, the only nourishment he could digest.
When he awoke in the mornings he sat coughing and spitting up bile for
at least a quarter of an hour. It never failed, you might as well have
the basin ready. He was never steady on his pins till after his first
glass of consolation, a real remedy, the fire of which cauterized his
bowels; but during the day his strength returned. At first he would feel
a tickling sensation, a sort of pins-and-needles in his hands and feet;
and he would joke, relating that someone was having a lark with him,
that he was sure his wife put horse-hair between the sheets. Then his
legs would become heavy, the tickling sensation would end by turning
into the most abominable cramps, which gripped his flesh as though in
a vise. That though did not amuse him so much. He no longer laughed; he
stopped suddenly on the pavement in a bewildered way with a ringing in
his ears and his eyes blinded with sparks. Everything appeared to him to
be yellow; the houses danced and he reeled about for three seconds with
the fear of suddenly finding himself sprawling on the ground. At other
times, while the sun was shining full on his back, he would shiver as
though iced water had been poured down his shoulders. What bothered
him the most was a slight trembling of both his hands; the right hand
especially must have been guilty of some crime, it suffered from so many
nightmares. _Mon Dieu!_ was he then no longer a man? He was becoming
an old woman! He furiously strained his muscles, he seized hold of his
glass and bet that he would hold it perfectly steady as with a hand of
marble; but in spite of his efforts the glass danced about, jumped
to the right, jumped to the left with a hurried and regular trembling
movement. Then in a fury he emptied it into his gullet, yelling that
he would require dozens like it, and afterwards he undertook to carry
a cask without so much as moving a finger. Gervaise, on the other
hand, told him to give up drink if he wished to cease trembling, and
he laughed at her, emptying quarts until he experienced the sensation
again, flying into a rage and accusing the passing omnibuses of shaking
up his liquor.

In the month of March Coupeau returned home one evening soaked through.
He had come with My-Boots from Montrouge, where they had stuffed
themselves full of eel soup, and he had received the full force of
the shower all the way from the Barriere des Fourneaux to the Barriere
Poissonniere, a good di