No, he was just growing old; he'd have given ten years of his life just to go see how the fortifications were getting along.

He kept going on about his fate.

It wasn't right, what had happened to him.

A good worker like him, not a loafer or a drunkard, he could have understood in that case.
"Papa Coupeau," said he, "broke his neck one day that he'd been boozing.
I can't say that it was deserved, but anyhow it was explainable.

I had had nothing since my lunch, was perfectly quiet, and without a drop of liquor in my body; and yet I came to grief just because I wanted to turn round to smile at Nana! Don't you think that's too much?
If there is a providence, it certainly arranges things in a very peculiar manner.