CHAPTER IX.
That winter mother Coupeau nearly went off in one of her coughing fits.
Each December she could count on her asthma keeping her on her back for two and three weeks at a time.

She was no longer fifteen, she would be seventy-three on Saint-Anthony's day.

With that she was very rickety, getting a rattling in her throat for nothing at all, though she was plump and stout.

The doctor said she would go off coughing, just time enough to say: "Good-night, the candle's out!" When she was in her bed mother Coupeau became positively unbearable.

It is true though that the little room in which she slept with Nana was not at all gay.