r their arrival
in the city. She got employment in the laundry of Madame Fauconnier, and
a few months later married Coupeau, a zinc-worker, who, though the son
of drunken parents, was himself steady and industrious. For a while
everything prospered with the Coupeaus; by hard work they were able to
save a little money, and in time a daughter (Nana) was born to them.
Then an accident to Coupeau, who fell from the roof of a house,
brought about a change. His recovery was slow, and left him with
an unwillingness to work and an inclination to pass his time in
neighbouring dram-shops. Meantime Gervaise, with money borrowed from
Goujet, a man who loved her with almost idyllic affection, had started
a laundry of her own. She was successful for a time, in spite of her
husband's growing intemperance and an increasing desire in herself
for ease and good living; but deterioration had begun, and with the
reappearance of Lantier, her old lover, it became rapid. Coupeau was by
this time a confirmed loafer and drunkard, while Gervaise was growing
careless and ease-loving. Lantier, having become a lodger with the
Coupeaus, ceased doing any work, and as he never paid anything for his
board, his presence not unnaturally hastened the downfall of his hosts.
Circumstances conspired to renew the old relations between Gervaise and
Lantier, and by easy stages she descended that somewhat slippery stair
which leads to ruin. The shop was given up, and she again got employment
in the laundry of Madame Fauconnier, though she was no longer the
capable workwoman of former times. Nana, her daughter, vicious from
childhood, had taken to evil courses; her husband had at least one
attack of delirium tremens; and she herself was fast giving way
to intemperance. The end was rapid. Coupeau died in the asylum of
Sainte-Anne after an illness the description of which is for pure horror
unparalleled in fiction; while Gervaise, after sinking to the lowest
depths of degradation and poverty, died miserably in a garret. The
tragedy of it all is that Gervaise, despite her early lapse with
Lantier, was a good and naturally virtuous woman, whose ruin was
wrought by circumstances and by the operation of the relentless laws of
heredity.

It may be useful to note here that though Zola states in _L'Assommoir_
that Gervaise and Lantier had two sons (Claude, born 1842, and Etienne,
born 1846), he makes a third son (Jacques, born 1844), not elsewhere
mentioned, the hero of _