Whenever Gervaise saw Pere Bru walking outside, she would call him in and arrange a place for him close to the stove.

Often she gave him some bread and cheese.

Pere Bru's face was as wrinkled as a withered apple.

He would sit there, with his stooping shoulders and his white beard, without saying a word, just listening to the coke sputtering in the stove.

Maybe he was thinking of his fifty years of hard work on high ladders, his fifty years spent painting doors and whitewashing ceilings in every corner of Paris.
"Well, Pere Bru," Gervaise would say, "what are you thinking of now ?" "Nothing much.