What use was he--that drunkard?
To make her weep, to devour all she possessed, to drive her to sin.

Well! Men so useless as he should be thrown as quickly as possible into the hole and the polka of deliverance be danced over them.

And when the mother said "Kill him!" the daughter responded "Knock him on the head!" Nana read all of the reports of accidents in the newspapers, and made reflections that were unnatural for a girl.

Her father had such good luck an omnibus had knocked him down without even sobering him.

Would the beggar never croak?
In the midst of her own poverty Gervaise suffered even more because other families around her were also starving to death.