Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848

by Various

PART I.

I have said that the Abbé G—— had a room in some dark corner of a hotel in the Rue de Seine, or Rue de la Harpe—which of the two it was I really forget. At any rate, the hotel was very old, and the street out of which I used to step into its ill-paved, triangular court, was very narrow, and very dirty.

At the end of the court, farthest from the heavy gateway, was the box of the concierge, who was a brisk little shoemaker, forever bethwacking his lap-stone. If I remember right, the hammer of the little cordonnier made the only sound I used to hear in the court; for though the house was full of lodgers, I never saw two of them together, and never heard them talking across the court from the upper windows, even in mid-summer.

At this distance of time, I do not think it would be possible for me to describe accurately all the windings of the corridor which led to the abbé's door. I remember that the first part was damp and low, and after it I used to mount a crazy stone staircase, and at the top passed through a passage that opened on one side upon a narrow court; then there was a little wicket of iron, which, when it turned, tinkled a bell. Sometimes the abbé would hear the bell, and open his door down at the end of the corridor; and sometimes a lodger, who occupied a room looking into the last-mentioned court, would draw, slyly, a corner of his curtain, and peep out, to see who was passing. Sometimes I would loiter myself to look down upon the lower windows in the court, or to glance up at story resting above story, and at the peaked roof, and dot of a loop-hole at the top.

A single small door opened into the court, and occasionally an old woman, or bustling, shabbily-dressed man would shuffle across the pavement; the faces at the windows seemed altogether sordid and every-day faces, so that I came to regard the quarters of the abbé, notwithstanding the quaint-fashioned windows and dim stairway, and suspicious quiet, a very matter of fact, and so, very uninteresting neighborhood.

As the abbé and myself passed out sometimes together through the open-sided corridor, I would point into the court, and ask who lived in the little room at the top.

"Ah, mon cher, I do not know," the abbé would say.

Or, "who lives in the corner, with the queer narrow window and the striped curtain?"

"I cannot tell you, mon cher."

Or, "whose is the little window with so many broken panes, and an old placard pinned against the frame?"

"Ah, who knows! perhaps a chiffonier, or a shopman, or perhaps—" and the abbé lifted his finger, and shook his head expressively, and continued,

"It is a strange world we live in, mon ami."

What could the abbé mean? I looked up at the window again; it was small, and the panes were set in rough metal casing; it was high up on the fourth or fifth floor. I could see nothing through but the dirty yellow placard.

"Is it in the same hotel with you?" said I.

"Ma foi, I do not know."

I tried to picture satisfactorily to my own mind the appearance of the chamber to which the little window belonged. Small it must be, I knew, for in that quarter few were large even upon the first floor, and looking upon the street. Dirty, too, it should surely be, and comfortless, and tenanted by misery, or poverty, or sin, or, very likely, all together. Possibly some miserly old wretch lived there, needing only a little light to count up his hoard, and caring little for any intrusive wind, if it did not blow away his treasure. I fancied I could see him running over the tale of his coin by a feeble rushlight—squat, perhaps, on the dirty tile-floor—then locking his box, and placing it carefully under the pillow of his straw pallet, then tip-toeing to the door to examine again the fastening, then carefully extinguishing the taper, and after, dropping into an anxious, fevered sleep.

I even lingered very late at the abbé's room, to see if I could detect the old man; but there was never any light to be seen.

Perhaps it was the home of some poor gentleman who had seen better days, and whom necessity obliged to deny himself the poor luxury of a centime light. Possibly it was a little shopman, as the abbé had suggested, struggling with fortune—not scrupulous in honesty, and shunning observation; or it might be (who could tell) a sleek-faced villain, stealing about in the dusk, and far into the night, making the dim chamber his home only when more honest lodgers were astir in the city.

All sorts of conjectures came thronging on me, and I cast my eyes up, day after day, at the little window, hoping some change of appearance might give plausibility to some one of my fancies.

Week after week, however, the corridor wore its old quietude; the striped curtain in the wing window, and the yellow placard in the suspicious window at the top, still kept their places with provoking tenacity; and I could never, with all my art, seduce the good-natured abbé into any bugbear story about the occupant of the dim chamber on the court.

