Gervaise felt as if she were choking; her eyes smarted, and her head was heavy with the fumes of alcohol. She turned around and saw the still, the machine that created drunkards. That evening the copper was dull and glittered only in one round spot. The shadows of the apparatus on the wall behind were strange and weird--creatures with tails, monsters opening gigantic jaws as if to swallow the whole world. "What will you take to drink?" said Coupeau. "Nothing," answered his wife. "You know I have had no dinner!" "You need it all the more then! Have a drop of something!" As she hesitated Mes-Bottes said gallantly: "The lady would like something sweet like herself." "I like men," she answered angrily, "who do not get tipsy and talk like fools! I like men who keep their promises!" Her husband laughed. "You had better drink your share," he said, "for the devil a bit of a circus will you see tonight." She looked at him fixedly. A heavy frown contracted her eyebrows. She answered slowly: "You are right; it is a good idea. We can drink up the money together." Bibi brought her a glass of anisette. As she sipped it she remembered all at once the brandied fruit she had eaten in the same place with Coupeau when he was courting her. That day she had left the brandy and took only the fruit, and now she was sitting there drinking liqueur. But the anisette was good. When her glass was empty she refused another, and yet she was not satisfied. She looked around at the infernal machine behind her--a machine that should have been buried ten fathoms deep in the sea. Nevertheless, it had for her a strange fascination, and she longed to quench her thirst with that liquid fire. "What is that you have in your glasses?" she asked. "That, my dear," answered her husband, "is Father Colombe's own especial brew. Taste it." And when a glass of the vitriol was brought to her Coupeau bade her swallow it down, saying it was good for her. After she had drunk this glass Gervaise was no longer conscious of the hunger that had tormented her. Coupeau told her they could go to the circus another time, and she felt she had best stay where she was. It did not rain in the Assommoir, and she had come to look upon the scene as rather amusing. She was comfortable and sleepy. She took a third glass and then put her head on her folded arms, supporting them on the table, and listened to her husband and his friends as they talked. Behind her the still was at work with constant drip-drip, and she felt a mad desire to grapple with it as with some dangerous beast and tear out its heart. She seemed to feel herself caught in those copper fangs and fancied that those coils of pipe were wound around her own body, slowly but surely crushing out her life.