You, all of you, only bring in nine francs. How do you expect me to go on? We are ten in the house."

"Oh! nine francs!" exclaimed Maheu. "I and Zacharie three: that makes six, Catherine and the father, two: that makes four: four and six, ten, and Jeanlin one, that makes eleven."

"Yes, eleven, but there are Sundays and the off-days. Never more than nine, you know."

He did not reply, being occupied in looking on the ground for his leather belt. Then he said, on getting up:

"Mustn't complain. I am sound all the same. There's more than one at forty-two who are put to the patching."

"Maybe, old man, but that does not give us bread. Where am I to get it from, eh? Have you got nothing?"

"I've got two coppers."

"Keep them for a half-pint. Good Lord! where am I to get it from? Six days! it will never end. We owe sixty francs to Maigrat, who turned me out of doors day before yesterday. That won't prevent me from going to see him again. But if he goes on refusing----"

And Maheude continued in her melancholy voice, without moving her head, only closing her eyes now and then beneath the dim light of the candle. She said the cupboard was empty, the little ones asking for bread and butter, even the coffee was done, and the water caused colic, and the long days passed in deceiving hunger with boiled cabbage leaves. Little by little she had been obliged to raise her voice, for Estelle's screams drowned her words. These cries became unbearable. Maheu seemed all at once to hear them, and, in a fury, snatched the little one up from the cradle and threw it on the mother's bed, stammering with rage:

"Here, take her; I'll do for her! Damn the child! It wants for nothing: it sucks, and it complains louder than all the rest!"

Estelle began, in fact, to suck. Hidden beneath the clothes and soothed by the warmth of the bed, her cries subsided into the greedy little sound of her lips.

"Haven't the Piolaine people told you to go and see them?" asked the father, after a period of silence.

The mother bit her lip with an air of discouraged doubt.

"Yes, they met me; they were carrying clothes for poor children. Yes, I'll take Lénore and Henri to them this morning. If they only give me a few pence!"

There was silence again.

Maheu was ready. He remained a moment motionless, then added, in his hollow voice:

"What is it that you want? Let things be, and see about the soup. It's no good talking, better be at work down below."

"True enough," replied Maheude. "Blow out the candle: I don't need to see the colour of my thoughts."

He blew out the candle. Zacharie and Jeanlin were already going down; he followed them, and the wooden staircase creaked beneath their heavy feet, clad in wool. Behind them the closet and the room were again dark. The children slept; even Alzire's eyelids were closed; but the mother now remained with her eyes open in the darkness, while, pulling at her breast, the pendent breast of an exhausted woman, Estelle was purring like a kitten.

Down below, Catherine had at first occupied herself with the fire, which was burning in the iron grate, flanked by two ovens. The Company distributed every month, to each family, eight hectolitres of a hard slaty coal, gathered in the passages. It burnt slowly, and the young girl, who piled up the fire every night, only had to stir it in the morning, adding a few fragments of soft coal, carefully picked out. Then, after having placed a kettle on the grate, she sat down before the sideboard.

It was a fairly large room, occupying all the ground floor, painted an apple green, and of Flemish cleanliness, with its flags well washed and covered with white sand. Besides the sideboard of varnished deal the furniture consisted of a table and chairs of the same wood. Stuck on to the walls were some violently-coloured prints, portraits of the emperor and the empress, given by the Company, of soldiers and of saints speckled with gold, contrasting crudely with the simple nudity of the room; and there was no other ornament except a box of rose-coloured pasteboard on the sideboard, and the clock with its daubed face and loud tick-tack, which seemed to fill the emptiness of the place.