MACQUART (GERVAISE), born 1828, was a daughter of Antoine Macquart, and
was slightly lame from birth. She was apprenticed to a laundress, but at
an early age had two children to a journeyman tanner named Lantier.[*]
Soon after the death of her mother, in 1850, she ran off to Paris with
Lantier and her children, Claude, a boy of eight, and Etienne, aged
four. La Fortune des Rougon.
The party had only been in the city a few weeks when Lantier ran off
with a girl named Adele, leaving Gervaise and the children unprovided
for. She got work in the laundry of Madame Fauconnier, and not long
after received an offer of marriage from Coupeau, a respectable
zinc-worker, which after some hesitation she accepted. The marriage
took place, and for a considerable time things prospered, one child, a
daughter named Nana being born. An accident to Coupeau, who fell from
a roof and was seriously injured, led to a gradual change; formerly
temperate and industrious, he became unwilling to work, and began to
spend his time in public-houses. Gervaise had meantime taken a shop with
money borrowed from the Goujets, and had started a laundry in it.
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