I dare say I might soon have neglected to look up at all, had I not observed one day, after my glances had grown very careless, and almost involuntary, a rich lace veil hanging against the same little window where had hung the placard. There was no mistaking it—the veil was of the richest Mechlin lace. I knew very well that no lady of elegance could occupy such apartment, or, indeed, was to be found (I mean no disrespect to the abbé) in that quarter of Paris. The window plainly belonged to some thievish den, and the lace formed a portion of the spoils. I began to be distrustful of late visits to the abbé's quarters, and full of the notion of thievish eyes looking out from the strange window—I used half to tremble as I passed along the corridor. I told the abbé of the veil, and hinted my suspicions.

"It is nothing," said he, "princes have lived in worse corners."

"And yet you are not curious to know more?"

"Mon cher, it is dangerous to be too curious, je suis un prêtre."

Some days after—it was on a winter's morning, when a little snow had fallen—I chanced to glance over into the court on which the mysterious window looked, and saw the beautiful foot-mark of a lady's slipper. It was scarce longer than my hand—too narrow and delicately formed for a child's foot, least of all the foot of such children as belonged to the Rue de Seine. I could not but associate the foot-track—so small, so beautiful, and so unlocked for in such scene—with the veil I had seen at the window.

Through all of my morning's lesson—I was then reading La Grammaire des Grammaires—I could think of nothing but the pretty foot-track in the snow. No such foot, I was quite sure, could be seen in the dirty Rue de Seine—not even the shop-girls of the Rue de la Paix, or the tidiest Llorettes could boast of one so pretty.

I asked the abbé to walk with me; and as we passed the corridor, I threw my eye carelessly into the court, as if it were only my first observation, and said as quietly as possible, "Mon cher abbé, the snow tells tales this morning."

The abbé looked curiously down upon the foot-marks, ran his eye rapidly over the windows, turned to me, shook his head expressively, and said, as he glanced down again, "O'etait un fort joli petit soulier." (It was a very pretty little shoe.)

"Whose was it?" said I.

"Mon cher, I do not know."

I still kept up, day after day, my watch upon the window. It shortly supplied me with an important link in the chain of observations. I saw lying within the glass, against which the veil yet hung, nothing more nor less than the same little shoe, I thoroughly believed, which had made the delicate foot-marks on the snow in the court. Not a prettier shoe could be seen on the Boulevards, and scarce one so small. It would have been very strange to see such delicate articles of dress at any hotels of the neighborhood, and stranger still to find them in the humblest window of so dismal a court.

There was a mystery about the matter that perplexed me. Every one knows, who knows any thing about Paris, that that part of the city along the Rue de Seine, between the Rues Jacob and Bussy, and though very reputable in its way, is yet no place for delicate ladies, not even as a promenade, and much less as a residence. It is assigned over, as well by common consent as custom, to medical students, shop-men, attorneys, physicians, priests, lodging-house keepers, market-men, sub-officials, shop-women, second-class milliners, and grisettes.

Indeed a delicate lady—and such only, I was sure, could have left the foot-print in the court, and be the owner of the shoe I had seen—could hardly pass through the Rue de Seine without drawing the eyes of all the lodgers on the street. Dried up hag faces would have met the apparition with a leer; the porters would have turned to stare, and she would have had very suspicious followers.

I loitered about the outer court of the hotel, under pretence of waiting for the abbé, in hope of seeing something which would throw light upon the mysterious occupant of the chamber. But the comers and goers were all of the most unobtrusive and ordinary cast. I ventured to question the concierge concerning his lodgers. They were all bons gens.

"Were there any ladies?"

The little shoemaker lifted his hammer a moment while he eyed me—"But one, monsieur; the wife of the old tobacconist at the corner."

I asked about the windows in the little court, beside which I passed—did they belong to his hotel?

He did not think it.

I prevailed on him to step with me a moment into the corridor, and pointed out to him the window which had drawn so much of my attention. I asked if he knew the hotel to which it belonged?

He did not. It might be the next, or the next after, or down the little alley branching out of the Rue de Seine. I asked him of the character of the neighborhood.

It was a good neighborhood, he said—a very reputable neighborhood. He believed the lodgers of the quarter to be all honnêtes gens.

