One is generally punished if one does what is not right.
His dissoluteness had gradually become a habit. Now it was as regular an affair as eating and drinking.
Each time Coupeau came home drunk, she would go to Lantier’s room. This was usually on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
Sometimes on other nights, if Coupeau was snoring too loudly, she would leave in the middle of the night.
It was not that she cared more for Lantier, but just that she slept better in his room.
Mother Coupeau never dared speak openly of it.
But after a quarrel, when the laundress had bullied her, the old woman was not sparing in her allusions.
She would say that she knew men who were precious fools and women who were precious hussies, and she would mutter words far more biting, with the sharpness of language pertaining to an old waistcoat-maker.
The first time this had occurred Gervaise looked at her straight in the face without answering. Then, also avoiding going into details, she began to defend herself with reasons given in a general sort of way.
When a woman had a drunkard for a husband, a pig who lived in filth, that woman was to be excused if she sought for cleanliness elsewhere.
Once she pointed out that Lantier was just as much her husband as Coupeau was.
Hadn’t she known him since she was fourteen and didn’t she have children by him?
Anyway, she’d like to see anyone make trouble for her.
She wasn’t the only one around the Rue de la Goutte-d’Or.
Madame Vigouroux, the coal-dealer had a merry dance from morning to night.
Then there was the grocer’s wife, Madame Lehongre with her brother-in-law.
Mon Dieu! What a slob of a fellow.
He wasn’t worth touching with a shovel. Even the neat little clockmaker was said to have carried on with his own daughter, a streetwalker.
Ah, the entire neighborhood.
Oh, she knew plenty of dirt.
One day when mother Coupeau was more pointed than usual in her observations, Gervaise had replied to her, clinching her teeth:
“You’re confined to your bed and you take advantage of it. Listen! You’re wrong. You see that I behave nicely to you, for I’ve never thrown your past life into your teeth.
Oh! I know all about it. No, don’t cough. I’ve finished what I had to say.
It’s only to request you to mind your own business, that’s all!”
The old woman almost choked.
On the morrow, Goujet having called about his mother’s washing when Gervaise happened to be out, mother Coupeau called him to her and kept him some time seated beside her bed.
She knew all about the blacksmith’s friendship, and had noticed that for some time past he had looked dismal and wretched, from a suspicion of the melancholy things that were taking place.
So, for the sake of gossiping, and out of revenge for the quarrel of the day before, she bluntly told him the truth, weeping and complaining as though Gervaise’s wicked behavior did her some special injury.
When Goujet quitted the little room, he leant against the wall, almost stifling with grief.
Then, when the laundress returned home, mother Coupeau called to her that Madame Goujet required her to go round with her clothes, ironed or not; and she was so animated that Gervaise, seeing something was wrong, guessed what had taken place and had a presentiment of the unpleasantness which awaited her.
Very pale, her limbs already trembling, she placed the things in a basket and started off.
For years past she had not returned the Goujets a sou of their money.
The debt still amounted to four hundred and twenty-five francs.
She always spoke of her embarrassments and received the money for the washing.
It filled her with shame, because she seemed to be taking advantage of the blacksmith’s friendship to make a fool of him.
Coupeau, who had now become less scrupulous, would chuckle and say that Goujet no doubt had fooled around with her a bit, and had so paid himself.
But she, in spite of the relations she had fallen into with Coupeau, would indignantly ask her husband if he already wished to eat of that sort of bread.
She would not allow anyone to say a word against Goujet in her presence; her affection for the blacksmith remained like a last shred of her honor.
Thus, every time she took the washing home to those worthy people, she felt a spasm of her heart the moment she put a foot on their stairs.
“Ah! it’s you, at last!” said Madame Goujet sharply, on opening the door to her.
“When I’m in want of death, I’ll send you to fetch him.”
Gervaise entered, greatly embarrassed, not even daring to mutter an excuse.
She was no longer punctual, never came at the time arranged, and would keep her customers waiting for days on end.
Little by little she was giving way to a system of thorough disorder.
“For a week past I’ve been expecting you,” continued the lace-mender.
“And you tell falsehoods too; you send your apprentice to me with all sorts of stories; you are then busy with my things, you will deliver them the same evening, or else you’ve had an accident, the bundle’s fallen into a pail of water.
Whilst all this is going on, I waste my time, nothing turns up, and it worries me exceedingly.
No, you’re most unreasonable. Come, what have you in your basket?
Is everything there now?
Have you brought me the pair of sheets you’ve been keeping back for a month past, and the chemise which was missing the last time you brought home the washing?”