“Look at him there—the great glutton! 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: