sufficient, he had sent the waiter to his wife with the bill, and to say that he was under lock for the balance.  She laughed and shrugged her shoulders.  Where was the harm if her good man amused himself a little while?  You must give men a long rein if you want to live peaceably at home.  Gracious powers!  It was easy to understand.  Coupeau still suffered from his leg; besides, he was drawn in sometimes.  He was obliged to do as the others did, or else he would pass for a muff.  It was really a matter of no consequence.  If he came home a little bit elevated, he went to bed, and two hours afterwards he was all right again.

But Coupeau was becoming a continual drag on his wife.  Most of his time and few earnings were wasted in Colombe’s “Assommoir.”  And Nana, between her mother’s toil and her father’s shiftlessness, ran wild about the streets.

Then one day Coupeau came in drunk.  He almost smashed a pane of glass with his shoulder as he missed the door.  He was in a state of absolute drunkenness, with his teeth clinched and his nose inflamed.  And Gervaise at once recognised the “vitriol” of the “Assommoir” in the poisoned blood which made his skin quite pale.  She tried to make fun and get him to bed, as she had done on the days when the wine had made him merry, but he pushed her aside, without opening his lips, and raised his fist to her in passing as he went to bed of his own accord.  Then she grew cold.  She thought of the men she knew—­of her husband, of Goujet, of Lantier—­her heart breaking, despairing of ever being happy.

IV.—­Lantier’s Return

At this stage of Coupeau’s affairs Virginie reappeared.  She expressed great joy in meeting her former foe, declaring that she retained no bad feeling.  She mentioned that Gervaise might be interested to know that she had recently seen Lantier in the neighbourhood.  Gervaise received the news with apparent indifference.  Then, on the evening of her fete Lantier appeared and, strangely enough, it was the zinc-worker who, heated with the festival drinking, welcomed him most warmly.

Gervaise, feeling meek and stupid, gazed at them one after the other.  At first when her husband pushed her old lover into the shop, she could not believe it possible; the walls would fall in and crush the whole of them.  Then, seeing the two men seated together, and without so much as the muslin curtains moving, she suddenly thought it the most natural thing in the world.

On the following Saturday Coupeau brought Lantier home with him in the evening.  He remained standing and avoided looking at Gervaise.

Coupeau looked at them, and then spoke his mind very plainly.  They were not going to behave like a couple of geese, he hoped.  The past was the past, was it not?  If people nursed grudges after nine and ten years, one would end by no longer seeing anybody.  No, no, he carried his heart in his hand, he did.  He knew who he had to deal with, a worthy woman and a worthy man—­in short, two friends.