On the other hand, according to the Boches, Gervaise had gone back to her former mate the very first night, just as soon as poor Coupeau had gone to sleep.

The picture was not pretty, but there were a lot of worse things in life, so folks ended by accepting the threesome as altogether natural.

In fact, they thought them rather nice since there were never any fights and the outward decencies remained.

Certainly if you stuck your nose into some of the other neighborhood households you could smell far worse things.

So what if they slept together like a nice little family.