Never named, the woman who gave birth to Popeye is "the daughter of a boarding house keeper" in Pensacola (302-03). She is already pregnant with him, and carrying the disease (probably syphilis) that will leave her an "invalid" (309), when she marries Popeye's father, a professional strike-breaker whom she has only known for 3 days when they decide to marry. They were married less than 3 weeks when he takes off, leaving her to raise the child who is born with the same disease.
During Horace's first conversation with Lee Goodwin in his jail cell, the child that Ruby is holding is compared by the narrator to "the children which beggars on Paris streets carry" (116). Horace has been to France, and is carrying a French novel when the novel begins. The novel's final scene is set in Paris. Still, in the immediate context of the narrow cell that confines Goodwin, the narrative's sudden evocation of life half a world away from Yoknapatawpha comes as a surprise.
