answered:

"Yes, it's me, Toine. Are you getting about again yet, old fellow?"

"Not exactly getting about," answered Toine. "But I haven't grown thin;
my carcass is still good."

Soon he got into the way of asking his intimates into his room to keep
him company, although it grieved him to see that they had to drink
without him. It pained him to the quick that his customers should be
drinking without him.

"That's what hurts worst of all," he would say: "that I cannot drink my
Extra-Special any more. I can put up with everything else, but going
without drink is the very deuce."

Then his wife's screech-owl face would appear at the window, and she
would break in with the words:

"Look at him! Look at him now, the good-for-nothing wretch! I've got to
feed him and wash him just as if he were a pig!"

And when the old woman had gone, a cock with red feathers would sometimes
fly up to the window sill and looking into the room with his round
inquisitive eye, would begin to crow loudly. Occasionally, too, a few
hens would flutter as far as the foot of the bed, seeking crumbs on the
floor. Toine's friends soon deserted the drinking room to come and chat
every afternoon beside the invalid's bed. Helpless though he was, the
jovial Toine still provided them with amusement. He would have made the
devil himself laugh. Three men were regular in their attendance at the
bedside: Celestin Maloisel, a tall, thin fellow, somewhat gnarled, like
the trunk of an apple-tree; Prosper Horslaville, a withered little man
with a ferret nose, cunning as a fox; and Cesaire Paumelle, who never
spoke, but who enjoyed Toine's society all the same.

They brought a plank from the yard, propped it upon the edge of the bed,
and played dominoes from two till six.

But Toine's wife soon became insufferable. She could not endure that her
fat, lazy husband should amuse himself at games while lying in his bed;
and whenever she caught him beginning a game she pounced furiously on the
dominoes, overturned the plank, and carried all away into the bar,
declaring that it was quite enough to have to feed that fat, lazy pig
without seeing him amusing himself, as if to annoy poor people who had to
work hard all day long.

Celestin Maloisel and Cesaire Paumelle bent their heads to the storm, but
Prosper Horslaville egged on the old woman, and was only amused at her
wrath.

One day, when she was more angry than usual, he said:

"Do you know what I'd do if