Gervaise seemed to be disposed to yield, and then Virginie spoke in the blandest of tones. "I will take the lease off your hands," she said, "and will arrange the back rent with your landlord." "No, no! Thank you," cried Gervaise, shaking off the lethargy in which she had been wrapped. "I can manage this matter and I can work. No, no, I say." Lantier interposed and said soothingly: "Never mind! We will talk of it another time--tomorrow, possibly." The family were to sit up all night. Nana cried vociferously when she was sent into the Boche quarters to sleep; the Poissons remained until midnight. Virginia began to talk of the country: she would like to be buried under a tree with flowers and grass on her grave. Mme Lerat said that in her wardrobe--folded up in lavender--was the linen sheet in which her body was to be wrapped. When the Poissons went away Lantier accompanied them in order, he said, to leave his bed for the ladies, who could take turns in sleeping there. But the ladies preferred to remain together about the stove. Mme Lorilleux said she had no black dress, and it was too bad that she must buy one, for they were sadly pinched just at this time. And she asked Gervaise if she was sure that her mother had not a black skirt which would do, one that had been given her on her birthday. Gervaise went for the skirt. Yes, it would do if it were taken in at the waist. Then Mme Lorilleux looked at the bed and the wardrobe and asked if there was nothing else belonging to her mother. Here Mme Lerat interfered. The Coupeaus, she said, had taken care of her mother, and they were entitled to all the trifles she had left. The night seemed endless. They drank coffee and went by turns to look at the body, lying silent and calm under the flickering light of the candle. The interment was to take place at half-past ten, but Gervaise would gladly have given a hundred francs, if she had had them, to anyone who would have taken Mamma Coupeau away three hours before the time fixed. "Ah," she said to herself, "it is no use to disguise the fact: people are very much in the way after they are dead, no matter how much you have loved them!" Father Bazonge, who was never known to be sober, appeared with the coffin and the pall. When he saw Gervaise he stood with his eyes starting from his head. "I beg you pardon," he said, "but I thought it was for you," and he was turning to go away. "Leave the coffin!" cried Gervaise, growing very pale. Bazonge began to apologize: "I heard them talking yesterday, but I did not pay much attention. I congratulate you that you are still alive. Though why I do, I do not know, for life is not such a very agreeable thing." Gervaise listened with a shiver of horror and a morbid dread that he would take her away and shut her up in his box and bury her. She had once heard him say that he knew a woman who would be only too thankful if he would do exactly that.