He kept his spirits, nevertheless; but his gaiety was of a different kind—­more timid, more humble; and he lived in a constant, childlike fear of his wife, who grumbled from morning till night: 

“Look at him there—­the great glutton! the good-for-nothing creature, the old boozer!  Serve him right, serve him right!”

He no longer answered her.  He contented himself with winking behind the old woman’s back, and turning over on his other side—­the only movement of which he was now capable.  He called this exercise a “tack to the north” or a “tack to the south.”

His great distraction nowadays was to listen to the conversations in the bar, and to shout through the wall when he recognized a friend’s voice: 

“Hallo, my son-in-law!  Is that you, Celestin?”

And Celestin Maloisel answered: 

“Yes, it’s me, Toine.  Are you getting about again yet, old fellow?”

“Not exactly getting about,” answered Toine.  “But I haven’t grown thin; my carcass is still good.”

Soon he got into the way of asking his intimates into his room to keep him company, although it grieved him to see that they had to drink without him.  It pained him to the quick that his customers should be drinking without him.

“That’s what hurts worst of all,” he would say:  “that I cannot drink my Extra-Special any more.  I can put up with everything else, but going without drink is the very deuce.”

Then his wife’s screech-owl face would appear at the window, and she would break in with the words: 

“Look at him!  Look at him now, the good-for-nothing wretch!  I’ve got to feed him and wash him just as if he were a pig!”

And when the old woman had gone, a cock with red feathers would sometimes fly up to the window sill and looking into the room with his round inquisitive eye, would begin to crow loudly.  Occasionally, too, a few hens would flutter as far as the foot of the bed, seeking crumbs on the floor.  Toine’s friends soon deserted the drinking room to come and chat every afternoon beside the invalid’s bed.  Helpless though he was, the jovial Toine still provided them with amusement.  He would have made the devil himself laugh.  Three men were regular in their attendance at the bedside:  Celestin Maloisel, a tall, thin fellow, somewhat gnarled, like the trunk of an apple-tree; Prosper Horslaville, a withered little man with a ferret nose, cunning as a fox; and Cesaire Paumelle, who never spoke, but who enjoyed Toine’s society all the same.

They brought a plank from the yard, propped it upon the edge of the bed, and played dominoes from two till six.

But Toine’s wife soon became insufferable.  She could not endure that her fat, lazy husband should amuse himself at games while lying in his bed; and whenever she caught him beginning a game she pounced furiously on the dominoes, overturned the plank, and carried all away into the bar, declaring that it was quite enough to have to feed that fat, lazy pig without seeing him amusing himself, as if to annoy poor people who had to work hard all day long.