At last Denise began to feel easier. He had desired that Pépé should come down into the shop to play, for he was wonderfully fond of children. When the little one was crawling about on all-fours, neither of them had room to move. She sat in her corner doing the mending, he near the window, carving away with his little knife. Every day now brought round the same work and the same conversation. Whilst working, he would continually assail The Ladies' Paradise; never weary of explaining how affairs stood in the terrible duel between that bazaar and himself. He had occupied his house since 1845, and had a thirty years' lease of it at a rent of eighteen hundred francs a year; and, as he made a thousand francs out of his four furnished rooms, he only paid eight hundred for the shop. It was a mere trifle, he had no expenses, and could thus hold out for a long time still. To hear him, there was no doubt about his eventual triumph; he would certainly swallow up the monster. Then suddenly he would break off to ask: "Have they got any dog's heads like that?" And he would blink his eyes behind his glasses, whilst judging the dog's head which he was carving, with its lip turned up and its fangs displayed, in a life-like growl. Pépé delighted with the dog, would thereupon get up, resting his two little arms on the old man's knee. "As long as I make both ends meet I don't care a hang about the rest," the latter resumed, whilst delicately shaping the dog's tongue with the point of his knife. "The scoundrels have taken away my profits; but if I'm making nothing I'm not losing anything yet, or at least only a trifle. And, you see, I'm ready to sacrifice everything rather than yield." Thereupon he would brandish his knife, and his white hair would blow about in a storm of anger. "But if they made you a reasonable offer," Denise would mildly observe, without raising her eyes from her needle, "it would be wiser to accept it." This suggestion, however, only produced an outburst of ferocious obstinacy. "Never! If my head were under the knife I should still say no, by heavens I would! I've another ten years' lease, and they shan't have the house before then, even if I should have to die of hunger within the four bare walls. Twice already they've tried to get over me. They offered me twelve thousand francs for my good-will, and eighteen thousand francs for the last ten years of my lease; in all thirty thousand. But no, no--not for fifty thousand even! I have them in my power, and intend to see them licking the dust before me!" "Thirty thousand francs! it's a good sum," thereupon resumed Denise. "You could go and establish yourself elsewhere. And suppose they were to buy the house?"