s pleasant.

"We will see you as far as your door," said he.

But Madame Lorilleux, raising her voice, thought it a funny thing to
spend one's wedding night in such a filthy hole as the Hotel Boncoeur.
Ought they not to have put their marriage off, and have saved a few
sous to buy some furniture, so as to have had a home of their own on
the first night? Ah! they would be comfortable, right up under the roof,
packed into a little closet, at ten francs a month, where there was not
even the slightest air.

"I've given notice, we're not going to use the room up at the top of
the house," timidly interposed Coupeau. "We are keeping Gervaise's room,
which is larger."

Madame Lorilleux forgot herself. She turned abruptly round.

"That's worse than all!" cried she. "You're going to sleep in
Clump-clump's room."

Gervaise became quite pale. This nickname, which she received full in
the face for the first time, fell on her like a blow. And she fully
understood it, too, her sister-in-law's exclamation: the Clump-clump's
room was the room in which she had lived for a month with Lantier, where
the shreds of her past life still hung about. Coupeau did not understand
this, but merely felt hurt at the harsh nickname.

"You do wrong to christen others," he replied angrily. "You don't know
perhaps, that in the neighborhood they call you Cow's-Tail, because of
your hair. There, that doesn't please you, does it? Why should we not
keep the room on the first floor? To-night the children won't sleep
there, and we shall be very comfortable."

Madame Lorilleux added nothing further, but retired into her dignity,
horribly annoyed at being called Cow's-Tail. To cheer up Gervaise,
Coupeau squeezed her arm softly. He even succeeded in making her smile
by whispering into her ear that they were setting up housekeeping with
the grand sum of seven sous, three big two-sou pieces and one little
sou, which he jingled in his pocket.

When they reached the Hotel Boncoeur, the two couples wished each other
good-night, with an angry air; and as Coupeau pushed the two women into
each other's arms, calling them a couple of ninnies, a drunken fellow,
who seemed to want to go to the right, suddenly slipped to the left and
came tumbling between them.

"Why, it's old Bazouge!" said Lorilleux. "He's had his fill to-day."

Gervaise, frightened, squeezed up against the door of the hotel. Old
Bazouge, an undertaker's helper of some fifty years of age, had h