You mustn’t move about, otherwise it’ll be a fortnight before you’ll be able to stand on your legs. Your stew’s very good.
Madame will eat some with me, won’t you, Madame?”
The midwife declined; but she was willing to accept a glass of wine, because it had upset her, said she to find the poor woman with the baby on the mat.
Coupeau at length went off to tell the news to his relations.
Half an hour later he returned with all of them, mother Coupeau, the Lorilleuxs, and Madame Lerat, whom he had met at the latter’s.
“I’ve brought you the whole gang!” cried Coupeau.
“It can’t be helped! They wanted to see you. Don’t open your mouth, it’s forbidden.
They’ll stop here and look at you without ceremony, you know.
As for me, I’m going to make them some coffee, and of the right sort!”
He disappeared into the kitchen.
Mother Coupeau after kissing Gervaise, became amazed at the child’s size.
The two other women also kissed the invalid on her cheeks.
And all three, standing before the bed, commented with divers exclamations on the details of the confinement — a most remarkable confinement, just like having a tooth pulled, nothing more.
Madame Lerat examined the baby all over, declared she was well formed, even added that she could grow up into an attractive woman. Noticing that the head had been squeezed into a point on top, she kneaded it gently despite the infant’s cries, trying to round it a bit.
Madame Lorilleux grabbed the baby from her; that could be enough to give the poor little thing all sorts of vicious tendencies, meddling with it like that while her skull was still soft.
She then tried to figure out who the baby resembled. This almost led to a quarrel.
Lorilleux, peering over the women’s shoulders, insisted that the little girl didn’t look the least bit like Coupeau. Well, maybe a little around the nose, nothing more.
She was her mother all over again, with big eyes like hers. Certainly there were no eyes like that in the Coupeau family.
Coupeau, however, had failed to reappear.
One could hear him in the kitchen struggling with the grate and the coffee-pot.
Gervaise was worrying herself frightfully; it was not the proper thing for a man to make coffee; and she called and told him what to do, without listening to the midwife’s energetic “hush!”
“Here we are!” said Coupeau, entering with the coffee-pot in his hand.
“Didn’t I just have a bother with it!
It all went wrong on purpose! Now we’ll drink out of glasses, won’t we?
Because you know, the cups are still at the shop.”
They seated themselves around the table, and the zinc-worker insisted on pouring out the coffee himself.
It smelt very strong, it was none of that weak stuff.
When the midwife had sipped hers up, she went off; everything was going on nicely, she was not required. If the young woman did not pass a good night they were to send for her on the morrow.
She was scarcely down the staircase, when Madame Lorilleux called her a glutton and a good-for-nothing.
She put four lumps of sugar in her coffee, and charged fifteen francs for leaving you with your baby all by yourself.
But Coupeau took her part; he would willingly fork out the fifteen francs. After all those sort of women spent their youth in studying, they were right to charge a good price.
It was then Lorilleux who got into a quarrel with Madame Lerat by maintaining that, in order to have a son, the head of the bed should be turned to the north. She shrugged her shoulders at such nonsense, offering another formula which consisted in hiding under the mattress, without letting your wife know, a handful of fresh nettles picked in bright sunlight.
The table had been pushed over close to the bed.
Until ten o’clock Gervaise lay there, smiling although she was only half awake. She was becoming more and more weary, her head turned sideways on the pillow.
She no longer had the energy to venture a remark or a gesture.
It seemed to her that she was dead, a very sweet death, from the depths of which she was happy to observe the others still in the land of the living.
The thin cries of her baby daughter rose above the hum of heavy voices that were discussing a recent murder on Rue du Bon Puits, at the other end of La Chapelle.
Then, as the visitors were thinking of leaving, they spoke of the christening.
The Lorilleux had promised to be godfather and godmother; they looked very glum over the matter. However, if they had not been asked to stand they would have felt rather peculiar.
Coupeau did not see any need for christening the little one; it certainly would not procure her an income of ten thousand francs, and besides she might catch a cold from it.
The less one had to do with priests the better.
But mother Coupeau called him a heathen.
The Lorilleux, without going and eating consecrated bread in church, plumed themselves on their religious sentiments.
“It shall be next Sunday, if you like,” said the chainmaker.
And Gervaise having consented by a nod, everyone kissed her and told her to take good care of herself.
They also wished the baby good-bye.
Each one went and leant over the little trembling body with smiles and loving words as though she were able to understand.
They called her Nana, the pet name for Anna, which was her godmother’s name.
“Good night, Nana. Come be a good girl, Nana.”
When they had at length gone off, Coupeau drew his chair close up to the bed and finished his pipe, holding Gervaise’s hand in his. He smoked slowly, deeply affected and uttering sentences between the puffs.