“More traps, all that! I thought as much. Silence, you set of swindlers! Yes, you’re making a fool of me. It’s for that that you’re drinking and bawling inside there with your viragoes. I’ll demolish you, you and your cottage! Damnation! Will you leave me in peace?”
He clinched his fists; then he uttered a hoarse cry, stooping as he ran. And he stuttered, his teeth chattering with fright.
“It’s so that I may kill myself. No, I won’t throw myself in! All that water means that I’ve no heart. No, I won’t throw myself in!”
The cascades, which fled at his approach, advanced when he retired. And all of a sudden, he looked stupidly around him, mumbling, in a voice which was scarcely audible:
“It isn’t possible, they set conjurers against me!”
“I’m off, sir. I’ve got to go. Good-night!” said Gervaise to the house surgeon. “It upsets me too much; I’ll come again.”
She was quite white. Coupeau was continuing his breakdown from the window to the mattress and from the mattress to the window, perspiring, toiling, always beating the same rhythm. Then she hurried away. But though she scrambled down the stairs, she still heard her husband’s confounded jig until she reached the bottom. Ah! Mon Dieu! how pleasant it was out of doors, one could breathe there!
That evening everyone in the tenement was discussing Coupeau’s strange malady. The Boches invited Gervaise to have a drink with them, even though they now considered Clump-clump beneath them, in order to hear all the details. Madame Lorilleux and Madame Poisson were there also. Boche told of a carpenter he had known who had been a drinker of absinthe. The man shed his clothes, went out in the street and danced the polka until he died. That rather struck the ladies as comic, even though it was very sad.
Gervaise got up in the middle of the room and did an imitation of Coupeau. Yes, that’s just how it was. Can anyone feature a man doing that for hours on end? If they didn’t believe they could go see for themselves.
On getting up the next morning, Gervaise promised herself she would not return to the Sainte-Anne again. What use would it be? She did not want to go off her head also. However, every ten minutes, she fell to musing and became absent-minded. It would be curious though, if he were still throwing his legs about. When twelve o’clock struck, she could no longer resist; she started off and did not notice how long the walk was, her brain was so full of her desire to go and the dread of what awaited her.