I took occasion to loiter about the courts of the adjoining houses, frequently passing the opposite side of the way, with my eye all the time upon the entrance gates. The lodgers seemed to be even inferior to those who passed in at the court where the abbé resided.

One individual alone had attracted my attention. He was a tall, pale man, in the decline of life, dressed in a sort of half-uniform; he walked with a stooping gait, and seemed to me (perhaps it was a mere fancy) as much weighed down by care as years. Several times I had seen him going in or coming out of the court that opened two doors above the abbé's. He was unlike most inhabitants of the neighborhood in both dress and air.

I ventured to step up to the brisk little concierge in the court one day, and ask who was the tall gentleman with the tarnished lace who had just entered?

"It is un Monsieur Very," said the concierge.

"And poor Monsieur Very lives alone?" said I.

"How should I know, monsieur?"

"He always walks alone," said I.

"It is true," said the concierge.

"He has children, perhaps?" said I.

"Très probable," said the concierge.

He was little disposed to be communicative, yet I determined to make another trial.

"You have very pretty lodgers," said I.

"Pardon, monsieur," said he, "I do not understand you."

"Pretty—very pretty lodgers," said I.

"You are facetious, monsieur," said the concierge, smiling.

"Not at all," said I; "have I not seen (a sad lie) a very pretty face at one of the windows on the back court?"

"I do not think it, monsieur."

"And then there are no female lodgers?"

"Pardon, monsieur—there are several."

Here the little concierge was interrupted by a lodger, and I could ask no more.

I still, however, kept up my scrutiny of the attic window—observed closely every female foot that glanced about the neighboring courts, and remitted sadly my attention to the Grammaire des Grammaires, in the quiet room of my demure friend the abbé.

Sometimes, in my fancies, the object of wonder was a young maiden of the noblesse, who, for imputed family crimes, had hid herself in so humble a quarter. Sometimes I pictured the occupant of the chamber as the suffering daughter of some miserly parent, with trace of noble blood—filial, yet dependent in her degradation. Sometimes I imagined her the daughter of shame—the beloved of a doating, and too late repentant mother—shunning the face of a world that had seduced her with its smiles, and that now made smiles the executioners of its punishment.

In short, form what fancies I would, I could not but feel a most extraordinary interest in clearing the mystery that seemed to me to hang about the little window in the court. Unconnected with the foot-track and the slipper, the window on the court would have been nothing more than half the courts to be seen in the old quarters of Paris. Or, indeed, the delicate foot-prints, and articles of female luxury would have hardly caught attention, much less sustained it with so feverish curiosity, in any one of the courts opening upon the Rue de Rivoli, or Rue Lafitte.

The concierge next door, I was persuaded, knew more of his inmates than he cared to say. I still, as I have said, glanced my eye, each morning, along the upper angles of the court, and sidled now and then by the gate of the neighboring hotel; but the window wore its usual look—there was the veil, and the placard, and the disjointed, rattling sash; and in the neighboring court was, sometimes, the tall gentleman picking his way carefully over the stones, and sometimes the stumpy figure of a waiting woman.

Some ten days after my chat with the neighbor concierge, I reached the hotel of the abbé an hour earlier than my usual morning visit, and took the occasion to reconnoitre the adjoining courts. The concierge, my acquaintance of the week before, was busy with a bowl of coffee and a huge roll; and, just as I had sidled up to his box for a word with him, who should brush past in great apparent haste, but the pale, thin gentleman who had before attracted my observation.

I determined to step around at once into the open corridor of the abbé's hotel, and see if I could detect any movement—so slight even as the opening or shutting of a door in the chamber of the narrow window.

It was earlier by a half hour at the least than I had ever been in the corridor before. The court was quiet; my eye ran to the little window—at a glance I saw it had not its usual appearance. A light cambric handkerchief, with lace border, was pinned across it from side to side; and just at the moment that I began to scrutinize what seemed to me like a coronet stitched on the corner, a couple of delicate fingers reached over the hem, removed the fastening, first on one side, then on the other—the handkerchief was gone.

It was the work of an instant, and evidently done in haste; but I still caught a glimpse of a delicate female figure—sleeve hanging loose about the arm a short way below the elbow, hair sweeping, half curled and half carelessly over a cheek white as her dress, and an expression, so far as I could judge, of deep sadness.

