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"Do you know," he said, "when I am up there I can see the Hotel Boncoeur. Yesterday you were at the window, and I waved my hand, but you did not see me." They by this time had turned into La Rue de la Goutte-d'Or. He stopped and looked up. "There is the house," he said, "and I was born only a few doors farther off. It is an enormous place." Gervaise looked up and down the facade.
Outside, she turned to look up at the monumental structure of the hospital and recalled the days when Coupeau was working there, putting on the zinc roof, perched up high and singing in the sun. He wasn't drinking in those days. She used to watch for him from her window in the Hotel Boncoeur and they would both wave their handkerchiefs in greeting.
It was a two-story building, painted a deep red up to the first floor, and had disjointed weather-stained blinds. Above a lantern with glass sides was a sign between the two windows: HOTEL BONCOEUR in large yellow letters, partially obliterated by the dampness. Gervaise, who was prevented by the lantern from seeing as she desired, leaned out still farther, with her handkerchief on her lips.
The women under the trees walked up and down with the regularity of wild animals in a cage. "Sir," she said again, "please listen." But the man went on. She walked toward the Hotel Boncoeur again, past the hospital, which was now brilliantly lit. There she turned and went back over the same ground the dismal ground between the slaughterhouses and the place where the sick lay dying.
"You know," said he, "I can see the Hotel Boncoeur when I'm up there. Yesterday you were at the window, and I waved my arms, but you didn't notice me." They had already gone about a hundred paces along the Rue de la Goutte-d'Or, when he stood still and raising his eyes, said: "That's the house. I was born farther on, at No. 22. But this house is, all the same, a fine block of masonry!
One hardly had time to turn over in one's sleep when the everlasting grind began again. Gervaise went with the crowd. No one looked at her, for the men were all hurrying home to their dinner. Suddenly she looked up and beheld the Hotel Boncoeur. It was empty, the shutters and doors covered with placards and the whole facade weather-stained and decaying.
When she returned with a five-franc-piece he slipped it into his pocket and lay down on the bed and appeared to fall asleep. Reassured by his regular breathing, she gathered together a bundle of dirty clothes and went out to a wash-house near by. Madame Boche, the doorkeeper of the Hôtel Boncoeur, had kept a place for her, and immediately started talking, without leaving off her work.
Suddenly on raising her eyes she noticed the old Hotel Boncoeur in front of her. After being an all-night cafe, which the police had closed down, the little house was now abandoned; the shutters were covered with posters, the lantern was broken, and the whole building was rotting and crumbling away from top to bottom, with its smudgy claret-colored paint, quite moldy.
And yet it was here, in this dirty den the Hotel Boncoeur that the whole cursed life had commenced. Gervaise remained looking at the window of the first floor, from which hung a broken shutter, and recalled to mind her youth with Lantier, their first rows and the ignoble way in which he had abandoned her. Never mind, she was young then, and it all seemed gay to her, seen from a distance.
He parted his hair carefully on one side, wore pretty cravats and patent-leather shoes on Sunday and was as saucy as only a fine Parisian workman can be. They were of mutual use to each other at the Hotel Boncoeur. Coupeau went for her milk, did many little errands for her and carried home her linen to her customers and often took the children out to walk.
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