accent.

Gervaise, who had fallen back on her chair, gently complained, in
short sentences: "I've not had a wink of sleep. I feared some harm had
happened to you. Where have you been? Where did you spend the night? For
heaven's sake! Don't do it again, or I shall go crazy. Tell me Auguste,
where have you been?"

"Where I had business, of course," he returned shrugging his shoulders.
"At eight o'clock, I was at La Glaciere, with my friend who is to start
a hat factory. We sat talking late, so I preferred to sleep there. Now,
you know, I don't like being spied upon, so just shut up!"

The young woman recommenced sobbing. The loud voices and the rough
movements of Lantier, who upset the chairs, had awakened the children.
They sat up in bed, half naked, disentangling their hair with their tiny
hands, and, hearing their mother weep, they uttered terrible screams,
crying also with their scarcely open eyes.

"Ah! there's the music!" shouted Lantier furiously. "I warn you, I'll
take my hook! And it will be for good, this time. You won't shut up?
Then, good morning! I'll return to the place I've just come from."

He had already taken his hat from off the chest of drawers. But Gervaise
threw herself before him, stammering: "No, no!"

And she hushed the little ones' tears with her caresses, smoothed their
hair, and soothed them with soft words. The children, suddenly quieted,
laughing on their pillow, amused themselves by punching each other. The
father however, without even taking off his boots, had thrown himself on
the bed looking worn out, his face bearing signs of having been up all
night. He did not go to sleep, he lay with his eyes wide open, looking
round the room.

"It's a mess here!" he muttered. And after observing Gervaise a moment,
he malignantly added: "Don't you even wash yourself now?"

Gervaise was twenty-two, tall and slim with fine features, but she was
already beginning to show the strain of her hard life. She seemed to
have aged ten years from the hours of agonized weeping. Lantier's mean
remark made her mad.

"You're not fair," she said spiritedly. "You well know I do all I can.
It's not my fault we find ourselves here. I would like to see you, with
two children, in a room where there's not even a stove to heat some
water. When we arrived in Paris, instead of squandering your money, you
should have made a home for us at once, as you promised."

"Listen!" Lantier exploded. "You cracked the nut wit