"Yesterday?"
"Yesterday afternoon,—yes. Quite sudden, was it not?"
She said this as though it was of no importance.
"The huissier?" he suggested, official ejectment being the most common cause of student troubles.
She laughed secretively.
"The police?"
Then she laughed openly—her pretty little silvery tinkle—and drew his attention to the kitchen.
It was a small dark place with a much-worn tile floor and a charcoal range of two pockets faced and covered with blue and white tiles; an immense hood above yawning like the flat open jaws of a gigantic cobra, which might not only consume all the smoke and smells but gobble up the little tile-covered range itself upon gastronomical provocation.
"Isn't it just lovely!" exclaimed Mlle. Fouchette, delightedly. "And see! here is a stone sink, and there's water and gas."
Water and gas are still deemed luxuries in the more ancient quarters of Paris. As for baths, they are for the rich,—even the more modern structures are parsimonious of baths. You realize all this when in a close omnibus, or smell some well-dressed Parisienne ten feet away. When one of the dwellers of Rue St. Jacques takes a bath a battered old tub is brought around on a wagon and unloaded in the court with a noise and ceremony that arouses the entire neighborhood, which puts its head out of the window and wonders who is going to be married.