In the Days of My Youth: A Novel

by Amelia B. Edwards

In Paris, a lodging-house (or, as they prefer to style it, a hôtel meublé) is a little town in itself; a beehive swarming from basement to attic; a miniature model of the great world beyond, with all its loves and hatreds, jealousies, aspirations, and struggles. Like that world, it contains several grades of society, but with this difference, that those who therein occupy the loftiest position are held in the lowest estimation. Thus, the fifth-floor lodgers turn up their noses at the inhabitants of the attics; while the fifth-floor is in its turn scorned by the fourth, and the fourth is despised by the third, and the third by the second, down to the magnificent dwellers on the premier étage, who live in majestic disdain of everybody above or beneath them, from the grisettes in the garret, to the concierge who has care of the cellars.

The house in which I lived in the Cité Bergère was, in fact, a double house, and contained no fewer than thirty tenants, some of whom had wives, children, and servants. It consisted of six floors, and each floor contained from eight to ten rooms. These were let in single chambers, or in suites, as the case might be; and on the outer doors opening round the landings were painted the names, or affixed the visiting-cards, of the dwellers within. My own third-floor neighbors were four in number. To my left lived a certain Monsieur and Madame Lemercier, a retired couple from Alsace. Opposite their door, on the other side of the well staircase, dwelt one Monsieur Cliquot, an elderly employé in some public office; next to him, Signor Milanesi, an Italian refugee who played in the orchestra at the Variétés every night, was given to practising the violoncello by day, and wore as much hair about his face as a Skye-terrier. Lastly, in the apartment to my right, resided a lady, upon whose door was nailed a small visiting-card engraved with these words:--

MLLE. HORTENSE DUFRESNOY.
Teacher of Languages.

I had resided in the house for months before I ever beheld this Mademoiselle Hortense Dufresnoy. When I did at last encounter her upon the stairs one dusk autumnal evening, she wore a thick black veil, and, darting past me like a bird on the wing, disappeared down the staircase in fewer moments than I take to write it. I scarcely observed her at the time. I had no more curiosity to learn whether the face under that veil was pretty or plain than I cared to know whether the veil itself was Shetland or Chantilly. At that time Paris was yet new to me: Madame de Marignan's evil influence was about me; and, occupied as my time and thoughts were with unprofitable matters, I took no heed of my fellow-lodgers. Save, indeed, when the groans of that much-tortured violoncello woke me in the morning to an unwelcome consciousness of the vicinity of Signor Milanesi, I should scarcely have remembered that I was not the only inhabitant of the third story.

Now, however, that I spent all my evenings in my own quiet room, I became, by imperceptible degrees, interested in the unseen inhabitant of the adjoining apartment. Sometimes, when the house was so still that the very turning of the page sounded unnaturally loud, and the mere falling of a cinder startled me, I heard her in her chamber, singing softly to herself. Every night I saw the light from her window streaming out over the balcony and touching the evergreens with a midnight glow. Often and often, when it was so late that even I had given up study and gone to bed, I heard her reading aloud, or pacing to and fro to the measure of her own recitations. Listen as I would, I could only make out that these recitations were poetical fragments--I could only distinguish a certain chanted metre, the chiming of an occasional rhyme, the rising and falling of a voice more than commonly melodious.

This vague interest gave place by-and-by to active curiosity. I resolved to question Madame Bouïsse, the concierge; and as she, good soul! loved gossip not wisely, but too well, I soon knew all the little she had to tell.

Mademoiselle Hortense, it appeared, was the enigma of the third story. She had resided in the house for more than two years. She earned her living by her labor; went out teaching all the day; sat up at night, studying and writing; had no friends; received no visitors; was as industrious as a bee, and as proud as a princess. Books and flowers were her only friends, and her only luxuries. Poor as she was, she was continually filling her shelves with the former, and supplying her balcony with the latter. She lived frugally, drank no wine, was singularly silent and reserved, and "like a real lady," said the fat concierge, "paid her rent to the minute."

This, and no more, had Madame Bouïsse to tell. I had sought her in her own little retreat at the foot of the public staircase. It was a very wet afternoon, and under pretext of drying my boots by the fire, I stayed to make conversation and elicit what information I could. Now Madame Bouïsse's sanctuary was a queer, dark, stuffy little cupboard devoted to many heterogeneous uses, and it "served her for parlor, kitchen, and all." In one corner stood that famous article of furniture which became "a bed by night, a chest of drawers by day." Adjoining the bed was the fireplace; near the fireplace stood a corner cupboard filled with crockery and surmounted by a grand ormolu clock, singularly at variance with the rest of the articles. A table, a warming-pan, and a couple of chairs completed the furniture of the room, which, with all its contents, could scarcely have measured more than eight feet square. On a shelf inside the door stood thirty flat candlesticks; and on a row of nails just beneath them, hung two and twenty bright brass chamber-door keys--whereby an apt arithmetician might have divined that exactly two-and-twenty lodgers were out in the rain, and only eight housed comfortably within doors.

"And how old should you suppose this lady to be?" I asked, leaning idly against the table whereon Madame Bouïsse was preparing an unsavory dish of veal and garlic.

The concierge shrugged her ponderous shoulders.