ite and breathing so
feebly that she seemed to be dead. Her mother shook her five or six
times in the course of the morning, threatening to throw a jugful of
water over her. The sight of this handsome lazy girl, half naked
and besotted with wine, exasperated her, as she saw her lying there.
Sometimes Nana opened an eye, closed it again, and then stretched
herself out all the more.

One day after reproaching her with the life she led and asking her
if she had taken on an entire battalion of soldiers, Gervaise put her
threat into execution to the extent of shaking her dripping hand over
Nana's body. Quite infuriated, the girl pulled herself up in the sheet,
and cried out:

"That's enough, mamma. It would be better not to talk of men. You did as
you liked, and now I do the same!"

"What! What!" stammered the mother.

"Yes, I never spoke to you about it, for it didn't concern me; but you
didn't used to be very fussy. I often saw you when we lived at the
shop sneaking off as soon as papa started snoring. So just shut up; you
shouldn't have set me the example."

Gervaise remained pale, with trembling hands, turning round without
knowing what she was about, whilst Nana, flattened on her breast,
embraced her pillow with both arms and subsided into the torpor of her
leaden slumber.

Coupeau growled, no longer sane enough to think of launching out a
whack. He was altogether losing his mind. And really there was no need
to call him an unprincipled father, for liquor had deprived him of all
consciousness of good and evil.

Now it was a settled thing. He wasn't sober once in six months; then he
was laid up and had to go into the Sainte-Anne hospital; a pleasure trip
for him. The Lorilleuxs said that the Duke of Bowel-Twister had gone
to visit his estates. At the end of a few weeks he left the asylum,
repaired and set together again, and then he began to pull himself to
bits once more, till he was down on his back and needed another mending.
In three years he went seven times to Sainte-Anne in this fashion. The
neighborhood said that his cell was kept ready for him. But the worst of
the matter was that this obstinate tippler demolished himself more and
more each time so that from relapse to relapse one could foresee the
final tumble, the last cracking of this shaky cask, all the hoops of
which were breaking away, one after the other.

At the same time, he forgot to improve in appearance; a perfect ghost
to look at! The poi