If they had bread to eat during the fine weather, the rain and cold came accompanied by famine, by drubbings before the empty cupboard, and by dinner-hours with nothing to eat in the little Siberia of their larder.
Villainous December brought numbing freezing spells and the black misery of cold and dampness.
The first winter they occasionally had a fire, choosing to keep warm rather than to eat.

But the second winter, the stove stood mute with its rust, adding a chill to the room, standing there like a cast-iron gravestone.

And what took the life out of their limbs, what above all utterly crushed them was the rent.

Oh! the January quarter, when there was not a radish in the house and old Boche came up with the bill! It was like a bitter storm, a regular tempest from the north.

Monsieur Marescot then arrived the following Saturday, wrapped up in a good warm overcoat, his big hands hidden in woolen gloves; and he was for ever talking of turning them out, whilst the snow continued to fall outside, as though it were preparing a bed for them on the pavement with white sheets.