alive, just barely. Even Death seemed to have neglected him. Whenever
Gervaise had any bread she gave him the crusts. Even when she hated all
men because of her husband, she still felt sincerely sorry for Pere Bru,
the poor old man. They were letting him starve to death because he could
no longer hold tools in his hand.

The laundress also suffered a great deal from the close neighborhood of
Bazouge, the undertaker's helper. A simple partition, and a very thin
one, separated the two rooms. He could not put his fingers down his
throat without her hearing it. As soon as he came home of an evening she
listened, in spite of herself, to everything he did. His black leather
hat laid with a dull thud on the chest of drawers, like a shovelful of
earth; the black cloak hung up and rustling against the walls like the
wings of some night bird; all the black toggery flung into the middle
of the room and filling it with the trappings of mourning. She heard
him stamping about, felt anxious at the least movement, and was quite
startled if he knocked against the furniture or rattled any of his
crockery. This confounded drunkard was her preoccupation, filling her
with a secret fear mingled with a desire to know. He, jolly, his belly
full every day, his head all upside down, coughed, spat, sang "Mother
Godichon," made use of many dirty expressions and fought with the
four walls before finding his bedstead. And she remained quite pale,
wondering what he could be doing in there. She imagined the most
atrocious things. She got into her head that he must have brought a
corpse home, and was stowing it away under his bedstead. Well! the
newspapers had related something of the kind--an undertaker's helper
who collected the coffins of little children at his home, so as to save
himself trouble and to make only one journey to the cemetery.

For certain, directly Bazouge arrived, a smell of death seemed to
permeate the partition. One might have thought oneself lodging against
the Pere Lachaise cemetery, in the midst of the kingdom of moles. He was
frightful, the animal, continually laughing all by himself, as though
his profession enlivened him. Even when he had finished his rumpus and
had laid himself on his back, he snored in a manner so extraordinary
that it caused the laundress to hold her breath. For hours she listened
attentively, with an idea that funerals were passing through her
neighbor's room.

The worst was that, in spite of her terr