breath short, Gervaise leaned over the railing to look down. Now it
was the gaslight on the first floor which seemed a distant star at the
bottom of a narrow well six stories deep. All the odors and all the
murmurings of the immense variety of life within the tenement came up
to her in one stifling breath that flushed her face as she hazarded a
worried glance down into the gulf below.

"We're not there yet," said Coupeau. "Oh! It's quite a journey!"

He had gone down a long corridor on the left. He turned twice, the first
time also to the left, the second time to the right. The corridor still
continued branching off, narrowing between walls full of crevices,
with plaster peeling off, and lighted at distant intervals by a slender
gas-jet; and the doors all alike, succeeded each other the same as
the doors of a prison or a convent, and nearly all open, continued to
display homes of misery and work, which the hot June evening filled
with a reddish mist. At length they reached a small passage in complete
darkness.

"We're here," resumed the zinc-worker. "Be careful, keep to the wall;
there are three steps."

And Gervaise carefully took another ten steps in the obscurity. She
stumbled and then counted the three steps. But at the end of the passage
Coupeau had opened a door, without knocking. A brilliant light spread
over the tiled floor. They entered.

It was a narrow apartment, and seemed as if it were the continuation of
the corridor. A faded woolen curtain, raised up just then by a string,
divided the place in two. The first part contained a bedstead pushed