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Updated: June 6, 2025
Once already, she had been a fortnight in bed, with her stomach swollen out, through having eaten too much roast goose. But Coupeau got angry and helped Virginie to the upper part of a leg, saying that, by Jove's thunder! if she did not pick it, she wasn't a proper woman. Had roast goose ever done harm to anybody? On the contrary, it cured all complaints of the spleen.
By this time Mes-Bottes was what is properly called howling drunk, and as he staggered away from the counter he struck the bag of tools which Coupeau had over his shoulder. "You look like a peddler with his pack or a humpback. Put it down!" Coupeau hesitated a moment, and then slowly and deliberately, as if he had arrived at a decision after mature deliberation, he laid his bag on the ground.
It would never have suited her to have been cruel. She protested, she said, no merit was due to her for being kind. Had not all her dreams been realised? Had she any other ambition in life? It was to Coupeau especially that Gervaise behaved so well. Never an angry word, never a complaint behind her husband's back.
One may at once allow, for instance, that Rachel and Stephen, though human nature in its infinite capacity may include such characters, are scarcely a typical working woman and working man. But then neither, heaven be praised, are Coupeau the sot, and Gervaise the drab, in M. Zola's "Drink" and, for my part, I think Rachel and Stephen the better company.
Returning to the counter, he renewed his attack on Father Colombe, whom he accused of adulterating his liquors. It was now bright daylight, and the proprietor of the Assommoir began to extinguish the lights. Coupeau made excuses for his brother-in-law, who, he said, could never drink; it was not his fault, poor fellow!
All three, Coupeau, Gervaise and Nana, watched each other with eyes of baleful hate. It seemed as if some spring had broken the great mainspring that binds families together. Gervaise did not shudder when she saw her husband lying drunk in the gutter. She would not have pushed him in, to be sure, but if he were out of the way it would be a good thing for everybody.
No one would engage her, she was washed up everywhere; and this secretly suited her, for she had fallen to that state of indifference when one prefers to croak rather than move one's fingers. At all events, if Coupeau brought his pay home they would have something warm to eat.
At length they reached a small passage in complete darkness. "We're here," resumed the zinc-worker. "Be careful, keep to the wall; there are three steps." And Gervaise carefully took another ten steps in the obscurity. She stumbled and then counted the three steps. But at the end of the passage Coupeau had opened a door, without knocking. A brilliant light spread over the tiled floor.
They put on her stockings, a white petticoat, a short linen jacket and a white cap in short, the best of her linen. Coupeau continued snoring, a high note and a low one, the one sharp, the other flat. One could almost have imagined it to be church music accompanying the Good Friday ceremonies.
He had agreed so as not to hurt her feelings and the wedding had been set for early September. Money had long since been saved to set them up in housekeeping. However, when Gervaise referred to his coming marriage, he shook his head, saying, "Not every woman is like you, Madame Coupeau. If all women were like you, I'd marry ten of them." At the end of two months, Coupeau was able to get up.
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