United States or Dominica ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
She entered the room like a whirlwind, without knocking. Everything was just as it was on that night when she had been received by them in a fashion which she had never forgotten or forgiven. "I have come," cried Gervaise, "and I dare say you wish to know why, particularly as we are at daggers drawn. Well then, I have come on Mamma Coupeau's account.
Coupeau's accident had created quite a commotion in the family. Mother Coupeau passed the nights with Gervaise; but as early as nine o'clock she fell asleep on a chair. Every evening, on returning from work, Madame Lerat went a long round out of her way to inquire how her brother was getting on.
Mme Lerat, Coupeau's eldest sister, was a tall, thin woman, very masculine in appearance and talking through her nose, wearing a puce-colored dress that was much too loose for her. It was profusely trimmed with fringe, which made her look like a lean dog just coming out of the water. She brandished an umbrella as she talked, as if it had been a walking stick.
At this stage of Coupeau's affairs Virginie reappeared. She expressed great joy in meeting her former foe, declaring that she retained no bad feeling. She mentioned that Gervaise might be interested to know that she had recently seen Lantier in the neighbourhood. Gervaise received the news with apparent indifference.
Mon Dieu! how pleasant it was out of doors, one could breathe there! That evening everyone in the tenement was discussing Coupeau's strange malady. The Boches invited Gervaise to have a drink with them, even though they now considered Clump-clump beneath them, in order to hear all the details. Madame Lorilleux and Madame Poisson were there also.
Coupeau, in a gray blouse, was quarreling with someone, and Poisson, who was not on duty that day, was listening quietly, his red mustache and imperial giving him, however, quite a formidable aspect. Goujet left the women outside and, going in, placed his hand on Coupeau's shoulder, who, when he saw his wife and Virginie, fell into a great rage. No, he would not move!
This memory keep Coupeau's entire family from the drink. Every time Coupeau passed that spot, he thought he would rather lick up water from the gutter than accept a free drink in a bar. He would always say: "In our trade, you have to have steady legs." Gervaise had taken up her basket again.
The three men stood in grave silence, watching the man for some time. They uncovered him, and Gervaise saw his shoulders and back. The tremulous motion had now taken complete possession of the body as well as the limbs, and a strange ripple ran just under the skin. "He is asleep," said the surgeon in chief, turning to his colleagues. Coupeau's eyes were closed, and his face twitched convulsively.
She gradually abandoned herself to him, dizzy from the slight faintness caused by the heap of clothes and not minding Coupeau's foul-smelling breath. The long kiss they exchanged on each other's mouths in the midst of the filth of the laundress's trade was perhaps the first tumble in the slow downfall of their life together.
Then Gervaise started as if waking from a dream and hurried away calling out good-night to everyone. On the morrow, the Boches saw her start off at twelve, the same as on the two previous days. They wished her a pleasant afternoon. That day the corridor at Sainte-Anne positively shook with Coupeau's yells and kicks. She had not left the stairs when she heard him yelling: "What a lot of bugs!
Word Of The Day