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Finally a printed paper was given her which frightened her at first, but she was soon relieved to find that it simply conveyed to her the information that her husband was at Sainte-Anne's again. Gervaise was in no way disturbed. Coupeau knew the way back well enough; he would return in due season.
Coupeau's life was a very regular one that is to say, he did not drink for six months and then yielded to temptation, which brought him up with a round turn and sent him to Sainte-Anne's. When he came out he did the same thing, so that in three years he was seven times at Sainte-Anne's, and each time he came out the fellow looked more broken and less able to stand another orgy.
He could live at home just as he had lived at Sainte-Anne's and must forget that such things as wine and brandy existed. "He is right," said Gervaise as they took their seats in the omnibus. "Of course he is right," answered her husband. But after a moment's silence he added: "But then, you know, a drop of brandy now and then never hurts a man: it aids digestion."
The letter from the asylum stared her in the face and worried her. The snow had melted; the sky was gray and soft, and the air was fresh. She started at noon, as the days were now short and Sainte-Anne's was a long distance off, but as there were a great many people in the street, she was amused. When she reached the hospital she heard a strange story.
In the streets the galloping horses made her start with a strange fear that all the inmates of Sainte-Anne's were at her heels. She remembered what the physician had said, with what terrors he had threatened her, and she wondered if she already had the disease. When she reached the house the concierge and all the others were waiting and called her into the loge.
Gervaise told them to go and see if they did not believe her. But Mme Lorilleux declared that nothing would induce her to set foot within Sainte-Anne's, and Virginie, whose face had grown longer and longer with each successive week that the shop got deeper into debt, contented herself with murmuring that life was not always gay in fact, in her opinion, it was a pretty dismal thing.
She stared wildly about, as if awaking from a dream, and then left the room. The next day she left the house at noon, as she had done before. And as she entered Sainte-Anne's she heard the same terrific sounds. When she reached the cell she found Coupeau raving mad! He was fighting in the middle of the cell with invisible enemies.
But her representations were often involuntary. She trembled at times from head to foot and uttered little spasmodic cries. She had taken the disease in a modified form at Sainte-Anne's from looking so long at her husband. But she never became altogether like him in the few remaining months of her existence. She sank lower day by day.
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