nd was forced to lick her lips. The room smelled of
the heat and of the working women. The white lilies in the jar were
beginning to fade, yet they still exuded a pure and strong perfume.
Coupeau's heavy snores were heard like the regular ticking of a huge
clock, setting the tempo for the heavy labor in the shop.

On the morrow of his carouses, the zinc-worker always had a headache,
a splitting headache which kept him all day with his hair uncombed, his
breath offensive, and his mouth all swollen and askew. He got up late on
those days, not shaking the fleas off till about eight o'clock; and he
would hang about the shop, unable to make up his mind to start off to
his work. It was another day lost. In the morning he would complain that
his legs bent like pieces of thread, and would call himself a great fool
to guzzle to such an extent, as it broke one's constitution. Then, too,
there were a lot of lazy bums who wouldn't let you go and you'd get to
drinking more in spite of yourself. No, no, no more for him.

After lunch he would always begin to perk up and deny that he had been
really drunk the night before. Maybe just a bit lit up. He was rock
solid and able to drink anything he wanted without even blinking an eye.

When he had thoroughly badgered the workwomen, Gervaise would give him
twenty sous to clear out. And off he would go to buy his tobacco at the
"Little Civet," in the Rue des Poissonniers, where he generally took a
plum in brandy whenever he met a friend. Then, he spent the rest of
the twenty sous at old Francois's, at the corner of the Rue de la
Goutte-d'Or, where there was a famous wine, quite young, which tickled
your gullet. This was an old-fashioned place with a low ceiling. There
was a smoky room to one side where soup was served. He would stay there
until evening drinking because there was an understanding that he didn't
have to pay right away and they would never send the bill to his wife.
Besides he was a jolly fellow, who would never do the least harm--a chap
who loved a spree sure enough, and who colored his nose in his turn
but in a nice manner, full of contempt for those pigs of men who have
succumbed to alcohol, and whom one never sees sober! He always went home
as gay and as gallant as a lark.

"Has your lover been?" he would sometimes ask Gervaise by way of teasing
her. "One never sees him now; I must go and rout him out."

The lover was Goujet. He avoided, in fact, calling too often for fe