The Countess de Nemours' house in Paris stood in the centre of the street of the Two Repentant Magdalens. An iron door in a griffoned arch opened into a sunny court-yard, where peacocks strutted by an old fountain, and a black poodle, who was both a thief and a miser, snarled at the passers-by.
On the right of the entrance, in a kind of sentry-box, Quantrelle the Red acted as concierge. He was a man above the peasant class, ridiculously long and spare, with an unbroken record for thirty years of drunkenness and quarrelling. His narrow head was covered with irregular tufts of scarlet hair, and in his forehead were heavy furrows which curved down over the nose and waved upward and back to the temple. His eyebrows were red tufts standing fiercely out over his little red-brown eyes, and his nose, long,
lean, and absurdly pointed, seemed peering at his great teeth, yellowed by much smoking of cigarettes. He added to his charms an attire intentionally bizarre, for he dressed himself, so to speak, in character. And with these natural and achieved drawbacks to his appearance he had the temper of a wasp, so that it was small wonder that questionings were rife as to the reason of his retention, his overpaid retention, in the De Nemours' household. He had a wit of his own, had Quantrelle. Frequently his pleasing fancy led him to admit visitors when he knew Madame de Nemours to be absent, and, after conducting them by some circuitous route to unexpected rooms, he would leave them waiting until discovered by any chance domestic who happened by. And when they were ushered forth to the street he would follow them with a torrent of shrill apology, retiring, in a paroxysm of silent laughter, behind the shutters of his little box. Why Madame de Nemours endured his vagaries was indeed strange, for she was one who demanded of every other domestic something of an over-obsequiousness in service. It was a well-known fact, however, that he held an assured position in the household, and that the Countess only smiled at his grimaces and
drinking, rewarding him with frequent gifts and holidays in the country.
On the morning of Dermott's coming, Quantrelle the Red sat in his little house peering out, monkeylike, expectantly, at the passers-by, and craning his long neck to keep a constant eye on the corner around which the Irishman was to arrive. As the brougham drew up to the curb the Red One sprang to his feet, threw the iron doors wide apart, and stood bowing double as McDermott entered.
"Ah, my Quantrelle!" he cried, gayly, at sight of the thin grotesqueness. "Still in your old place; still taking care of madame!"
"Till the end," was the answer, with a serious note in the voice.
"You have not changed much in the three years since I saw you last," Dermott said, inspecting him closely.
"Nor you, monsieur," Quantrelle answered. "In fact, you have changed little since twelve years ago, when I hid you and young Monsieur de Chevanne on top of my box here, after some escapade, to keep you both from the police." He scrutinized McDermott closely as he spoke. "And it's not the money (which I know well you will give me anyhow) which makes me say you
are more beautiful than ever, monsieur. The same elegant pallor; the same pursuit in the eye! Had I had your looks"; he made a clucking sound in his cheek with his tongue; "and your clothes! Always the blacks and grays and very elegant! They are not my colors," he drew himself to his straightest to exhibit his maroon coat and trousers and wide green cravat with an assumed satisfaction; "but each has his own style," he finished.