“Well, old woman, they’ve made your head ache, haven’t they?
You see I couldn’t prevent them coming.
After all, it shows their friendship. But we’re better alone, aren’t we?
I wanted to be alone like this with you.
It has seemed such a long evening to me!
Poor little thing, she’s had a lot to go through!
Those shrimps, when they come out into the world, have no idea of the pain they cause.
It must really almost be like being split in two. Where is does it hurt the most, that I may kiss it and make it well?”
He had carefully slid one of his big hands under her back, and now he drew her toward him, bending over to kiss her stomach through the covers, touched by a rough man’s compassion for the suffering of a woman in childbirth. He inquired if he was hurting her.
Gervaise felt very happy, and answered him that it didn’t hurt any more at all.
She was only worried about getting up as soon as possible, because there was no time to lie about now.
He assured her that he’d be responsible for earning the money for the new little one.
He would be a real bum if he abandoned her and the little rascal.
The way he figured it, what really counted was bringing her up properly. Wasn’t that so?
Coupeau did not sleep much that night.
He covered up the fire in the stove. Every hour he had to get up to give the baby spoonfuls of lukewarm sugar and water. That did not prevent his going off to his work in the morning as usual.
He even took advantage of his lunch-hour to make a declaration of the birth at the mayor’s.
During this time Madame Boche, who had been informed of the event, had hastened to go and pass the day with Gervaise.
But the latter, after ten hours of sleep, bewailed her position, saying that she already felt pains all over her through having been so long in bed.
She would become quite ill if they did not let her get up.
In the evening, when Coupeau returned home, she told him all her worries; no doubt she had confidence in Madame Boche, only it put her beside herself to see a stranger installed in her room, opening the drawers, and touching her things.
On the morrow the concierge, on returning from some errand, found her up, dressed, sweeping and getting her husband’s dinner ready; and it was impossible to persuade her to go to bed again.
They were trying to make a fool of her perhaps!
It was all very well for ladies to pretend to be unable to move.
When one was not rich one had no time for that sort of thing.
Three days after her confinement she was ironing petticoats at Madame Fauconnier’s, banging her irons and all in a perspiration from the great heat of the stove.
On the Saturday evening, Madame Lorilleux brought her presents for her godchild — a cup that cost thirty-five sous, and a christening dress, plaited and trimmed with some cheap lace, which she had got for six francs, because it was slightly soiled.
On the morrow, Lorilleux, as godfather, gave the mother six pounds of sugar.
They certainly did things properly!
At the baptism supper which took place at the Coupeaus that evening, they did not come empty-handed.
Lorilleux carried a bottle of fine wine under each arm and his wife brought a large custard pie from a famous pastry shop on Chaussee Clignancourt.
But the Lorilleuxs made sure that the entire neighborhood knew they had spent twenty francs.
As soon as Gervaise learned of their gossiping, furious, she stopped giving them credit for generosity.
It was at the christening feast that the Coupeaus ended by becoming intimately acquainted with their neighbors on the opposite side of the landing.
The other lodging in the little house was occupied by two persons, mother and son, the Goujets as they were called.
Until then the two families had merely nodded to each other on the stairs and in the street, nothing more; the Coupeaus thought their neighbors seemed rather bearish.
Then the mother, having carried up a pail of water for Gervaise on the morrow of her confinement, the latter had thought it the proper thing to invite them to the feast, more especially as she considered them very respectable people.
And naturally, they there became well acquainted with each other.
The Goujets came from the Departement du Nord.
The mother mended lace; the son, a blacksmith, worked at an iron bolt factory.
They had lived in their lodging for five years.
Behind the quiet peacefulness of their life, a long standing sorrow was hidden. Goujet the father, one day when furiously drunk at Lille, had beaten a comrade to death with an iron bar and had afterwards strangled himself in prison with his handkerchief.
The widow and child, who had come to Paris after their misfortune, always felt the tragedy hanging over their heads, and atoned for it by a strict honesty and an unvarying gentleness and courage.
They had a certain amount of pride in their attitude and regarded themselves as better than other people.
Madame Goujet, dressed in black as usual, her forehead framed in a nun’s hood, had a pale, calm, matronly face, as if the whiteness of the lace and the delicate work of her fingers had cast a glow of serenity over her.
Goujet was twenty-three years old, huge, magnificently built, with deep blue eyes and rosy cheeks, and the strength of Hercules.
His comrades at the shop called him
“Golden Mouth” because of his handsome blonde beard.
Gervaise at once felt a great friendship for these people.
When she entered their home for the first time, she was amazed at the cleanliness of the lodging.