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One has all sorts of preparations to make. To begin with, they lunched. Then it happened to be old Bazouge, the undertaker's helper, who lived on the sixth floor, who brought the coffin and the sack of bran. He was never sober, the worthy fellow. At eight o'clock that day, he was still lively from the booze of the day before. "This is for here, isn't it?" asked he.
Bazouge, ever gallant, thought that he ought not to be hasty with a lady who appeared to have taken such a fancy to him. She was falling to pieces, but all the same, what remained was very fine, especially when she was excited. "What you say is very true," said he in a convinced manner.
The worst was that, in spite of her terrors, something incited Gervaise to put her ear to the wall, the better to find out what was taking place. Bazouge had the same effect on her as handsome men have on good women: they would like to touch them. Well! if fear had not kept her back, Gervaise would have liked to have handled death, to see what it was like.
When they reached the Hotel Boncoeur, the two couples wished each other good-night, with an angry air; and as Coupeau pushed the two women into each other's arms, calling them a couple of ninnies, a drunken fellow, who seemed to want to go to the right, suddenly slipped to the left and came tumbling between them. "Why, it's old Bazouge!" said Lorilleux. "He's had his fill to-day."
She no longer thought of kissing her sister-in-law, she implored Coupeau to get rid of the drunkard. Then Bazouge, as he stumbled about, made a gesture of philosophical disdain. "That won't prevent you passing though our hands, my little woman. You'll perhaps be glad to do so, one of these days. Yes, I know some women who'd be much obliged if we did carry them off."
The undertaker's helpers were now standing up and waiting; the little one with the squint took the coffin lid, by way of inviting the family to bid their last farewell, whilst Bazouge had filled his mouth with nails and was holding the hammer in readiness.
And, as a glimmer of light passed under old Bazouge's door, she walked boldly in, seized with a mania for going off on the same journey as the little one. That old joker, Bazouge, had come home that night in an extraordinary state of gaiety.
For certain, directly Bazouge arrived, a smell of death seemed to permeate the partition. One might have thought oneself lodging against the Pere Lachaise cemetery, in the midst of the kingdom of moles. He was frightful, the animal, continually laughing all by himself, as though his profession enlivened him.
And don't spit on old Bazouge, because he's held in his arms finer ones than you, who let themselves be tucked in without a murmur, very pleased to continue their by-by in the dark." "Hold your tongue, old Bazouge!" said Lorilleux severely, having hastened to the spot on hearing the noise, "such jokes are highly improper. If we complained about you, you would get the sack.
The lid was placed on, and old Bazouge knocked the nails in with the style of a packer, two blows for each; and they none of them could hear any longer their own weeping in that din, which resembled the noise of furniture being repaired. It was over. The time for starting had arrived.
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