Key in hand, the concierge led the way. They followed her in silence. The gloomy antiquity of the house caused the memories which the blackened stones evoked for the brother and sister to recede into an unfathomable past. They climbed the stone stairs in a state of sorrowful eagerness, and when the concierge opened the door of the flat they remained motionless upon the landing, afraid to enter the rooms that seemed to be haunted by the host of their childish memories, like so many little ghosts.
“You can go in; the flat is empty.”
At first they could find nothing of the past in the wide empty rooms, freshly papered. They were amazed to find that they had become strangers to things which had formerly been so familiar.
“Here is the kitchen,” said the concierge, “and here are the dining-room and the drawing-room.”
A voice cried from the courtyard:
“M’ame Falempin!”
The concierge looked out of the window, apologized, and grumbling to herself went down the stairs with feeble steps, groaning. Then the brother and sister began to remember. Memories of inimitable hours, of the long days of childhood, began to return to them.
“Here is the dining-room,” said Zoe. “The sideboard used to be there, against the wall.”
“The mahogany sideboard, ‘battered by its long wanderings,’ as our father used to say, when he and his family and his furniture were ceaselessly hunted from north to south and from east to west by the Minister of the 2nd of December. It remained here a few years, however, maimed and crippled.”
“There is the porcelain stove in its old corner.”