d a broom except when the accumulation of filth almost upset her.

She could keep no work, and at last came to scrub out the shop and rooms
for Virginie. She came on Saturday morning with a pail and a scrubbing
brush, without appearing to suffer in the least at having to perform a
dirty, humble duty, a charwoman's work, in the home where she had
reigned as the beautiful, fair-haired mistress--for thirty sous. It was
a last humiliation, the end of her pride. Virginie must have enjoyed
herself, for a yellowish flame darted from her cat's eyes. At last she
was revenged for that thrashing she had received at the wash-house, and
which she had never forgotten.

Coupeau went from worse to worse. He was not sober once in six months.
Then he fell ill and had to go to the asylum, but when he came out
repaired he would begin to pull himself to bits again and need another
mending. In three years he went seven times to the asylum in this
fashion, until he died in the extremities of delirium.

Gervaise was next compelled to descend to begging of Lorilleux and his
wife. But they refused her a son or a crumb and laughed at her. It was
terrible. She remembered her ideal of former days; to work quietly,
always having bread to eat and a tidy home to sleep in, to bring up her
children not to be thrashed, and to die in her bed. No, really, it was
droll how all that was be? coming realised! She no longer worked, she no
longer ate, she slept on filth; all that was left for her to do was to
die on the pavement, and it would not take long if, on getting into her
room, she could only screw up enough courage to fling herself out of the
window. What increased her ugly laugh was the remembrance of her grand
hope of retiring into the country after twenty years spent in ironing.
Well! she was on her way to the country. She was about to have her green
corner in the Pere-Lachaise cemetery.

Gervaise lasted in this state several months. She fell lower and lower
still, dying of starvation a little every day. As soon as she had four
sous, she drank and fought the walls. Her landlord had decided to turn
her out of her room on the sixth floor, but allowed her to turn into a
hole under the staircase. It was inside there, on some old straw, that
her teeth chattered, whilst her stomach was empty and her bones were
frozen. The earth would not have her evidently. She was becoming
idiotic; she did not even think of making an end of herself by jumping
out of th