Bed and bedding had gone, piece by piece, to the second-hand dealers of the neighborhood.
First she had ripped open the mattress to sell handfuls of wool at ten sous a pound.

When the mattress was empty she got thirty sous for the sack so as to be able to have coffee.

Everything else had followed.
Well, wasn't the straw good enough for them?
Gervaise bent herself like a gun-trigger on the heap of straw, with her clothes on and her feet drawn up under her rag of a skirt, so as to keep them warm.

And huddled up, with her eyes wide open, she turned some scarcely amusing ideas over in her mind that morning.

Ah! no, they couldn't continue living without food.