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 sometim............