The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

Yes, it was their fault if they descended lower and lower every season. But that is the sort of thing one never tells one self, especially when one is down in the gutter. They accused their bad fortune; they pretended that fate was against them. Their home had become a little hell by this time. They bickered away the whole day. However, they had not yet come to blows, with the exception of a few smacks which somehow were given at the height of their disputes. The saddest thing was that they had opened the cage of affection; the better feelings had all taken flight like so many canaries. The loving warmth of father, mother, and child, when united and wrapped up in each other, deserted them, and left them shivering, each in his or her own corner. The whole three--Coupeau, Gervaise, and Nana--were ever ready to seize one another by the hair, biting each other for nothing at all, their eyes full of hatred. What use was he, that drunkard? thought Gervaise. To make her weep, to eat up all she possessed, to drive her to sin. Well, men so useless as he should be thrown as quickly as possible into the hole, and the polka of deliverance be danced over them.

VI.--The Final Ruin

Presently, Gervaise took to fuddling with her husband at the "Assommoir." She sank lower than ever; she missed going to her work oftener, gossipped for whole days, and became as soft as a rag whenever she had any work to do. If a thing fell from her hands, it might remain on the floor; it was certainly not she who would have bent down to pick it up. She intended to save her bacon. She took her ease, and never handled a broom except when the accumulation of filth almost upset her.

She could keep no work, and at last came to scrub out the shop and rooms for Virginie. She came on Saturday morning with a pail and a scrubbing brush, without appearing to suffer in the least at having to perform a dirty, humble duty, a charwoman's work, in the home where she had reigned as the beautiful, fair-haired mistress--for thirty sous. It was a last humiliation, the end of her pride. Virginie must have enjoyed herself, for a yellowish flame darted from her cat's eyes. At last she was revenged for that thrashing she had received at the wash-house, and which she had never forgotten.

Coupeau went from worse to worse. He was not sober once in six months. Then he fell ill and had to go to the asylum, but when he came out repaired he would begin to pull himself to bits again and need another mending. In three years he went seven times to the asylum in this fashion, until he died in the extremities of delirium.

Gervaise was next compelled to descend to begging of Lorilleux and his wife. But they refused her a son or a crumb and laughed at her. It was terrible. She remembered her ideal of former days; to work quietly, always having bread to eat and a tidy home to sleep in, to bring up her children not to be thrashed, and to die in her bed. No, really, it was droll how all that was be? coming realised! She no longer worked, she no longer ate, she slept on filth; all that was left for her to do was to die on the pavement, and it would not take long if, on getting into her room, she could only screw up enough courage to fling herself out of the window. What increased her ugly laugh was the remembrance of her grand hope of retiring into the country after twenty years spent in ironing. Well! she was on her way to the country. She was about to have her green corner in the Père-Lachaise cemetery.

Gervaise lasted in this state several months. She fell lower and lower still, dying of starvation a little every day. As soon as she had four sous, she drank and fought the walls. Her landlord had decided to turn her out of her room on the sixth floor, but allowed her to turn into a hole under the staircase. It was inside there, on some old straw, that her teeth chattered, whilst her stomach was empty and her bones were frozen. The earth would not have her evidently. She was becoming idiotic; she did not even think of making an end of herself by jumping out of the sixthfloor window on to the pavement of the court-yard beneath. Death was 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 spoilt life. Over-gorging and dissoluteness killed her, said the Lorilleux.