During the first two months she had a terribly hard time of it. Being unable to pay for Pépé's board, she had taken him away, and slept him on an old sofa lent by Bourras. She could not do with less than thirty sous a day, including the rent, even by consenting to live on dry bread herself, in order to procure a bit of meat for the little one. During the first fortnight she got on pretty well, having begun her housekeeping with about ten francs; besides she had been fortunate enough to find the cravat-dealer, who paid her her eighteen francs six sous. But after that she became completely destitute. It was in vain she applied to the various shops, at La Place Clichy, the Bon Marché, the Louvre: the dead season had stopped business everywhere, they told her to apply again in the autumn, more than five thousand employees, dismissed like her, were wandering about Paris in want of places. She then tried to obtain a little work elsewhere; but in her ignorance of Paris she did not know where to apply, often accepting most ungrateful tasks, and sometimes even not getting her money. Certain evenings she gave Pépé his dinner alone, a plate of soup, telling him she had dined out; and she would go to bed, her head in a whirl, nourished by the fever which was burning her hands. When Jean dropped suddenly into the midst of this poverty, he called himself a scoundrel with such a despairing violence that she was obliged to tell some falsehood to reassure him; and often found means of slipping a two-franc piece into his hand, to prove that she still had money. She never wept before the children. On Sundays, when she would cook a piece of veal in the stove, on her knees before the fire, the narrow room re-echoed with the gaiety of children, careless about existence. Then, when Jean had returned to his master's and Pépé was sleeping, she spent a frightful night, in anguish about the coming day.