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Updated: May 31, 2025
And really there was no need to call him an unprincipled father, for liquor had deprived him of all consciousness of good and evil. Now it was a settled thing. He wasn't sober once in six months; then he was laid up and had to go into the Sainte-Anne hospital; a pleasure trip for him. The Lorilleuxs said that the Duke of Bowel-Twister had gone to visit his estates.
In his opinion, the less one had to do with priests, the better. His mother was horrified and called him a heathen, while the Lorilleuxs claimed to be religious people also. "It had better be on Sunday," said his sister in a decided tone, and Gervaise consented with a little nod. Everybody kissed her and then the baby, addressing it with tender epithets, as if it could understand, and departed.
They wished, of all things, to take one in the old house where Mme Lorilleux lived, but there was not one single room to be rented, and they were compelled to relinquish the idea. Gervaise was reconciled to this more easily, since she did not care to be thrown in any closer contact with the Lorilleuxs. They looked further.
Boche and his wife sat in judgment on the quarrel and gave as their opinion that the Lorilleuxs were much to blame. They were good tenants, of course. They paid regularly. "But," added Mme Boche, "I never could abide jealousy. They are mean people and were never known to offer a glass of wine to a friend."
Death had to take her little by little, bit by bit, dragging her thus to the end through the accursed existence she had made for herself. It was never even exactly known what she did die of. There was some talk of a cold, but the truth was she died of privation and of the filth and hardship of her ruined life. Overeating and dissoluteness killed her, according to the Lorilleuxs.
As to the Lorilleuxs, they were furious when they found out who he was and declared that it was a sin and a disgrace for Gervaise to bring him into her house. But one fine day Lantier bearded them in their den and ordered a chain made for a lady of his acquaintance and made himself so agreeable that they begged him to sit down and kept him an hour.
The Lorilleuxs, under the influence of the prosperity of their brother and his wife, had become extremely amiable toward them and only lifted their eyebrows in a significant sort of way, as much as to say that they could tell something if they pleased. "You must not talk, you understand," said Coupeau, "but they would come and take a peep at you, and I am going to make them some coffee."
"No, sir, not quite," stammered Gervaise, greatly put out at hearing this mentioned before the Lorilleuxs. "You see, with the misfortune which has fallen upon us " "No doubt, but everyone has their troubles," resumed the landlord, spreading out his immense fingers, which indicated the former workman. "I am very sorry, but I cannot wait any longer.
Gervaise was saying at the same moment, speaking of the chainmaker and his wife. "To think that those skinflints have not even brought a bunch of violets for their mother!" The Lorilleuxs, true enough, had come empty-handed. Madame Lerat had given a wreath of artificial flowers. And a wreath of immortelles and a bouquet bought by the Coupeaus were also placed on the coffin.
This stopped anyone from coming up, and so the Lorilleuxs could stuff everything down, just the two of them. They were even careful the next day not to throw the bones into the garbage so that no one would know what they had eaten. Madame Lorilleux would walk to the end of the street to toss them into a sewer opening. One morning Gervaise surprised her emptying a basket of oyster shells there.
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