I shrunk back into a shadow of the corridor, and waited; but there was no more stir at the window. The yellow placard dangled by one fastening; a bit of the veil was visible, nothing else, to tell me of the character of the inmate.

I told the abbé what I had seen.

The abbé closed his grammar, (keeping his thumb at the place,) shook his head slowly from side to side, smiled, lifted his finger in playful menace, and—went on with his lesson.

"Who can it be?" said I.

"Indeed, I cannot tell you, mon ami," said the abbé, laying down his book with a look of despair.

The morning after I was again in the corridor a full half hour before my usual time, but the window wore its usual air. The next day, again I was an hour beforehand, and the abbé had not put off his priest robe, in which he goes to morning mass; still there was no handkerchief at the little window—no wavy mesh of hair—no taper arm—no shadowy form moving in the dim chamber.

I had arranged to leave for the south in a few days, and was more than ever anxious for some explication of the mystery. A single further mode only occurred to me; I would go to the concierge next door, and under pretence of looking for rooms, would have him conduct me through his hotel.

It had dismal corridors, and steeper stairways than even the abbé's. I was careless about the second and the third floors; and it was not till we had mounted a half dozen crazy pair of stairs, that I began to scrutinize narrowly the doors, and sometimes to ask if this or that chamber was occupied. I made my way always to the windows of the rooms shown me, in hope of seeing the little court I knew so well, and the abbé's half-open corridor, and yet in half fear, that I might, after all, be looking from the very window about which hung so perplexing mystery.

It was long before I caught sight of my old point of observation in the neighboring corridor. The room was small, and was covered with singular ancient hangings, with a concealed door, which the concierge opened into a charming little cabinet. How many more concealed doors there might have been I do not know. I put my head out the window, and looked down in search of the strange casement; it was not below. Then I looked to one side—there was the long window with a striped curtain. I looked to the other side—another long window. I looked up—there at length it was, over my left shoulder. I could see plainly the yellow placard, and heard it flapping the casement.

I asked the concierge if he had no rooms above.

"Oui, monsieur—a single one; but it is too high for monsieur."

"Let me see," said I—and we mounted a miserably dim staircase. There were three doors; the concierge opened the nearest to the landing.

"La voici, monsieur." It was a sad little affair, and looked out by just such a loop-hole as was the object of my curiosity, upon a court I did not know.

"It will never do," said I, as I came out of the room. "But what is here?" continued I, brushing up to the next door.

The concierge caught me by the arm, and drew me back. Then he raised himself forward on tip-toe, and whispered, "C'nt le Monsieur Very."

I knew from its position it must have been the little casement which looked upon the corridor. There was another door opposite; I brushed up to this, and was again drawn back by the concierge.

"Who is here?" said I.

"La Mademoiselle Marie," said the concierge, and put his finger on his lip.

"Is she young?" said I, following the concierge down the stairway.

"Oui, monsieur."

"And pretty?"

"Oui, monsieur."

"I have never seen her," said I.

"Ma foi, that is not strange, monsieur."

"And she has been here—?"

"A month."

"Perhaps she is rich," said I.

"Mon Dieu!" said the concierge, turning round to look at me, "and live in such a chamber?"

"But she dresses richly," said I.

"Eh bien! you have seen her, then!" exclaimed briskly the little concierge.

By this time we were in the court again. My search had only stimulated my curiosity tenfold more. I half fancied the concierge began to suspect my inquiries. Yet I determined to venture a single further one. It was just as I was carelessly leaving the court—"Mais, la mademoiselle, is, perhaps, the daughter of Monsieur Very, eh, monsieur?"

"Ma foi, I cannot tell you, monsieur," said the little concierge—and he closed his door.

I told the abbé of my search. He smiled, and shook his head.

I described to him the person of Monsieur Very, and told him he must keep his eye upon him, and, if possible, clear up the strange mystery of the window in the court.

The abbé shook his finger doubtingly, yet gave me a half promise.

Three days only were left to me; I cast up anxious glances each morning of my stay, but there was nothing but the placard and a bit of the veil to be seen—the little shoe was gone. My last evening I passed with the abbé, and came away late. I stopped five minutes on the corridor, just outside the wicket; the moon was shining bright, and the stars were out, but the window at the top of the court was dark—all dark.