana adorned all the balls in the vicinity, and the Coupeaus knew that
they could lay their hands on her at any time they chose, but they did
not choose and they avoided meeting her.

But one night, just as they were going to bed, they heard a rap on the
door. It was Nana, who came to ask as coolly as possible if she could
sleep there. What a state she was in! All rags and dirt. She devoured
a crust of dried bread and fell asleep with a part of it in her
hand. This continued for some time, the girl coming and going like a
will-o'-the-wisp. Weeks and months would elapse without a sign from
her, and then she would reappear without a word to say where she
had been, sometimes in rags and sometimes well dressed. Finally her
parents began to take these proceedings as a matter of course. She
might come in, they said, or stay out, just as she pleased, provided
she kept the door shut. Only one thing exasperated Gervaise now, and
that was when her daughter appeared with a bonnet and feathers and
a train. This she would not endure. When Nana came to her it must be
as a simple workingwoman! None of this dearly bought finery should
be exhibited there, for these trained dresses had created a great
excitement in the house.

One day Gervaise reproached her daughter violently for the life she
led and finally, in her rage, took her by the shoulder and shook her.

"Let me be!" cried the girl. "You are the last person to talk to me
in that way. You did as you pleased. Why can't I do the same?"

"What do you mean?" stammered the mother.

"I have never said anything about it because it was none of my
business, but do you think I did not know where you were when my
father lay snoring? Let me alone. It was you who set me the example."

Gervaise turned away pale and trembling, while Nana composed herself
to sleep again.

Coupeau's life was a very regular one--that is to say, he did not
drink for six months and then yielded to temptation, which brought him
up with a round turn and sent him to Sainte-Anne's. When he came out
he did the same thing, so that in three years he was seven times at
Sainte-Anne's, and each time he came out the fellow looked more broken
and less able to stand another orgy.

The poison had penetrated his entire system. He had grown very thin;
his cheeks were hollow and his eyes inflamed. Those who knew his age
shuddered as they saw him pass, bent and decrepit as a man of eighty.
The trembling of his hands had so increased that some days he was
obliged to use them both in raising his glass to his lips. This
annoyed him intensely and seemed to be the only symptom of his failing
health which disturbed him. He sometimes swore violently at these
unruly members and at others sat for hours looking at these fluttering
hands as if trying to discover by what strange mechanism they were
moved. And one night Gervaise found him sitting in this way with great
tears pouring down his withered cheeks.

The last summer of his life was especially trying to Coupeau. His
voice was entirely changed; he was deaf in one ear, and some days he
could not see and was obliged to feel his way up and downstairs as
if he were blind. He suffered from maddening headaches, and sudden
pains would dart through his limbs, causing him to snatch at a chair
for support. Sometimes after one of these attacks his arm would be
paralyzed for twenty-four hours.

He would lie in bed with even his head wrapped up, silent and
moody, like some suffering animal. Then came incipient madness and
fever--tearing everything to pieces that came in his way--or he would
weep and moan, declaring that no one loved him, that he was a burden
to his wife. One evening when his wife and daughter came in he was not
in his bed; in his place lay the bolster carefully tucked in. They
found him at last crouched on the floor under the bed, with his teeth
chattering with cold and fear. He told them he had been attacked by
assassins.

The two women coaxed him back to bed as if he had been a baby.

Coupeau knew but one remedy for all this, and that was a good stout
morning dram. His memory had long since fled; his brain had softened.
When Nana appeared after an absence of six weeks he thought she had
been on an errand around the corner. She met him in the street, too,
very often now, without fear, for he passed without recognizing her.
One night in the autumn Nana went out, saying she wanted some baked
pears from the fruiterer's. She felt the cold weather coming on, and
she did not care to sit before a cold stove. The winter before she
went out for two sous' worth of tobacco and came back in a month's
time; they thought she would do the same now, but they were mistaken.
Winter came and went, as did the spring, and even when June arrived
they had seen and heard nothing of her.

She was evidently comfortable somewhere, and the Coupeaus, feeling
certain that she would never return, had sold her bed; it was very
much in their way, and they could drink up the six francs it brought.

One morning Virginie called to Gervaise as the latter passed the shop
and begged her to come in and help a little, as Lantier had had two
friends to supper the night before, and Gervaise washed the dishes
while Lantier sat in the shop smoking. Presently he said:

"Oh, Gervaise, I saw Nana the other night."

Virginie, who was behind the counter, opening and shutting drawer
after drawer, with a face that lengthened as she found each empty,
shook her fist at him indignantly.

She had begun to think he saw Nana very often. She did not speak, but
Mme Lerat, who had just come in, said with a significant look:

"And where did you see her?"

"Oh, in a carriage," answered Lantier with a laugh. "And I was on the
sidewalk." He turned toward Gervaise and went on:

"Yes, she was in a carriage, dressed beautifully. I did not recognize
her at first, but she kissed her hand to me. Her friend this time must
be a vicomte at the least. She looked as happy as a queen."

Gervaise wiped the plate in her hands, rubbing it long and carefully,
though it had long since been dry. Virginie, with wrinkled brows,
wondered how she could pay two notes which fell due the next day,
while Lantier, fat and hearty from the sweets he had devoured, asked
himself if these drawers and jars would be filled up again or if the
ruin he anticipated was so near at hand that he would be compelled
to pull up stakes at once. There was not another praline for him to
crunch, not even a gumdrop.

When Gervaise went back to her room she found Coupeau sitting on the
side of the bed, weeping and moaning. She took a chair near by and
looked at him without speaking.

"I have news for you," she said at last. "Your daughter has been seen.
She is happy and comfortable. Would that I were in her place!"

Coupeau was looking down on the floor intently. He raised his head
and said with an idiotic laugh:

"Do as you please, my dear; don't let me be any hindrance to you.
When you are dressed up you are not so bad looking after all."

Back to chapter list of: L'Assommoir