The party had only been in the city a few weeks when Lantier ran off with a girl named Adele, leaving Gervaise and the children unprovided for.  She got work in the laundry of Madame Fauconnier, and not long after received an offer of marriage from Coupeau, a respectable zinc-worker, which after some hesitation she accepted.  The marriage took place, and for a considerable time things prospered, one child, a daughter named Nana being born.  An accident to Coupeau, who fell from a roof and was seriously injured, led to a gradual change; formerly temperate and industrious, he became unwilling to work, and began to spend his time in public-houses.  Gervaise had meantime taken a shop with money borrowed from the Goujets, and had started a laundry in it.  She was at first successful, but in time grew lazy and fond of good living, while Coupeau continued idle and became increasingly intemperate.  Business began to go, and Gervaise became more careless, even taking more drink occasionally than she had been wont to do.  About this time Lantier, her former lover, appeared again, and made friends with Coupeau, who agreed to take him into the house as a lodger.  After that, the descent of Gervaise was rapid.  Lantier never paid anything for his support, Coupeau drank more heavily than ever, and Gervaise, who was gradually drifting into intemperance, resumed her old connection with her lover.  All the time work was being neglected, and debts were accumulating with alarming rapidity.  Eventually Madame Virginie Poisson took over the shop, and with it Lantier, who transferred his affections along with the lease, and the Coupeaus removed into a small house high up in the same building.  Coupeau suffered from repeated attacks of delirium tremens, and eventually died in an asylum.  Gervaise continued to sink still lower, until no work was too menial or too repulsive for her to undertake for the price of drink, and one day in the winter of 1869 she was found dead in a garret of that great tenement house where she had passed so much of her life.  L’Assommoir.

Her sister, Lisa Quenu, the pork-butcher, did not come to her assistance.  Lisa did not like people who were unfortunate, and she was ashamed that Gervaise should have married a workman.  Le Ventre de Paris.

Her son Etienne sent her small sums of money from time to time while he was in a situation at Lille.  Germinal.

[*] These two are the only children of Gervaise and Lantier mentioned by M. Zola in La Fortune des Rougon, L’Assommoir, L’Oeuvre, and Germinal.  In La Bete Humaine, however, the hero, Jacques Lantier, is stated to have been a child of these parents.

MACQUART (JEAN), born 1811, son of Antoine Macquart, was apprenticed to a carpenter.  A quiet, industrious lad, Jean’s father took advantage of his simple nature and made him give up his whole earnings to assist in keeping him in idleness.  Like his sister Gervaise, he ran off soon after the death of his mother.  La Fortune des Rougon.