He exclaimed, as he continued squeezing the links, invisible between his black finger-nails.
"Listen to me, Young Cassis! I was making a calculation this morning.
I commenced work when I was twelve years old, you know.

Well! Can you guess how long a herring-bone chain I must have made up till to-day ?" He raised his pale face, and blinked his red eye-lids.
"Twenty-six thousand feet, do you hear?
Two leagues! That's something! A herring-bone chain two leagues long! It's enough to twist round the necks of all the women of the neighborhood.

And you know, it's still increasing.

I hope to make it long enough to reach from Paris to Versailles." Gervaise had returned to her seat, disenchanted and thinking everything very ugly.

She smiled to be polite to the Lorilleuxs.