utton! the good-for-nothing creature,
the old boozer! Serve him right, serve him right!"

He no longer answered her. He contented himself with winking behind the
old woman's back, and turning over on his other side--the only movement
of which he was now capable. He called this exercise a "tack to the
north" or a "tack to the south."

His great distraction nowadays was to listen to the conversations in the
bar, and to shout through the wall when he recognized a friend's voice:

"Hallo, my son-in-law! Is that you, Celestin?"

And Celestin Maloisel 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