hes. They knew one another--they
would always get on well together. It would be just like members of the
same family.

On the day the Coupeaus went to sign their lease, Gervaise felt her
heart swollen with pride as she passed through the high doorway. She
was then at length going to live in that house as vast as a little town,
with its interminable staircases, and passages as long and winding as
streets. She was excited by everything: the gray walls with varicolored
rugs hanging from windows to dry in the sun, the dingy courtyard with
as many holes in its pavement as a public square, the hum of activity
coming through the walls. She felt joy that she was at last about to
realize her ambition. She also felt fear that she would fail and be
crushed in the endless struggle against the poverty and starvation she
could feel breathing down her neck. It seemed to her that she was doing
something very bold, throwing herself into the midst of some machinery
in motion, as she listened to the blacksmith's hammers and the
cabinetmakers' planes, hammering and hissing in the depths of the
work-shops on the ground floor. On that day the water flowing from
the dyer's under the entrance porch was a very pale apple green. She
smilingly stepped over it; to her the color was a pleasant omen.

The meeting with the landlord was to take place in the Boches' room.
Monsieur Marescot, a wealthy cutler of the Rue de la Paix, had at one
time turned a grindstone through the streets. He was now stated to be
worth several millions. He was a man of fifty-five, large and big-boned.
Even though he now wore a decoration in his button-hole, his huge hands
were still those of a former workingman. It was his joy to carry off the
scissors and knives of his tenants, to sharpen them himself, for the fun
of it. He often stayed for hours with his concierges, closed up in the
darkness of their lodges, going over the accounts. That's where he did
all his business. He was now seated by Madame Boche's kitchen table,
listening to her story of how the dressmaker on the third floor,
staircase A, had used a filthy word in refusing to pay her rent. He had
had to work precious hard once upon a time. But work was the high road
to everything. And, after counting the two hundred and fifty francs for
the first two quarters in advance, and dropping them into his capacious
pocket, he related the story of his life, and showed his decoration.

Gervaise, however, felt rather ill