When Silvere came to see him, he complained, with tears, of his children's ingratitude.

Had he not always been a good father to them?
Jean and Gervaise were monsters, who had made him an evil return for all he had done for them.

Now they abandoned him because he was old, and they could not get anything more out of him! "But uncle," said Silvere, "you are not yet too old to work!" Macquart, coughing and stooping, shook his head mournfully, as if to say that he could not bear the least fatigue for any length of time.

Just as his nephew was about to withdraw, he borrowed ten francs of him.

Then for a month he lived by taking his children's old clothes, one by one, to a second-hand dealer's, and in the same way, little by little, he sold all the small articles in the house.