thought they were
drops of blood.

More and more, as she plodded through the mire of the streets, getting
splashed by passing vehicles and being dazzled by the magnificence of
the window displays, she felt longings that tortured her like hunger
pangs, yearnings for better clothes, for eating in restaurants, for
going to the theatre, for a room of her own with nice furniture. Right
at those moments, it never failed that her old gentleman would come up
to whisper something in her ear. Oh, if only she wasn't afraid of him,
how readily she would have taken up with him.

When the winter arrived, life became impossible at home. Nana had her
hiding every night. When her father was tired of beating her, her mother
smacked her to teach her how to behave. And there were free-for-alls; as
soon as one of them began to beat her, the other took her part, so that
all three of them ended by rolling on the floor in the midst of the
broken crockery. And with all this, there were short rations and they
shivered with cold. Whenever the girl bought anything pretty, a bow or
a pair of buttons, her parents confiscated the purchase and drank
what they could get for it. She had nothing of her own, excepting her
allowance of blows, before coiling herself up between the rags of
a sheet, where she shivered under her little black skirt, which she
stretched out by way of a blanket. No, that cursed life could not
continue; she was not going to leave her skin in it. Her father had long
since ceased to count for her; when a father gets drunk like hers did,
he isn't a father, but a dirty beast one longs to be rid of. And now,
too, her mother was doing down the hill in her esteem. She drank as
well. She liked to go and fetch her husband at Pere Colombe's, so as to
be treated; and she willingly sat down, with none of the air of disgust
that she had assumed on the first occasion, draining glasses indeed at
one gulp, dragging her elbows over the table for hours and leaving the
place with her eyes starting out of her head.

When Nana passed in front of l'Assommoir and saw her mother inside, with
her nose in her glass, fuddled in the midst of the disputing men,
she was seized with anger; for youth which has other dainty thoughts
uppermost does not understand drink. On these evenings it was a pretty
sight. Father drunk, mother drunk, a hell of a home that stunk with
liquor, and where there was no bread. To tell the truth, a saint would
not have stayed in th