When she reached her home she found the whole house in confusion. Her employees had left their work and were in the courtyard. She asked what the matter was. "It is Father Bijard beating his wife; he is as drunk as a fool, and he drove her up the stairs to her room, where he is murdering her. Just listen!" Gervaise flew up the stairs. She was very fond of Mme Bijard, who was her laundress and whose courage and industry she greatly admired. On the sixth floor a little crowd was assembled. Mme Boche stood at an open door. "Have done!" she cried. "Have done, or the police will be summoned." No one dared enter the room, because Bijard was well known to be like a madman when he was tipsy. He was rarely thoroughly sober, and on the occasional days when he condescended to work he always had a bottle of brandy at his side. He rarely ate anything, and if a match had been touched to his mouth he would have taken fire like a torch. "Would you let her be killed?" exclaimed Gervaise, trembling from head to foot, and she entered the attic room, which was very clean and very bare, for the man had sold the very sheets off the bed to satisfy his mad passion for drink. In this terrible struggle for life the table had been thrown over, and the two chairs also. On the floor lay the poor woman with her skirts drenched as she had come from the washtub, her hair streaming over her bloody face, uttering low groans at each kick the brute gave her. The neighbors whispered to each other that she had refused to give him the money she had earned that day. Boche called up the staircase to his wife: "Come down, I say; let him kill her if he will. It will only make one fool the less in the world!" Father Bru followed Gervaise into the room, and the two expostulated with the madman. But he turned toward them, pale and threatening; a white foam glistened on his lips, and in his faded eyes there was a murderous expression. He grasped Father Bru by the shoulder and threw him over the table and shook Gervaise until her teeth chattered and then returned to his wife, who lay motionless, with her mouth wide open and her eyes closed; and during this frightful scene little Lalie, four years old, was in the corner, looking on at the murder of her mother. The child's arms were round her sister Henriette, a baby who had just been weaned. She stood with a sad, solemn face and serious, melancholy eyes but shed no tears. When Bijard slipped and fell Gervaise and Father Bru helped the poor creature to her feet, who then burst into sobs. Lalie went to her side, but she did not cry, for the child was already habituated to such scenes. And as Gervaise went down the stairs she was haunted by the strange look of resignation and courage in Lalie's eyes; it was an expression belonging to maturity and experience rather than to childhood. "Your husband is on the other side of the street," said Clemence as soon as she saw Gervaise; "he is as tipsy as possible!"