From head to foot, indeed, she was but one bruise! Oh! this murdering of childhood; those heavy hands crushing this lovely girl; how abominable that such weakness should have such a weighty cross to bear! Again did Gervaise crouch down, no longer thinking of tucking in the sheet, but overwhelmed by the pitiful sight of this martyrdom; and her trembling lips seemed to be seeking for words of prayer.
"Madame Coupeau," murmured the child, "I beg you--" With her little arms she tried to draw up the sheet again, ashamed as it were for her father.

Bijard, as stultified as ever, with his eyes on the corpse which was his own work, still wagged his head, but more slowly, like a worried animal might do.
When she had covered Lalie up again, Gervaise felt she could not remain there any longer.

The dying girl was growing weaker and ceased speaking; all that was left to her was her gaze--the dark look she had had as a resigned and thoughtful child and which she now fixed on her two little ones who were still cutting out their pictures.

The room was growing gloomy and Bijard was working off his liquor while the poor girl was in her death agonies.

No, no, life was too abominable! How frightful it was! How frightful! And Gervaise took herself off, and went down the stairs, not knowing what she was doing, her head wandering and so full of disgust that she would willingly have thrown herself under the wheels of an omnibus to have finished with her own existence.
As she hastened on, growling against cursed fate, she suddenly found herself in front of the place where Coupeau pretended that he worked.
Her legs had taken her there, and now her stomach began singing its song again, the complaint of hunger in ninety verses--a complaint she knew by heart.