"Will he get well, sir?" she said. The surgeon shook his head. "What is he saying? Hark! He is talking now." "Just be quiet, will you?" said the young man. "I wish to listen." Coupeau was speaking fast and looking all about, as if he were examining the underbrush in the Bois de Vincennes. "Where is it now?" he exclaimed and then, straightening himself, he looked off into the distance. "It is a fair," he exclaimed, "and lanterns in the trees, and the water is running everywhere: fountains, cascades and all sorts of things." He drew a long breath, as if enjoying the delicious freshness of the air. By degrees, however, his features contracted again with pain, and he ran quickly around the wall of his cell. "More trickery," he howled. "I knew it!" He started back with a hoarse cry; his teeth chattered with terror. "No, I will not throw myself over! All that water would drown me! No, I will not!" "I am going," said Gervaise to the surgeon. "I cannot stay another moment." She was very pale. Coupeau kept up his infernal dance while she tottered down the stairs, followed by his hoarse voice. How good it was to breathe the fresh air outside! That evening everyone in the huge house in which Coupeau had lived talked of his strange disease. The concierge, crazy to hear the details, condescended to invite Gervaise to take a glass of cordial, forgetting that he had turned a cold shoulder upon her for many weeks. Mme Lorilleux and Mme Poisson were both there also. Boche had heard of a cabinetmaker who had danced the polka until he died. He had drunk absinthe. Gervaise finally, not being able to make them understand her description, asked for the table to be moved and there, in the center of the loge, imitated her husband, making frightful leaps and horrible contortions. "Yes, that was what he did!" And then everybody said it was not possible that man could keep up such violent exercise for even three hours. Gervaise told them to go and see if they did not believe her. But Mme Lorilleux declared that nothing would induce her to set foot within Sainte-Anne's, and Virginie, whose face had grown longer and longer with each successive week that the shop got deeper into debt, contented herself with murmuring that life was not always gay--in fact, in her opinion, it was a pretty dismal thing. As the wine was finished, Gervaise bade them all good night. When she was not speaking she had sat with fixed, distended eyes. Coupeau was before them all the time. The next day she said to herself when she rose that she would never go to the hospital again; she could do no good. But as midday arrived she could stay away no longer and started forth, without a thought of the length of the walk, so great were her mingled curiosity and anxiety. She was not obliged to ask a question; she heard the frightful sounds at the very foot of the stairs. The keeper, who was carrying a cup of tisane across the corridor, stopped when he saw her.