"This is all nonsense you are talking! What I want to know is if the day will suit you, July twenty-ninth." "One day is the same as another to us," answered his sister severely. "Lorilleux can do as he pleases in regard to being your witness. I only ask for peace." Gervaise, in her embarrassment, had been pushing about with her feet some of the rubbish on the floor; then fearing she had done some harm, she stooped to ascertain. Lorilleux hastily approached her with a lamp and looked at her fingers with evident suspicion. "Take care," he said. "Those small bits of gold stick to the shoes sometimes and are carried off without your knowing it." This was a matter of some importance, of course, for his employers weighed what they entrusted to him. He showed the hare's-foot with which he brushed the particles of gold from the table and the skin spread on his knees to receive them. Twice each week the shop was carefully brushed; all the rubbish was kept and burned, and the ashes were examined, where were found each month twenty-five or thirty francs of gold. Mme Lorilleux did not take her eyes from the shoes of her guest. "If Mademoiselle would be so kind," she murmured with an amiable smile, "and would just look at her soles herself. There is no cause for offense, I am sure!" Gervaise, indignant and scarlet, reseated herself and held up her shoes for examination. Coupeau opened the door with a gay good night, and she followed him into the corridor after a word or two of polite farewell. The Lorilleuxs turned to their work at the end of their room where the tiny forge still glittered. The woman with her chemise slipped off her shoulder which was red with the reflection from the brazier, was drawing out another wire, the muscles in her throat swelling with her exertions. The husband, stooping under the green light of the ball of water, was again busy with his pincers, not stopping even to wipe the sweat from his brow. When Gervaise emerged from the narrow corridors on the sixth landing she said with tears in her eyes: "This certainly does not promise very well!" Coupeau shook his head angrily. Lorilleux should pay for this evening! Was there ever such a miser? To care if one carried off three grains of gold in the dust on one's shoes. All the stories his sister told were pure fictions and malice. His sister never meant him to marry; his eating with them saved her at least four sous daily. But he did not care whether they appeared on the twenty-ninth of July or not; he could get along without them perfectly well.