"He keeps it up well!" he said. She went in but stood at the door, as she saw there were people there. The young surgeon had surrendered his chair to an elderly gentleman wearing several decorations. He was the chief physician of the hospital, and his eyes were like gimlets. Gervaise tried to see Coupeau over the bald head of that gentleman. Her husband was leaping and dancing with undiminished strength. The perspiration poured more constantly from his brow now; that was all. His feet had worn holes in the mattress with his steady tramp from window to wall. Gervaise asked herself why she had come back. She had been accused the evening before of exaggerating the picture, but she had not made it strong enough. The next time she imitated him she could do it better. She listened to what the physicians were saying: the house surgeon was giving the details of the night with many words which she did not understand, but she gathered that Coupeau had gone on in the same way all night. Finally he said this was the wife of the patient. Wherefore the surgeon in chief turned and interrogated her with the air of a police judge. "Did this man's father drink?" "A little, sir. Just as everybody does. He fell from a roof when he had been drinking and was killed." "Did his mother drink?" "Yes sir--that is, a little now and then. He had a brother who died in convulsions, but the others are very healthy." The surgeon looked at her and said coldly: "You drink too?" Gervaise attempted to defend herself and deny the accusation. "You drink," he repeated, "and see to what it leads. Someday you will be here, and like this." She leaned against the wall, utterly overcome. The physician turned away. He knelt on the mattress and carefully watched Coupeau; he wished to see if his feet trembled as much as his hands. His extremities vibrated as if on wires. The disease was creeping on, and the peculiar shivering seemed to be under the skin--it would ease for a minute or two and then begin again. The belly and the shoulders trembled like water just on the point of boiling. Coupeau seemed to suffer more than the evening before. His complaints were curious and contradictory. A million pins were pricking him. There was a weight under the skin; a cold, wet animal was crawling over him. Then there were other creatures on his shoulder. "I am thirsty," he groaned; "so thirsty." The house surgeon took a glass of lemonade from a tray and gave it to him. He seized the glass in both hands, drank one swallow, spilling the whole of it at the same time. He at once spat it out in disgust. "It is brandy!" he exclaimed. Then the surgeon, on a sign from his chief, gave him some water, and Coupeau did the same thing. "It is brandy!" he cried. "Brandy! Oh, my God!"