LAssommoir | Page 4

screams, crying also with their scarcely open eyes.
"Ah! there's the music!" shouted Lantier furiously. "I warn you, I'll take
my hook! And it will be for good, this time. You won't shut up? Then,
good morning! I'll return to the place I've just come from."
He had already taken his hat from off the chest of drawers. But
Gervaise threw herself before him, stammering: "No, no!"
And she hushed the little ones' tears with her caresses, smoothed their
hair, and soothed them with soft words. The children, suddenly quieted,
laughing on their pillow, amused themselves by punching each other.
The father however, without even taking off his boots, had thrown
himself on the bed looking worn out, his face bearing signs of having
been up all night. He did not go to sleep, he lay with his eyes wide open,
looking round the room.
"It's a mess here!" he muttered. And after observing Gervaise a moment,
he malignantly added: "Don't you even wash yourself now?"
Gervaise was twenty-two, tall and slim with fine features, but she was

already beginning to show the strain of her hard life. She seemed to
have aged ten years from the hours of agonized weeping. Lantier's
mean remark made her mad.
"You're not fair," she said spiritedly. "You well know I do all I can. It's
not my fault we find ourselves here. I would like to see you, with two
children, in a room where there's not even a stove to heat some water.
When we arrived in Paris, instead of squandering your money, you
should have made a home for us at once, as you promised."
"Listen!" Lantier exploded. "You cracked the nut with me; it doesn't
become you to sneer at it now!"
Apparently not listening, Gervaise went on with her own thought. "If
we work hard we can get out of the hole we're in. Madame Fauconnier,
the laundress on Rue Neuve, will start me on Monday. If you work
with your friend from La Glaciere, in six months we will be doing well.
We'll have enough for decent clothes and a place we can call our own.
But we'll have to stick with it and work hard."
Lantier turned over towards the wall, looking greatly bored. Then
Gervaise lost her temper.
"Yes, that's it, I know the love of work doesn't trouble you much.
You're bursting with ambition, you want to be dressed like a gentleman.
You don't think me nice enough, do you, now that you've made me
pawn all my dresses? Listen, Auguste, I didn't intend to speak of it, I
would have waited a bit longer, but I know where you spent the night; I
saw you enter the 'Grand-Balcony' with that trollop Adele. Ah! you
choose them well! She's a nice one, she is! She does well to put on the
airs of a princess! She's been the ridicule of every man who frequents
the restaurant."
At a bound Lantier sprang from the bed. His eyes had become as black
as ink in his pale face. With this little man, rage blew like a tempest.
"Yes, yes, of every man who frequents the restaurant!" repeated the
young woman. "Madame Boche intends to give them notice, she and

her long stick of a sister, because they've always a string of men after
them on the staircase."
Lantier raised his fists; then, resisting the desire of striking her, he
seized hold of her by the arms, shook her violently and sent her
sprawling upon the bed of the children, who recommenced crying. And
he lay down again, mumbling, like a man resolving on something that
he previously hesitated to do:
"You don't know what you've done, Gervaise. You've made a big
mistake; you'll see."
For an instant the children continued sobbing. Their mother, who
remained bending over the bed, held them both in her embrace, and
kept repeating the same words in a monotonous tone of voice.
"Ah! if it weren't for you! My poor little ones! If it weren't for you! If it
weren't for you!"
Stretched out quietly, his eyes raised to the faded strip of chintz,
Lantier no longer listened, but seemed to be buried in a fixed idea. He
remained thus for nearly an hour, without giving way to sleep, in spite
of the fatigue which weighed his eyelids down.
He finally turned toward Gervaise, his face set hard in determination.
She had gotten the children up and dressed and had almost finished
cleaning the room. The room looked, as always, dark and depressing
with its sooty black ceiling and paper peeling from the damp walls. The
dilapidated furniture was always streaked and dirty despite frequent
dustings. Gervaise, devouring her grief, trying to assume a look of
indifference, hurried over her work.
Lantier watched as