She cooked her dinner and ate it alone, for Coupeau did not appear, nor did she hear a word of his whereabouts for nearly a week. Finally a printed paper was given her which frightened her at first, but she was soon relieved to find that it simply conveyed to her the information that her husband was at Sainte-Anne's again.

 

Gervaise was in no way disturbed. Coupeau knew the way back well enough; he would return in due season. She soon heard that he and Mes-Bottes had spent the whole week in dissipation, and she even felt a little angry that they had not seen fit to offer her a glass of wine with all their feasting and carousing.

 

On Sunday, as Gervaise had a nice little repast ready for the evening, she decided that an excursion would give her an appetite. The letter from the asylum stared her in the face and worried her. The snow had melted; the sky was gray and soft, and the air was fresh. She started at noon, as the days were now short and Sainte-Anne's was a long distance off, but as there were a great many people in the street, she was amused.

 

When she reached the hospital she heard a strange story. It seems that Coupeau--how, no one could say--had escaped from the hospital and had been found under the bridge. He had thrown himself over the parapet, declaring that armed men were driving him with the point of their bayonets.

 

One of the nurses took Gervaise up the stairs. At the head she heard terrific howls which froze the marrow in her bones.

 

"It is he!" said the nurse.

 

"He? Whom do you mean?"

 

"I mean your husband. He has gone on like that ever since day before yesterday, and he dances all the time too. You will see!"

 

Ah, what a sight it was! The cell was cushioned from the floor to the ceiling, and on the floor were mattresses on which Coupeau danced and howled in his ragged blouse. The sight was terrific. He threw himself wildly against the window and then to the other side of the cell, shaking hands as if he wished to break them off and fling them in defiance at the whole world. These wild motions are sometimes imitated, but no one who has not seen the real and terrible sight can imagine its horror.

 

"What is it? What is it?" gasped Gervaise.

 

A house surgeon, a fair and rosy youth, was sitting, calmly taking notes. The case was a peculiar one and had excited a great deal of attention among the physicians attached to the hospital.

 

"You can stay awhile," he said, "but keep very quiet. He will not recognize you, however."

 

Coupeau, in fact, did not seem to notice his wife, who had not yet seen his face. She went nearer. Was that really he? She never would have known him with his bloodshot eyes and distorted features. His skin was so hot that the air was heated around him and was as if it were varnished--shining and damp with perspiration. He was dancing, it is true, but as if on burning plowshares; not a motion seemed to be voluntary.

 

Gervaise went to the young surgeon, who was beating a tune on the back of his chair.

 

"Will he get well, sir?" she said.

 

The surgeon shook his head.

 

"What is he saying? Hark! He is talking now."

 

"Just be quiet, will you?" said the young man. "I wish to listen."

 

Coupeau was speaking fast and looking all about, as if he were examining the underbrush in the Bois de Vincennes.

 

"Where is it now?" he exclaimed and then, straightening himself, he looked off into the distance.

 

"It is a fair," he exclaimed, "and lanterns in the trees, and the water is running everywhere: fountains, cascades and all sorts of things."

 

He drew a long breath, as if enjoying the delicious freshness of the air.

 

By degrees, however, his features contracted again with pain, and he ran quickly around the wall of his cell.

 

"More trickery," he howled. "I knew it!"

 

He started back with a hoarse cry; his teeth chattered with terror.

 

"No, I will not throw myself over! All that water would drown me! No, I will not!"

 

"I am going," said Gervaise to the surgeon. "I cannot stay another moment."

 

She was very pale. Coupeau kept up his infernal dance while she tottered down the stairs, followed by his hoarse voice.

 

How good it was to breathe the fresh air outside!

 

That evening everyone in the huge house in which Coupeau had lived talked of his strange disease. The concierge, crazy to hear the details, condescended to invite Gervaise to take a glass of cordial, forgetting that he had turned a cold shoulder upon her for many weeks.

 

Mme Lorilleux and Mme Poisson were both there also. Boche had heard of a cabinetmaker who had danced the polka until he died. He had drunk absinthe.

 

Gervaise finally, not being able to make them understand her description, asked for the table to be moved and there, in the center of the loge, imitated her husband, making frightful leaps and horrible contortions.

 

"Yes, that was what he did!"

