CHAPTER IV

A HAPPY HOME

Four years of hard and incessant toil followed this day. Gervaise and
Coupeau were wise and prudent. They worked hard and took a little
relaxation on Sundays. The wife worked twelve hours of the twenty-four
with Mme Fauconnier and yet found time to keep her own home like
waxwork. The husband was never known to be tipsy but brought home his
wages and smoked his pipe at his own window at night before going to
bed. They were the bright and shining lights, the good example of the
whole _Quartier_, and as they made jointly about nine francs per
day, it was easy to see they were putting by money.

But in the first few months of their married life they were obliged to
trim their sails closely and had some trouble to make both ends meet.
They took a great dislike to the Hotel Boncoeur. They longed for a
home of their own with their own furniture. They estimated the cost
over and over again and decided that for three hundred and fifty
francs they could venture, but they had little hope of saving such a
sum in less than two years, when a stroke of good luck befell them.

An old gentleman in Plassans sent for Claude to place him at school.
He was a very eccentric old gentleman, fond of pictures and art.
Claude was a great expense to his mother, and when Etienne alone was
at home they saved the three hundred and fifty francs in seven months.
The day they purchased their furniture they took a long and happy walk
together, for it was an important step they had taken--important not
only in their own eyes but in those of the people around them.