she glanced round the wretched lodging, furnished with a walnut chest
of drawers, minus one drawer, three rush-bottomed chairs, and a little
greasy table, on which stood a broken water-jug. There had been added,
for the children, an iron bedstead, which prevented any one getting to
the chest of drawers, and filled two-thirds of the room. Gervaise's and
Lantier's trunk, wide open, in one corner, displayed its emptiness, and
a man's old hat right at the bottom almost buried beneath some dirty
shirts and socks; whilst, against the walls, above the articles of
furniture, hung a shawl full of holes, and a pair of trousers begrimed
with mud, the last rags which the dealers in second-hand clothes
declined to buy. In the centre of the mantel-piece, lying between two
odd zinc candle-sticks, was a bundle of pink pawn-tickets. It was
the best room of the hotel, the first floor room, looking on to the
Boulevard.

The two children were sleeping side by side, with their heads on the
same pillow. Claude, aged eight years, was breathing quietly, with his
little hands thrown outside the coverlet; while Etienne, only four
years old, was smiling, with one arm round his brother's neck! And
bare-footed, without thinking to again put on the old shoes that had
fallen on the floor, she resumed her position at the window, her eyes
searching the pavements in the distance.

The hotel was situated on the Boulevard de la Chapelle, to the left
of the Barriere Poissonniere. It was a building of two stories high,
painted a red, of the color of wine dregs, up to the second floor, and
with shutters all rotted by the rain. Over a lamp with starred panes
of glass, one could manage to read, between the two windows, the words,
"Hotel Boncoeur, kept by Marsoullier," painted in big yellow letters,
several pieces of which the moldering of the plaster had carried away.