 

And then everybody said it was not possible that man could keep up such violent exercise for even three hours.

 

Gervaise told them to go and see if they did not believe her. But Mme Lorilleux declared that nothing would induce her to set foot within Sainte-Anne's, and Virginie, whose face had grown longer and longer with each successive week that the shop got deeper into debt, contented herself with murmuring that life was not always gay--in fact, in her opinion, it was a pretty dismal thing. As the wine was finished, Gervaise bade them all good night. When she was not speaking she had sat with fixed, distended eyes. Coupeau was before them all the time.

 

The next day she said to herself when she rose that she would never go to the hospital again; she could do no good. But as midday arrived she could stay away no longer and started forth, without a thought of the length of the walk, so great were her mingled curiosity and anxiety.

 

She was not obliged to ask a question; she heard the frightful sounds at the very foot of the stairs. The keeper, who was carrying a cup of tisane across the corridor, stopped when he saw her.

 

"He keeps it up well!" he said.

 

She went in but stood at the door, as she saw there were people there. The young surgeon had surrendered his chair to an elderly gentleman wearing several decorations. He was the chief physician of the hospital, and his eyes were like gimlets.

 

Gervaise tried to see Coupeau over the bald head of that gentleman. Her husband was leaping and dancing with undiminished strength. The perspiration poured more constantly from his brow now; that was all. His feet had worn holes in the mattress with his steady tramp from window to wall.

 

Gervaise asked herself why she had come back. She had been accused the evening before of exaggerating the picture, but she had not made it strong enough. The next time she imitated him she could do it better. She listened to what the physicians were saying: the house surgeon was giving the details of the night with many words which she did not understand, but she gathered that Coupeau had gone on in the same way all night. Finally he said this was the wife of the patient. Wherefore the surgeon in chief turned and interrogated her with the air of a police judge.

 

"Did this man's father drink?"

 

"A little, sir. Just as everybody does. He fell from a roof when he had been drinking and was killed."

 

"Did his mother drink?"

 

"Yes sir--that is, a little now and then. He had a brother who died in convulsions, but the others are very healthy."

 

The surgeon looked at her and said coldly:

 

"You drink too?"

 

Gervaise attempted to defend herself and deny the accusation.

 

"You drink," he repeated, "and see to what it leads. Someday you will be here, and like this."

 

She leaned against the wall, utterly overcome. The physician turned away. He knelt on the mattress and carefully watched Coupeau; he wished to see if his feet trembled as much as his hands. His extremities vibrated as if on wires. The disease was creeping on, and the peculiar shivering seemed to be under the skin--it would ease for a minute or two and then begin again. The belly and the shoulders trembled like water just on the point of boiling.

 

Coupeau seemed to suffer more than the evening before. His complaints were curious and contradictory. A million pins were pricking him. There was a weight under the skin; a cold, wet animal was crawling over him. Then there were other creatures on his shoulder.

 

"I am thirsty," he groaned; "so thirsty."

 

The house surgeon took a glass of lemonade from a tray and gave it to him. He seized the glass in both hands, drank one swallow, spilling the whole of it at the same time. He at once spat it out in disgust.

 

"It is brandy!" he exclaimed.

 

Then the surgeon, on a sign from his chief, gave him some water, and Coupeau did the same thing.

 

"It is brandy!" he cried. "Brandy! Oh, my God!"

 

For twenty-four hours he had declared that everything he touched to his lips was brandy, and with tears begged for something else, for it burned his throat, he said. Beef tea was brought to him; he refused it, saying it smelled of alcohol. He seemed to suffer intense and constant agony from the poison which he vowed was in the air. He asked why people were allowed to rub matches all the time under his nose, to choke him with their vile fumes.

 

The physicians watched Coupeau with care and interest. The phantoms which had hitherto haunted him by night now appeared before him at midday. He saw spiders' webs hanging from the wall as large as the sails of a man-of-war. Then these webs changed to nets, whose meshes were constantly contracting only to enlarge again. These nets held black balls, and they, too, swelled and shrank. Suddenly he cried out:

 

"The rats! Oh, the rats!"

 

The balls had been transformed to rats. The vile beasts found their way through the meshes of the nets and swarmed over the mattress and then disappeared as suddenly as they came.