Then the two sisters were in duty bound to pull out their handkerchiefs. Their brother had lived a most dissolute life, but then he was their brother. Boche shrugged his shoulders and said in an audible voice: "Pshaw! It is only one drunkard the less!" After this day Gervaise was not always quite right in her mind, and it was one of the attractions of the house to see her act Coupeau. But her representations were often involuntary. She trembled at times from head to foot and uttered little spasmodic cries. She had taken the disease in a modified form at Sainte-Anne's from looking so long at her husband. But she never became altogether like him in the few remaining months of her existence. She sank lower day by day. As soon as she got a little money from any source whatever she drank it away at once. Her landlord decided to turn her out of the room she occupied, and as Father Bru was discovered dead one day in his den under the stairs, M. Marescot allowed her to take possession of his quarters. It was there, therefore, on the old straw bed, that she lay waiting for death to come. Apparently even Mother Earth would have none of her. She tried several times to throw herself out of the window, but death took her by bits, as it were. In fact, no one knew exactly when she died or exactly what she died of. They spoke of cold and hunger. But the truth was she died of utter weariness of life, and Father Bazonge came the day she was found dead in her den. Under his arm he carried a coffin, and he was very tipsy and as gay as a lark. "It is foolish to be in a hurry, because one always gets what one wants finally. I am ready to give you all your good pleasure when your time comes. Some want to go, and some want to stay. And here is one who wanted to go and was kept waiting." And when he lifted Gervaise in his great, coarse hands he did it tenderly. And as he laid her gently in her coffin he murmured between two hiccups: "It is I--my dear, it is I," said this rough consoler of women. "It is I. Be happy now and sleep quietly, my dear!" THE END.