They barely raised their heads to growl, and did not answer Pierre's questions.
He was about to go down again, when right atop of the stairs, at the entry of a passage, it occurred to him to make a last try by knocking at the door.

It was opened by a woman whose uncombed hair was already getting grey, though she could not be more than forty; while her pale lips, and dim eyes set in a yellow countenance, expressed utter lassitude, the shrinking, the constant dread of one whom wretchedness has pitilessly assailed.

The sight of Pierre's cassock disturbed her, and she stammered anxiously: "Come in, come in, Monsieur l'Abbe." However, a man whom Pierre had not at first seen--a workman also of some forty years, tall, thin and bald, with scanty moustache and beard of a washed-out reddish hue--made an angry gesture--a threat as it were--to turn the priest out of doors.

But he calmed himself, sat down near a rickety table and pretended to turn his back.

And as there was also a child present--a fair-haired girl, eleven or twelve years old, with a long and gentle face and that intelligent and somewhat aged expression which great misery imparts to children--he called her to him, and held her between his knees, doubtless to keep her away from the man in the cassock.
Pierre--whose heart was oppressed by his reception, and who realised the utter destitution of this family by the sight of the bare, fireless room, and the distressed mournfulness of its three inmates--decided all the same to repeat his question: "Madame, do you know an old workman named Laveuve in the house ?" The woman--who now trembled at having admitted him, since it seemed to displease her man--timidly tried to arrange matters.