He, jolly, his belly full every day, his head all upside down, coughed, spat, sang "Mother Godichon," made use of many dirty expressions and fought with the four walls before finding his bedstead.

And she remained quite pale, wondering what he could be doing in there.

She imagined the most atrocious things.

She got into her head that he must have brought a corpse home, and was stowing it away under his bedstead.

Well! the newspapers had related something of the kind--an undertaker's helper who collected the coffins of little children at his home, so as to save himself trouble and to make only one journey to the cemetery.
For certain, directly Bazouge arrived, a smell of death seemed to permeate the partition.