The floor, composed of earth beaten together with saltpetre, was thick with dirt; an armful of straw—an apology for a carpet—was placed at the foot of the ogress's counter, which was at the right hand of the door, just beneath the dim lantern.
On each side of this room there were six tables, one end of each of which was nailed to the wall, as well as the benches on either side of them. At the farther end was a door leading to a kitchen; on the right, near the counter, was a passage which led into a den where persons slept for the night at three halfpence a head.
A few words will describe the ogress and her guests. The lady was called Mother Ponisse; her triple trade consisted in letting furnished apartments, keeping a public-house, and lending clothes to the miserable creatures who infest these foul streets.
The ogress was about forty years of age, bulky, fat, and heavy. She had a full colour, and strong symptoms of a beard. Her deep voice, her enormous arms, and coarse hands betokened uncommon strength. She wore on her cap a large red and yellow handkerchief; a shawl of rabbit-skin was crossed over her bosom, and tied behind; her woollen gown fell upon black wooden shoes, scorched almost black by the small stove at which she warmed her feet; and, to crown her beauty, she had a copper complexion, which the use of strong liquors had materially tended to heighten.
The counter, covered with lead, was decked with jugs with iron hoops, and various pewter measures. In an open cupboard, fastened to the wall, there were several flasks of glass, so fashioned as to represent the pedestrian figure of the Emperor. These bottles contained sundry cordials, red and green in colour, and known by the names of "Drops for the Brave," "Ratafia of the Column," etc., etc.
A large black cat, with green eyes, was sitting near the ogress, and seemed the familiar demon of the place. Then, in strange contrast, a holy branch of boxwood, bought at church by the ogress, was suspended at the back of an old cuckoo clock.
Two marvellously ill-favoured fellows, with unshaven beards, and their garb all in tatters, hardly tasted of the pitcher of wine before them, and conversed together in low voices, and with uneasy aspect. One of the two, very pale and livid, pulled, from time to time, his shabby skull-cap over his brows, and concealed as much as possible his left hand, and, even when compelled to use it, he did so with caution.
Further on there was a young man, hardly sixteen years of age, with beardless chin, and a countenance wan, wrinkled, and heavy, his eye dull, and his long black hair straggling down his neck. This youthful rake, the emblem of precocious vice, was smoking a short black pipe. His back was resting against the wall, and his two hands were in the pockets of his blouse, and his legs stretched along the bench. He did not cease smoking for a moment, unless it was to drink from a cannikin of brandy placed before him.
The other inmates of the tapis-franc, men and women, presented no remarkable characteristics. There was the ferocious or embruted face,—the vulgar and licentious mirth; but from time to time there was a deep and dull silence. Such were the guests of the tapis-franc when the unknown, the Chourineur, and the Goualeuse entered.
These three persons play such important parts in our recital, that we must put them in relief.