man when only fourteen. Then too, she had often helped her
mother empty a bottle of anisette. But she had learned a few things
from experience. He was wrong to think of her as strong-willed; her will
power was very weak. She had always let herself be pushed into things
because she didn't want to hurt someone's feelings. Her one hope now was
to live among decent people, for living among bad people was like being
hit over the head. It cracks your skull. Whenever she thought of the
future, she shivered. Everything she had seen in life so far, especially
when a child, had given her lessons to remember.

Coupeau, however, chaffed her about her gloomy thoughts, and brought
back all her courage by trying to pinch her hips. She pushed him away
from her, and slapped his hands, whilst he called out laughingly that,
for a weak woman, she was not a very easy capture. He, who always joked
about everything did not trouble himself regarding the future. One day
followed another, that was all. There would always be somewhere to sleep
and a bite to eat. The neighborhood seemed decent enough to him, except
for a gang of drunkards that ought to be cleaned out of the gutters.

Coupeau was not a bad sort of fellow. He sometimes had really sensible
things to say. He was something of a dandy with his Parisian working
man's gift for banter, a regular gift of gab, and besides, he was
attractive.

They had ended by rendering each other all sorts of services at the
Hotel Boncoeur. Coupeau fetched her milk, ran her errands, carried her
bundles of clothes; often of an evening, as he got home first from work,
he took the children for a walk on the exterior Boulevard. Gervaise, in
return for his polite attentions, would go up into the narrow room at
the top of the house where he slept, and see to his clothes, sewing
buttons on his blue linen trousers, and mending his linen jackets. A
great familiarity existed between them. She was never bored when he
was around. The gay songs he sang amused her, and so did his continuous
banter of jokes and jibes characteristic of the Paris streets, this
being still new to her.

On Coupeau's side, this continual familiarity inflamed him more and
more until it began to seriously bother him. He began to feel tense and
uneasy. He continued with his foolish talk, never failing to ask her,
"When will it be?" She understood what he meant and teased him. He would
then come to visit her carrying his bedroom slippers, as if