spent it freely. During the night, when they were
both drunk, they beat each other outrageously, without being able to
remember on the morrow how it was that the quarrel had commenced. They
had remained on most affectionate terms until about ten o'clock, when
Antoine had begun to beat Fine brutally, whereupon the latter, growing
exasperated and forgetting her meekness, had given him back as much as
she received. She went to work again bravely on the following day, as
though nothing had happened. But her husband, with sullen rancour,
rose late and passed the remainder of the day smoking his pipe in the
sunshine.

From that time forward the Macquarts adopted the kind of life which
they were destined to lead in the future. It became, as it were, tacitly
understood between them that the wife should toil and moil to keep her
husband. Fine, who had an instinctive liking for work, did not object
to this. She was as patient as a saint, provided she had had no drink,
thought it quite natural that her husband should remain idle, and even
strove to spare him the most trifling labour. Her little weakness,
aniseed, did not make her vicious, but just. On the evenings when
she had forgotten herself in the company of a bottle of her favourite
liqueur, if Antoine tried to pick a quarrel with her, she would set
upon him with might and main, reproaching him with his idleness and
ingratitude. The neighbours grew accustomed to the disturbances which
periodically broke out in the couple's room. The two battered each other
conscientiously; the wife slapped like a mother chastising a naughty
child; but the husband, treacherous and spiteful as he was, measured his
blows, and, on several occasions, very nearly crippled the unfortunate
woman.

"You'll be in a fine plight when you've broken one of my arms or legs,"
she would say to him. "Who'll keep you then, you lazy fellow?"

Excepting for these turbulent scenes, Antoine began to find his new mode
of existence quite endurable. He was well clothed, and ate and drank his
fill. He had laid aside the basket work altogether; sometimes, when he
was feeling over-bored, he would resolve to plait a dozen baskets for
the next market day; but very often he did not even finish the first
one. He kept, under a couch, a bundle of osier which he did not use up
in twenty years.

The Macquarts had three children, two girls and a boy. Lisa,[*] born
the first, in 1827, one year after the marriage, remained but