She felt a strange timidity--a dread of failure--when she found herself face to face with her enterprise. The struggle for bread was a terrible and an increasing one, and it seemed to her for a moment that she had been guilty of a wild, foolhardy act, like throwing herself into the jaws of a machine, for the planes in the cabinetmaker's shop and the hammers in the locksmith's were dimly grasped by her as a part of a great whole. The water that ran past the door that day from the dyer's was pale green. She smiled as she stepped over it, accepting this color as a happy augury. She, with her husband, entered the loge, where Mme Boche and the owner of the building, M. Marescot, were talking on business. Gervaise, with a thrill of pain, heard Boche advise the landlord to turn out the dressmaker on the third floor who was behindhand with her rent. She wondered if she would ever be turned out and then wondered again at the attitude assumed by these Boche people, who did not seem to have ever seen her before. They had eyes and ears only for the landlord, who shook hands with his new tenants but, when they spoke of repairs, professed to be in such haste that morning that it would be necessary to postpone the discussion. They reminded him of certain verbal promises he had made, and finally he consented to examine the premises. The shop stood with its four bare walls and blackened ceiling. The tenant who had been there had taken away his own counters and cases. A furious discussion took place. M. Marescot said it was for them to embellish the shop. "That may be," said Gervaise gently, "but surely you cannot call putting on a fresh paper, instead of this that hangs in strips, an embellishment. Whitening the curbing, too, comes under, the head of necessary repairs." She only required these two things. Finally Marescot, with a desperate air, plunged his hands deep in his pockets, shrugged his shoulders and gave his consent to the repairs on the ceiling and to the paper, on condition that she would pay for half the paper, and then he hurried away. When he had departed Boche clapped Coupeau on the shoulder. "You may thank me for that!" he cried and then went on to say that he was the real master of the house, that he settled the whole business of the establishment, and it was a nod and look from him that had influenced M. Marescot. That evening Gervaise, considering themselves in debt to Boche, sent him some wine.