son or a convent, and nearly all open, continued to
display homes of misery and work, which the hot June evening filled
with a reddish mist. At length they reached a small passage in complete
darkness.

"We're here," resumed the zinc-worker. "Be careful, keep to the wall;
there are three steps."

And Gervaise carefully took another ten steps in the obscurity. She
stumbled and then counted the three steps. But at the end of the passage
Coupeau had opened a door, without knocking. A brilliant light spread
over the tiled floor. They entered.

It was a narrow apartment, and seemed as if it were the continuation of
the corridor. A faded woolen curtain, raised up just then by a string,
divided the place in two. The first part contained a bedstead pushed
beneath an angle of the attic ceiling, a cast-iron stove still warm
from the cooking of the dinner, two chairs, a table and a wardrobe, the
cornice of which had had to be sawn off to make it fit in between the
door and the bedstead. The second part was fitted up as a work-shop; at
the end, a narrow forge with its bellows; to the right, a vise fixed to
the wall beneath some shelves on which pieces of old iron lay scattered;
to the left near the window, a small workman's bench, encumbered with
greasy and very dirty pliers, shears and microscopical saws, all very
dirty and grimy.

"It's us!" cried Coupeau advancing as far as the woolen curtain.

But no one answered at first. Gervaise, deeply affected, moved
especially by the thought that she was about to enter a place full of
gold, stood behind the zinc-worker, stammering and venturing upon nods
of her head by way of bowing. The brilliant light, a lamp burning on
the bench, a brazier full of coals flaring in the forge, increased
her confusion still more. She ended however, by distinguishing Madame
Lorilleux--little, red-haired and tolerably strong, pulling with all
the strength of her short arms, and with the assistance of a big pair of
pincers, a thread of black metal which she passed through the holes of
a draw-plate fixed to the vise. Seated in front of the bench, Lorilleux,
quite as small of stature, but more slender in the shoulders, worked
with the tips of his pliers, with the vivacity of a monkey, at a labor
so minute, that it was impossible to follow it between his scraggy
fingers. It was the husband who first raised his head--a head with
scanty locks, the face of the yellow tinge of old wax, long, and with an
ailin