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Updated: May 8, 2025
Although Lantier's twenty francs would be used to pay off these debts for ten months, there would be a nice little profit later. It was during the early days of June that the hatter moved in. The day before, Coupeau had offered to go with him and fetch his box, to save him the thirty sous for a cab.
Slowly, from one end of the horizon to the other, she followed the octroi wall, behind which she sometimes heard, during night time, the shrieks of persons being murdered; and she searchingly looked into the remote angles, the dark corners, black with humidity and filth, fearing to discern there Lantier's body, stabbed to death.
Gently, without uttering a cry, icy cold yet prudent, the laundress returned to Lantier's room. He had gone to sleep again. She bent over him and murmured: "Listen, it's all over, she's dead." Heavy with sleep, only half awake, he grunted at first: "Leave me alone, get into bed. We can't do her any good if she's dead." Then he raised himself on his elbow and asked: "What's the time?"
She imagined another day when, quitting Adele, he might return to her with that old familiar trunk. When she went into the street it was with a spasm of terror. She fancied that every step behind her was Lantier's. She dared not look around lest his hand should glide about her waist. He might be watching for her at any time.
When they sent Nana off to sleep at the Boches' she cried; she had been looking forward ever since the morning to being nice and warm in her good friend Lantier's big bed. The Poissons stayed till midnight. Some hot wine had been made in a salad-bowl because the coffee affected the ladies' nerves too much. The conversation became tenderly effusive.
Each time Coupeau came home drunk, she would go to Lantier's room. This was usually on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Sometimes on other nights, if Coupeau was snoring too loudly, she would leave in the middle of the night. It was not that she cared more for Lantier, but just that she slept better in his room. Mother Coupeau never dared speak openly of it.
Just let me alone, will you?" His wife began to sob. Their voices and Lantier's noisy movements as he pushed the chairs about woke the children. They started up, half naked with tumbled hair, and hearing their mother cry, they followed her example, rending the air with their shrieks. "Well, this is lovely music!" cried Lantier furiously.
Those who had been so harsh to Gervaise were now quite lenient toward Virginie. Gervaise had previously heard numerous reports about Lantier's affairs with all sorts of girls on the street and they had bothered her so little that she hadn't even felt enough resentment to break off the affair.
A doctor's maid told me once that the doctor had told her that a surprise like that, at a certain moment, could strike a woman dead. If she had died right there, that would have been well, wouldn't it? She would have been punished right where she had sinned." It wasn't long until the entire neighborhood knew that Gervaise visited Lantier's room every night.
Madame Lerat, very intimate just then with Virginie, who confided in her, had that moment entered the shop, and hearing Lantier's remark, she pouted ridiculously, and asked: "What do you mean, you saw her?" "Oh, in the street here," answered the hatter, who felt highly flattered, and began to laugh and twirl his moustaches. "She was in a carriage and I was floundering on the pavement.
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