Gervaise had sprung upon Bijard and torn the whip away from him.
He stood bewildered in front of the bed.
What was the dirty brat talking about?
Do girls die so young without even having been ill?
Some excuse to get sugar out of him no doubt.
Ah! he’d make inquiries, and if she lied, let her look out!
“You will see, it’s the truth,” she continued.
“As long as I could I avoided worrying you; but be kind now, and bid me good-bye, papa.”
Bijard wriggled his nose as if he fancied she was deceiving him.
And yet it was true she had a singular look, the serious mien of a grown up person.
The breath of death which passed through the room in some measure sobered him.
He gazed around like a man awakened from a long sleep, saw the room so tidy, the two children clean, playing and laughing.
And then he sank on to a chair stammering,
“Our little mother, our little mother.”
Those were the only words he could find to say, and yet they were very tender ones to Lalie, who had never been much spoiled.
She consoled her father. What especially worried her was to go off like this without having completely brought up the little ones.
He would take care of them, would he not?
With her dying breath she told him how they ought to be cared for and kept clean.
But stultified, with the fumes of drink seizing hold of him again, he wagged his head, watching her with an uncertain stare as she was dying.
All kind of things were touched in him, but he could find no more to say and he was too utterly burnt with liquor to shed a tear.
“Listen,” resumed Lalie, after a pause.
“We owe four francs and seven sous to the baker; you must pay that. Madame Gaudron borrowed an iron of ours, which you must get from her.
I wasn’t able to make any soup this evening, but there’s some bread left and you can warm up the potatoes.”
Till her last rattle, the poor kitten still remained the little mother.
Surely she could never be replaced!
She was dying because she had had, at her age, a true mother’s reason, because her breast was too small and weak for so much maternity.
And if her ferocious beast of a father lost his treasure, it was his own fault.
After kicking the mother to death, hadn’t he murdered the daughter as well?
The two good angels would lie in the pauper’s grave and all that could be in store for him was to kick the bucket like a dog in the gutter.
Gervaise restrained herself not to burst out sobbing.
She extended her hands, desirous of easing the child, and as the shred of a sheet was falling, she wished to tack it up and arrange the bed.
Then the dying girl’s poor little body was seen.
Ah! Mon Dieu! what misery! What woe!
Stones would have wept.
Lalie was bare, with only the remnants of a camisole on her shoulders by way of chemise; yes, bare, with the grievous, bleeding nudity of a martyr.
She had no flesh left; her bones seemed to protrude through the skin.
From her ribs to her thighs there extended a number of violet stripes — the marks of the whip forcibly imprinted on her.
A livid bruise, moreover, encircled her left arm, as if the tender limb, scarcely larger than a lucifer, had been crushed in a vise.
There was also an imperfectly closed wound on her right leg, left there by some ugly blow and which opened again and again of a morning, when she went about doing her errands.
From head to foot, indeed, she was but one bruise!
Oh! this murdering of childhood; those heavy hands crushing this lovely girl; how abominable that such weakness should have such a weighty cross to bear!
Again did Gervaise crouch down, no longer thinking of tucking in the sheet, but overwhelmed by the pitiful sight of this martyrdom; and her trembling lips seemed to be seeking for words of prayer.
“Madame Coupeau,” murmured the child, “I beg you — “
With her little arms she tried to draw up the sheet again, ashamed as it were for her father.
Bijard, as stultified as ever, with his eyes on the corpse which was his own work, still wagged his head, but more slowly, like a worried animal might do.
When she had covered Lalie up again, Gervaise felt she could not remain there any longer.
The dying girl was growing weaker and ceased speaking; all that was left to her was her gaze — the dark look she had had as a resigned and thoughtful child and which she now fixed on her two little ones who were still cutting out their pictures.
The room was growing gloomy and Bijard was working off his liquor while the poor girl was in her death agonies.
No, no, life was too abominable!
How frightful it was!