"No indeed, not yet. It would never do." She did not want him down in
his bed again. She knew what the doctor had said, and she every day
begged him to take his own time. She even slipped a little silver,
into his vest pocket. All this Coupeau accepted as a matter of course.
He complained of all sorts of pains and aches to gain a little longer
period of indolence and at the end of six months had begun to look
upon himself as a confirmed invalid.

He almost daily dropped into a wineshop with a friend; it was a place
where he could chat a little, and where was the harm? Besides, whoever
heard of a glass of wine killing a man? But he swore to himself that
he would never touch anything but wine--not a drop of brandy should
pass his lips. Wine was good for one--prolonged one's life, aided
digestion--but brandy was a very different matter. Notwithstanding all
these wise resolutions, it came to pass more than once that he came
in, after visiting a dozen different cabarets, decidedly tipsy. On
these occasions Gervaise locked her doors and declared she was ill,
to prevent the Goujets from seeing her husband.

The poor woman was growing very sad. Every night and morning she
passed the shop for which she had so ardently longed. She made her
calculations over and over again until her brain was dizzy. Two
hundred and fifty francs for rent, one hundred and fifty for moving
and the apparatus she needed, one hundred francs to keep things going
until business began to come in. No, it could not be done under five
hundred francs.

She said nothing of this to anyone, deterred only by the fear of
seeming to regret the money she had spent for her husband during his