ll room where Nana and
mother Coupeau slept, she listened anxiously. She could hear only steady
breathing.

"Leave me alone, Auguste," she repeated. "You'll wake them. Be
sensible."

Lantier didn't answer, but just smiled at her. Then he began to kiss her
on the ear just as in the old days.

Gervaise felt like sobbing. Her strength deserted her; she felt a great
buzzing in her ears, a violent tremor passed through her. She advanced
another step forward. And she was again obliged to draw back. It was not
possible, the disgust was too great. She felt on the verge of vomiting
herself. Coupeau, overpowered by intoxication, lying as comfortably as
though on a bed of down, was sleeping off his booze, without life in his
limbs, and with his mouth all on one side. The whole street might have
entered and laughed at him, without a hair of his body moving.

"Well, I can't help it," she faltered. "It's his own fault. _Mon Dieu!_
He's forcing me out of my own bed. I've no bed any longer. No, I can't
help it. It's his own fault."

She was trembling so she scarcely knew what she was doing. While Lantier
was urging her into his room, Nana's face appeared at one of the glass
panes in the door of the little room. The young girl, pale from sleep,
had awakened and gotten out of bed quietly. She stared at her
father lying in his vomit. Then, she stood watching until her mother
disappeared into Lantier's room. She watched with the intensity and the
wide-open eyes of a vicious child aflame with curiosity.

CHAPTER IX

That winter mother Coupeau nearly went off in one of her coughing fits.
Each December she could count on her asthma keeping her on her back for
two and three weeks at a time. She was no longer fifteen, she would be
seventy-three on Saint-Anthony's day. With that she was very rickety,
getting a rattling in her throat for nothing at all, though she was
plump and stout. The doctor said she would go off coughing, just time
enough to say: "Good-night, the candle's out!"

When she was in her bed mother Coupeau became positively unbearable. It
is true though that the little room in which she slept with Nana was not
at all gay. There was barely room for two chairs between the beds. The
wallpaper, a faded gray, hung loose in long strips. The small window
near the ceiling let in only a dim light. It was like a cavern. At
night, as she lay awake, she could listen to the breathing of the
sleeping Nana as a sort of distraction;