Gervaise, struck dumb, imploringly clasped her hands, her eyes full of tears.  With an energetic shake of his big bony head, he gave her to understand that all supplications were useless.  Besides, the respect due to the dead forbade all discussion.  He discreetly retired, walking backwards.

Gervaise was persuaded by the jealous Lorilleux to resign the lease of her shop to Virginie and her husband.  That evening when Gervaise found herself at home again after the funeral she continued in a stupefied state on a chair.  It seemed to her that the rooms were very large and deserted.  Really, it would be a good riddance.  But it was certainly not only mother Coupeau that she missed.  She missed, too, many other things, very likely a part of her life, and her shop, and her pride of being an employer, and other sentiments besides, which she had buried on that day.  Yes, the walls were bare, and her heart also; it was an absolute deplenishment, a tumble into the pit.

It was the beginning of the end.  She got employment with her old employer, Madame Fauconnier, but presently she began to be looked upon with disfavour.  She was not nearly so expert; she did her work so clumsily that the mistress had reduced her wages to forty sous a day, the price paid to the stupidest.  With all that she was very proud and very susceptible, throwing at everybody’s head her former position of a person in business.  Some days she never appeared at all, whilst on others she would leave in the midst of her work through nothing but a fit of temper.  After these outbursts, she would be taken back out of charity, which embittered her still more.

As for Coupeau, he did perhaps work, but in that case he certainly made a present of his labour to the government; for Gervaise never saw his money.  She no longer looked in his hands when he returned home on paydays.  He arrived swinging his arms, his pockets empty, and often without his handkerchief.  Good gracious!  Yes, he had lost his fogle, or else some rascally comrade had sneaked it.  At first he made excuses; he invented all sorts of lies—­ten francs for a subscription, twenty francs fallen through a hole which he showed in his pocket, fifty francs disbursed in paying off imaginary debts.  After a little, he no longer troubled himself to give any explanations.  The money evaporated, that was all!

Yes, it was their fault if they descended lower and lower every season.  But that is the sort of thing one never tells one self, especially when one is down in the gutter.  They accused their bad fortune; they pretended that fate was against them.  Their home had become a little hell by this time.  They bickered away the whole day.  However, they had not yet come to blows, with the exception of a few smacks which somehow were given at the height of their disputes.  The saddest thing was that they had opened the cage of affection; the better feelings had all taken flight like so many canaries.  The loving