he door. His comrades did
not even notice his departure. He had already had a pretty good dose.
But once outside he shook himself and regained his self-possession; and
he quietly made for the shop, where he told Gervaise that Coupeau was
with some friends.

Two days passed by. The zinc-worker had not returned. He was reeling
about the neighborhood, but no one knew exactly where. Several persons,
however, stated that they had seen him at mother Baquet's, at the
"Butterfly," and at the "Little Old Man with a Cough." Only some said
that he was alone, whilst others affirmed that he was in the company of
seven or eight drunkards like himself. Gervaise shrugged her shoulders
in a resigned sort of way. _Mon Dieu!_ She just had to get used to it.
She never ran about after her old man; she even went out of her way if
she caught sight of him inside a wineshop, so as to not anger him; and
she waited at home till he returned, listening at night-time to hear if
he was snoring outside the door. He would sleep on a rubbish heap, or on
a seat, or in a piece of waste land, or across a gutter. On the morrow,
after having only badly slept off his booze of the day before, he would
start off again, knocking at the doors of all the consolation dealers,
plunging afresh into a furious wandering, in the midst of nips of
spirits, glasses of wine, losing his friends and then finding them
again, going regular voyages from which he returned in a state of
stupor, seeing the streets dance, the night fall and the day break,
without any other thought than to drink and sleep off the effects
wherever he happened to be. When in the latter state, the world was
ended so far as he was concerned. On the second day, however, Gervaise
went to Pere Colombe's l'Assommoir to find out something about him; he
had been there another five times, they were unable to tell her anything
more. All she could do was to take away his tools which he had left
under a seat.

In the evening Lantier, seeing that the laundress seemed very worried,
offered to take her to a music-hall, just by way of passing a pleasant
hour or two. She refused at first, she was in no mood for laughing.
Otherwise she would not have said, "no," for the hatter made the
proposal in too straightforward a manner for her to feel any mistrust.
He seemed to feel for her in quite a paternal way. Never before had
Coupeau slept out two nights running. So that in spite of herself, she
would go every ten minutes