One day, Gervaise went up to see the Lorilleuxs in spite of this. It was with respect to mother Coupeau who was then sixty-seven years old. Mother Coupeau’s eyesight was almost completely gone. Her legs too were no longer what they used to be. She had been obliged to give up her last cleaning job and now threatened to die of hunger if assistance were not forthcoming. Gervaise thought it shameful that a woman of her age, having three children should be thus abandoned by heaven and earth. And as Coupeau refused to speak to the Lorilleuxs on the subject saying that she, Gervaise, could very well go and do so, the latter went up in a fit of indignation with which her heart was almost bursting. When she reached their door she entered without knocking. Nothing had been changed since the night when the Lorilleuxs, at their first meeting had received her so ungraciously. The same strip of faded woolen stuff separated the room from the workshop, a lodging like a gun barrel, and which looked as though it had been built for an eel. Right at the back Lorilleux, leaning over his bench, was squeezing together one by one the links of a piece of chain, whilst Madame Lorilleux, standing in front of the vise was passing a gold wire through the draw-plate. In the broad daylight the little forge had a rosy reflection. “Yes, it’s I!” said Gervaise. “I daresay you’re surprised to see me as we’re at daggers drawn. But I’ve come neither for you nor myself you may be quite sure. It’s for mother Coupeau that I’ve come. Yes, I have come to see if we’re going to let her beg her bread from the charity of others.” “Ah, well, that’s a fine way to burst in upon one!” murmured Madame Lorilleux. “One must have a rare cheek.” And she turned her back and resumed drawing her gold wire, affecting to ignore her sister-in-law’s presence. But Lorilleux raised his pale face and cried: “What’s that you say?” Then, as he had heard perfectly well, he continued: “More back-bitings, eh? She’s nice, mother Coupeau, to go and cry starvation everywhere! Yet only the day before yesterday she dined here. We do what we can. We haven’t got all the gold of Peru. Only if she goes about gossiping with others she had better stay with them, for we don’t like spies.” He took up the piece of chain and turned his back also, adding as though with regret: “When everyone gives five francs a month, we’ll give five francs.”