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The doctor pursed his lips. He continued there another two minutes, his eyes fixed on Coupeau. Then he shrugged his shoulders, adding: "The same treatment, broth, milk, lemonade, and the potion of extract of quinine. Do not leave him, and call me if necessary." He went out and Gervaise followed him, to ask him if there was any hope.
At the same moment Mme Boche saw Gervaise coming toward her with little Nana trotting at her side. She looked up to the roof to tell Coupeau, but Gervaise closed her lips with an energetic signal, and then as she reached the old concierge she said in a low voice that she was always in deadly terror that her husband would fall. She never dared look at him when he was in such places.
Good heavens, how much they drank! A pile of empty bottles stood in the corner. When Mme Putois asked for water Coupeau himself removed the carafes from the table. No one should drink water, he declared, in his house did she want to swallow frogs and live things? and he filled up all the glasses.
For two months more Coupeau walked with a crutch and after a while was able to get into the street and then to the outer boulevard, where he sat on a bench in the sun. His gaiety returned; he laughed again and enjoyed doing nothing. For the first time in his life he felt thoroughly lazy, and indolence seemed to have taken possession of his whole being.
Never before had Coupeau slept out two nights running. So that in spite of herself, she would go every ten minutes to the door, with her iron in her hand, and look up and down the street to see if her old man was coming. It might be that Coupeau had broken a leg, or fallen under a wagon and been crushed and that might be good riddance to bad rubbish.
He must learn something of life, you see, and will understand one of these days that people must forget and forgive, and I would cut off my head sooner than prevent a father from seeing his child!" He then proposed to finish the bottle of brandy. They all three drank together again. Lantier was quite undisturbed, and before he left he insisted on aiding Coupeau to shut up the shop.
Coupeau was behaving very badly at this time, and one evening as she passed the Assommoir she was certain she saw him drinking with Mes-Bottes. She hurried on lest she should seem to be watching him. But as she hastened she looked over her shoulder. Yes, it was Coupeau who was tossing down a glass of liquor with an air as if it were no new thing. He had lied to her then; he did drink brandy.
She was very much annoyed at her husband's idea; not that the thought of seeing Lantier living with them wounded her feelings, or made her particularly uneasy, but she was wondering where she would be able to keep the dirty clothes. Coupeau was going on about the advantages of the arrangement. Their rent, five hundred francs, had always been a bit steep.
Had that animal Coupeau gone to the Arc de Triomphe to get his dram? They had already done the upper part of the street, looking in at all the likely places; at the "Little Civet," renowned for its preserved plums; at old mother Baquet's, who sold Orleans wine at eight sous; at the "Butterfly," the coachmen's house of call, gentlemen who were not easy to please. But no Coupeau.
Whenever she smuggled some remnants of meat to Lalie, it almost broke her heart to see the child weeping silently and nibbling it down only by little bits because her throat was so shrunken. Gervaise looked on Lalie as a model of suffering and forgiveness and tried to learn from her how to suffer in silence. In the Coupeau household the vitriol of l'Assommoir was also commencing its ravages.
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