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Updated: June 6, 2025
But the young woman explained that she was waiting for a friend and then turned back toward the street. As Coupeau still delayed, she returned to the courtyard, finding in it a strange fascination. The house did not strike her as especially ugly.
They scarcely trembled an almost imperceptible motion of the tips of his fingers was all. But as the room grew darker Coupeau became restless. Two or three times he sat up and peered into the remote corners. Suddenly he stretched out his arms and seemed to crush some creature on the wall. "What is it?" asked Gervaise, terribly frightened. "Rats!" he said quietly. "Only rats!"
Her regret was at not being able to start in business at once; she would have earned all the home required, without counting on Coupeau, letting him take months to get into the way of work again; she would no longer have been uneasy, but certain of the future and free from the secret fears which sometimes seized her when he returned home very gay and singing, and relating some joke of that animal My-Boots, whom he had treated to a drink.
Coupeau, who had been watching a workman, completely soaked, yet quietly walking along in the rain, murmured: "If that animal My-Boots is waiting for us on the Route de Saint-Denis, he won't catch a sunstroke." That made some of them laugh; but the general ill-humor increased. It was becoming ludicrous.
She trembled for an hour after them, but they never took away her appetite. It was very stupid of these people, after all, she said to Lantier. How could she pay them if she had no money? And where could she get money? She closed her eyes to the inevitable and would not think of the future. Mamma Coupeau was well again, but the household had been disorganized for more than a year.
Gervaise tried to calm him, but in vain. He drew himself up in his rags, in full view, and struck his blouse, roaring: "There's a man's chest under that!" Thereupon the young man dived into the midst of the crowd, muttering: "What a dirty blackguard!" Coupeau wanted to follow and catch him. He wasn't going to let himself be insulted by a fellow with a coat on. Probably it wasn't even paid for!
"No, no," said Lantier; "it would trouble you too much. I know that you have the most generous heart in the world, but I cannot impose upon you. Your room would be a passageway to mine, and that would not be agreeable to any of us." "Nonsense," said Coupeau. "Have we no invention? There are two windows; can't one be cut down to the floor and used as a door?
If Gervaise were dying and asked her for a glass of water she would not give it. She could not stand such people. As to Nana, it was different; they would always receive her. The child, of course, was not responsible for her mother's crimes. Coupeau should take a more decided stand and not put up with his wife's vile conduct.
In the afternoons Coupeau often went to his sister's apartment; she expressed a great deal of compassion for him and showed every attention. When he was first married he had escaped from her influence, thanks to his affection for his wife and hers for him. Now he fell under her thumb again; they brought him back by declaring that he lived in mortal terror of his wife.
Lantier, who felt gay, was sucking his barley-sugar, and smacking his lips. "Well, if I saw her, I should go over to the other side of the street," interposed Virginie, who had just pinched the hatter again most ferociously. "It isn't because you are there, Madame Coupeau, but your daughter is rotten to the core. Why, every day Poisson arrests girls who are better than she is."
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