son was having terrible effects. By dint of imbibing
alcohol, his body shrunk up like the embryos displayed in glass jars in
chemical laboratories. When he approached a window you could see through
his ribs, so skinny had he become. Those who knew his age, only forty
years just gone, shuddered when he passed by, bent and unsteady,
looking as old as the streets themselves. And the trembling of his hands
increased, the right one danced to such an extent, that sometimes he had
to take his glass between both fists to carry it to his lips. Oh! that
cursed trembling! It was the only thing that worried his addled brains.
You could hear him growling ferocious insults against those hands of
his.

This last summer, during which Nana usually came home to spend her
nights, after she had finished knocking about, was especially bad for
Coupeau. His voice changed entirely as if liquor had set a new music in
his throat. He became deaf in one ear. Then in a few days his sight grew
dim, and he had to clutch hold of the stair railings to prevent himself
from falling. As for his health, he had abominable headaches and
dizziness. All on a sudden he was seized with acute pains in his arms
and legs; he turned pale; was obliged to sit down, and remained on a
chair witless for hours; indeed, after one such attack, his arm remained
paralyzed for the whole day. He took to his bed several times; he
rolled himself up and hid himself under the sheet, breathing hard
and continuously like a suffering animal. Then the strange scenes of
Sainte-Anne began again. Suspicious and nervous, worried with a burning
fever, he rolled about in a mad rage, tearing his blouse and biting the
furniture with his convulsed jaws; or else he sank into a great state of
emotion, complaining like a child, sobbing and lamenting because nobody
loved him. One night when Gervaise and Nana returned home together they
were surprised not to find him in his bed. He had laid the bolster in
his place. And when they discovered him, hiding between the bed and the
wall, his teeth were chattering, and he related that some men had come
to murder him. The two women were obliged to put him to bed again and
quiet him like a child.

Coupeau knew only one remedy, to toss down a pint of spirits; a whack in
his stomach, which set him on his feet again. This was how he doctored
his gripes of a morning. His memory had left him long ago, his brain was
empty; and he no sooner found himself on his fe