Gervaise pitied Father Bru from the bottom of her heart; he lay the greater part of the time rolled up in the straw in his den under the staircase leading to the roof. When two or three days elapsed without his showing himself someone opened the door and looked in to see if he were still alive. Yes, he was living; that is, he was not dead. When Gervaise had bread she always remembered him. If she had learned to hate men because of her husband her heart was still tender toward animals, and Father Bru seemed like one to her. She regarded him as a faithful old dog. Her heart was heavy within her whenever she thought of him, alone, abandoned by God and man, dying by inches or drying, rather, as an orange dries on the chimney piece. Gervaise was also troubled by the vicinity of the undertaker Bazonge--a wooden partition alone separated their rooms. When he came in at night she could hear him throw down his glazed hat, which fell with a dull thud, like a shovelful of clay, on the table. The black cloak hung against the wall rustled like the wings of some huge bird of prey. She could hear his every movement, and she spent most of her time listening to him with morbid horror, while he--all unconscious--hummed his vulgar songs and tipsily staggered to his bed, under which the poor woman's sick fancy pictured a dead body concealed. She had read in some paper a dismal tale of some undertaker who took home with him coffin after coffin--children's coffins--in order to make one trip to the cemetery suffice. When she heard his step the whole corridor was pervaded to her senses with the odor of dead humanity. She would as lief have resided at Pere-Lachaise and watched the moles at their work. The man terrified her; his incessant laughter dismayed her. She talked of moving but at the same time was reluctant to do so, for there was a strange fascination about Bazonge after all. Had he not told her once that he would come for her and lay her down to sleep in the shadow of waving branches, where she would know neither hunger nor toil? She wished she could try it for a month. And she thought how delicious it would be in midwinter, just at the time her quarter's rent was due. But, alas, this was not possible! The rest and the sleep must be eternal; this thought chilled her, and her longing for death faded away before the unrelenting severity of the bonds exacted by Mother Earth. One night she was sick and feverish, and instead of throwing herself out of the window as she was tempted to do, she rapped on the partition and called loudly: "Father Bazonge! Father Bazonge!" The undertaker was kicking off his slippers, singing a vulgar song as he did so. "What is the matter?" he answered.