ilfering
their strawberries and frightening them with the most abominable
threats. Now she felt very ill, and was bent double upon a stool, not
uttering a word, her face ghastly pale. Fat Pauline had let her head
fall against Etienne's shoulder, and he himself was sleeping on the
edge of the table. Nana was seated with Victor on the rug beside the
bedstead, she had passed her arm round his neck and was drawing him
towards her; and, succumbing to drowsiness and with her eyes shut, she
kept repeating in a feeble voice:

"Oh! Mamma, I'm not well; oh! mamma, I'm not well."

"No wonder!" murmured Augustine, whose head was rolling about on her
shoulders, "they're drunk; they've been singing like grown up persons."

Gervaise received another blow on beholding Etienne. She felt as though
she would choke when she thought of the youngster's father being there
in the other room, eating cake, and that he had not even expressed
a desire to kiss the little fellow. She was on the point of rousing
Etienne and of carrying him there in her arms. Then she again felt that
the quiet way in which matters had been arranged was the best. It would
not have been proper to have disturbed the harmony of the end of the
dinner. She returned with the coffee-pot and poured out a glass of
coffee for Lantier, who, by the way, did not appear to take any notice
of her.

"Now, it's my turn," stuttered Coupeau, in a thick voice. "You've
been keeping the best for the last. Well! I'll sing you 'That Piggish
Child.'"

"Yes, yes, 'That Piggish Child,'" cried everyone.

The uproar was beginning again. Lantier was forgotten. The ladies
prepared their glasses and their knives for accompanying the chorus.
They laughed beforehand, as they looked at the zinc-worker, who steadied
himself on his legs as he put on his most vulgar air. Mimicking the
hoarse voice of an old woman, he sang:

"When out of bed each morn I hop,
I'm always precious queer;
I send him for a little drop
To the drinking-ken that's near.
A good half hour or more he'll stay,
And that makes me so riled,
He swigs it half upon his way:
What a piggish child!"

And the ladies, striking their glasses, repeated in chorus in the midst
of a formidable gaiety:

"What a piggish child!
What a piggish child!"

Even the Rue de la Goutte-d'Or itself joined in now. The whole
neighborhood was singing "What a piggish child!" The little clockmaker,
the