rooms were rather small, but well placed. Only, she considered they
wanted too much; the landlord talked of five hundred francs.

"So you've been over the place, and asked the price?" said Coupeau.

"Oh! you know, only out of curiosity!" replied she, affecting an air
of indifference. "One looks about, and goes in wherever there's a bill
up--that doesn't bind one to anything. But that shop is altogether too
dear. Besides, it would perhaps be foolish of me to set up in business."

However, after dinner, she again referred to the draper's shop. She drew
a plan of the place on the margin of a newspaper. And, little by little,
she talked it over, measuring the corners, and arranging the rooms, as
though she were going to move all her furniture in there on the morrow.
Then Coupeau advised her to take it, seeing how she wanted to do so; she
would certainly never find anything decent under five hundred francs;
besides they might perhaps get a reduction. He knew only one objection
to it and that was living in the same house as the Lorilleux, whom she
could not bear.

Gervaise declared that she wasn't mad at anybody. So much did she want
her own shop that she even spoke up for the Lorilleuxs, saying that they
weren't mean at heart and that she would be able to get along just fine
with them. When they went to bed, Coupeau fell asleep immediately, but
she stayed awake, planning how she could arrange the new place even
though she hadn't yet made up her mind completely.

On the morrow, when she was alone, she could not resist removing the
glass cover from the clock, and taking a peep at the savings-bank book.
To think that her shop was there, in those dirty pages, covered with