his accident, and the friendly intervention of the tenants
occupying the fourth floor, he could not hinder her from

following the instinct of her kind; she mentioned the two
strangers, speaking of them as prompted by the interests of her

policy and the subterranean opinions of the porter's lodge.
"Ah," said she, "they were, no doubt, Mademoiselle Leseigneur and

her mother, who have lived here these four years. We do not know
exactly what these ladies do; in the morning, only till the hour

of noon, an old woman who is half deaf, and who never speaks any
more than a wall, comes in to help them; in the evening, two or

three old gentlemen, with loops of ribbon, like you, monsieur,
come to see them, and often stay very late. One of them comes in

a carriage with servants, and is said to have sixty thousand
francs a year. However, they are very quiet tenants, as you are,

monsieur; and economical! they live on nothing, and as soon as a
letter is brought they pay for it. It is a queer thing, monsieur,

the mother's name is not the same as the daughter's. Ah, but when
they go for a walk in the Tuileries, mademoiselle is very smart,

and she never goes out but she is followed by a lot of young men;
but she shuts the door in their face, and she is quite right. The

proprietor would never allow----"
The coach having come, Hippolyte heard no more, and went home.

His mother, to whom he related his adventure, dressed his wound
afresh, and would not allow him to go to the studio next day.

After taking advice, various treatments were prescribed, and
Hippolyte remained at home three days. During this retirement his

idle fancy recalled vividly, bit by bit, the details of the scene
that had ensued on his fainting fit. The young girl's profile was

clearly projected against the darkness of his inwardvision; he
saw once more the mother's faded features, or he felt the touch

of Adelaide's hands. He remembered some gesture which at first
had not greatly struck him, but whose exquisite grace was thrown

into relief by memory; then an attitude, or the tones of a
melodious voice, enhanced by the distance of remembrance,

suddenly rose before him, as objects plunging to the bottom of
deep waters come back to the surface.

So, on the day when he could resume work, he went early to his
studio; but the visit he undoubtedly had a right to pay to his

neighbors was the true cause of his haste; he had already
forgotten the pictures he had begun. At the moment when a passion

throws off its swaddling clothes, inexplicable pleasures are
felt, known to those who have loved. So some readers will

understand why the painter mounted the stairs to the fourth floor
but slowly, and will be in the secret of the throbs that followed

each other so rapidly in his heart at the moment when he saw the
humble brown door of the rooms inhabited by Mademoiselle

Leseigneur. This girl, whose name was not the same as her
mother's, had aroused the young painter's deepest sympathies; he

chose to fancy some similarity between himself and her as to
their position, and attributed to her misfortunes of birth akin

to his own. All the time he worked Hippolyte gave himself very
willingly to thoughts of love, and made a great deal of noise to

compel the two ladies to think of him, as he was thinking of
them. He stayed late at the studio and dined there; then, at

about seven o'clock, he went down to call on his neighbors.
No painter of manners has ventured to initiate us--perhaps out of

modesty--into the really curious privacy of certain Parisian
existences, into the secret of the dwellings whenceemerge such

fresh and elegant toilets, such brilliant women, who rich on the
surface, allow the signs of very doubtful comfort to peep out in

every part of their home. If, here, the picture is too boldly
drawn, if you find it tedious in places, do not blame the

description, which is, indeed, part and parcel of my story; for
the appearance of the rooms inhabited by his two neighbors had a

great influence on the feelings and hopes of Hippolyte Schinner.
The house belonged to one of those proprietors in whom there is a

foregone and profoundhorror of repairs and decoration, one of
the men who regard their position as Paris house-owners as a

business. In the vast chain of moral species, these people hold a
middle place between the miser and the usurer. Optimists in their

own interests, they are all faithful to the Austrian status quo.
If you speak of moving a cupboard or a door, of opening the most

indispensable air-hole, their eyes flash, their bile rises, they
rear like a frightened horse. When the wind blows down a few

chimney-pots they are quite ill, and deprive themselves of an
evening at the Gymnase or the Porte-Saint-Martin Theatre, "on

account of repairs." Hippolyte, who had seen the performance
gratis of a comical scene with Monsieur Molineux as concerning

certain decorative repairs in his studio, was not surprised to
see the dark greasy paint, the oily stains, spots, and other

disagreeable accessories that varied the woodwork. And these
stigmata of poverty are not altogetherdevoid of poetry in an

artist's eyes.
Mademoiselle Leseigneur herself opened the door. On recognizing

the young artist she bowed, and at the same time, with Parisian
adroitness, and with the presence of mind that pride can lend,

she turned round to shut the door in a glass partition through
which Hippolyte might have caught sight of some linen hung by

lines over patent ironing stoves, an old camp-bed, some wood-
embers, charcoal, irons, a filter, the household crockery, and

all the utensils familiar to a small household. Muslin curtains,
fairly white, carefully screened this lumber-room--a capharnaum,

as the French call such a domestic laboratory,--which was lighted
by windows looking out on a neighboring yard.

Hippolyte, with the quick eye of an artist, saw the uses, the
furniture, the general effect and condition of this first room,

thus cut in half. The more honorable half, which served both as
ante-room and dining-room, was hung with an old salmon-rose-

colored paper, with a flock border, the manufacture of Reveillon,
no doubt; the holes and spots had been carefully touched over

with wafers. Prints representing the battles of Alexander, by
Lebrun, in frames with the gilding rubbed off were symmetrically

arranged on the walls. In the middle stood a massivemahogany
table, old-fashioned in shape, and worn at the edges. A small

stove, whose thin straight pipe was scarcely visible, stood in
front of the chimney-place, but the hearth was occupied by a

cupboard. By a strange contrast the chairs showed some remains of
former splendor; they were of carved mahogany, but the red

morocco seats, the gilt nails and reeded backs, showed as many
scars as an old sergeant of the Imperial Guard.

This room did duty as a museum of certain objects, such as are
never seen but in this kind of amphibious household; nameless

objects with the stamp at once of luxury and penury. Among other
curiosities Hippolyte noticed a splendidly finished telescope,

hanging over the small discolored glass that decorated the
chimney. To harmonize with this strange collection of furniture,

there was, between the chimney and the partition, a wretched
sideboard of painted wood, pretending to be mahogany, of all

woods the most impossible to imitate. But the slippery red
quarries, the shabby little rugs in front of the chairs, and all

the furniture, shone with the hard rubbing cleanliness which
lends a treacherous lustre to old things by making their defects,

their age, and their long service still more conspicuous. An
indescribable odor pervaded the room, a mingled smell of the

exhalations from the lumber room, and the vapors of the dining-
room, with those from the stairs, though the window was partly

open. The air from the street fluttered the dusty curtains, which
were carefully drawn so as to hide the window bay, where former

tenants had testified to their presence by various ornamental
additions--a sort of domestic fresco.

Adelaide hastened to open the door of the inner room, where she
announced the painter with evident pleasure. Hippolyte, who, of

yore, had seen the same signs of poverty in his mother's home,
noted them with the singular vividness of impression which

characterizes the earliest acquisitions of memory, and entered
into the details of this existence better than any one else would

have done. As he recognized the facts of his life as a child, the
kind young fellow felt neither scorn for disguised misfortune nor