“Wait a bit! Wait a bit!” said his wife. “You'll see.”
At last Toine had an apoplectic fit, and was paralyzed in consequence. The giant was put to bed in the little room behind the partition of the drinking-room that he might hear what was said and talk to his friends, for his head was quite clear although his enormous body was helplessly inert. It was hoped at first that his immense legs would regain some degree of power; but this hope soon disappeared, and Toine spent his days and nights in the bed, which was only made up once a week, with the help of four neighbors who lifted the innkeeper, each holding a limb, while his mattress was turned.
He kept his spirits, nevertheless; but his gaiety was of a different kind--more timid, more humble; and he lived in a constant, childlike fear of his wife, who grumbled from morning till night:
“Look at him there--the great glutton! the good-for-nothing creature, the old boozer! Serve him right, serve him right!”
He no longer answered her. He contented himself with winking behind the old woman's back, and turning over on his other side--the only movement of which he was now capable. He called this exercise a “tack to the north” or a “tack to the south.”
His great distraction nowadays was to listen to the conversations in the bar, and to shout through the wall when he recognized a friend's voice:
“Hallo, my son-in-law! Is that you, Celestin?”
“Yes, it's me, Toine. Are you getting about again yet, old fellow?”
“Not exactly getting about,” answered Toine. “But I haven't grown thin; my carcass is still good.”
Soon he got into the way of asking his intimates into his room to keep him company, although it grieved him to see that they had to drink without him. It pained him to the quick that his customers should be drinking without him.
“That's what hurts worst of all,” he would say: “that I cannot drink my Extra-Special any more. I can put up with everything else, but going without drink is the very deuce.”
Then his wife's screech-owl face would appear at the window, and she would break in with the words:
“Look at him! Look at him now, the good-for-nothing wretch! I've got to feed him and wash him just as if he were a pig!”
And when the old woman had gone, a cock with red feathers would sometimes fly up to the window sill and looking into the room with his round inquisitive eye, would begin to crow loudly. Occasionally, too, a few hens would flutter as far as the foot of the bed, seeking crumbs on the floor. Toine's friends soon deserted the drinking room to come and chat every afternoon beside the invalid's bed. Helpless though he was, the jovial Toine still provided them with amusement. He would have made the devil himself laugh. Three men were regular in their attendance at the bedside: Celestin Maloisel, a tall, thin fellow, somewhat gnarled, like the trunk of an apple-tree; Prosper Horslaville, a withered little man with a ferret nose, cunning as a fox; and Cesaire Paumelle, who never spoke, but who enjoyed Toine's society all the same.