She tossed about and kept turning over as though there had been some lighted charcoal in her bed." The other two women did not seem at all surprised.
"Of course!" murmured Madame Lorilleux, "it probably began the very first night.

But as it pleases Coupeau, we've no business to interfere.
All the same, it's not very respectable." "As for me," declared Madame Lerat through clenched teeth, "if I'd been there, I'd have thrown a fright into them.

I'd have shouted something, anything.

A doctor's maid told me once that the doctor had told her that a surprise like that, at a certain moment, could strike a woman dead.
If she had died right there, that would have been well, wouldn't it?
She would have been punished right where she had sinned." It wasn't long until the entire neighborhood knew that Gervaise visited Lantier's room every night.

Madame Lorilleux was loudly indignant, calling her brother a poor fool whose wife had shamed him.