Gervaise no longer dared ask him for a centime.

She had the bread, the wine, the meat, all on credit.

The bills increased everywhere at the rate of three and four francs a day.

She had not paid a sou to the furniture dealer nor to the three comrades, the mason, the carpenter and the painter.

All these people commenced to grumble, and she was no longer greeted with the same politeness at the shops.
She was as though intoxicated by a mania for getting into debt; she tried to drown her thoughts, ordered the most expensive things, and gave full freedom to her gluttony now that she no longer paid for anything; she remained withal very honest at heart, dreaming of earning from morning to night hundreds of francs, though she did not exactly know how, to enable her to distribute handfuls of five-franc pieces to her tradespeople.