A LODGING-HOUSE.
The Passage de la Brasserie, a dark street, narrow, and but little known, although situated in the centre of Paris, runs at one end into the Rue Traversière St. Honoré, and at the other into the Cour St. Guillaume.
Towards the middle of this damp thoroughfare, muddy, dark, and unwholesome, and where the sun but rarely penetrates, there was a furnished house (commonly called a garni, lodging-house, in consequence of the low price of the apartments). On a miserable piece of paper might be read, "Chambers and small rooms furnished." To the right hand, in a dark alley, was the door of a store, not less obscure, in which constantly resided the principal tenant of this garni.
Father Micou was ostensibly a dealer in old metal ("marine stores"), but secretly purchased and received stolen metal, iron, lead, brass, and tin. When we mention that Father Micou was connected in business and friendship with the Martial family, we give a tolerable idea of his morality. The tie that binds—the sort of affiliation, the mysterious communion, which connects—the malefactors of Paris, is at once curious and fearful. The common prisons are the great centres whence flow, and to which reflow, incessantly those waves of corruption which gradually gain on the capital, and leave there such pernicious waifs and strays.
Father Micou was a stout man, about fifty years of age, with a mean and cunning countenance, a mulberry nose, and wine-flushed cheeks. He wore a fur cap and an old green long-skirted coat. Over his small stove, near which he was standing, there was a board fastened to the wall, and bearing a row of figures, to which were affixed the keys of the chambers of the absent lodgers. The panes of glass in the door which opened on to the street were so painted that from the outside no one could see what was going on within.
The whole of this extensive store was very dark. From the damp walls there hung rusty chains of all sizes; and the floor was strewed with iron and other metals. Three blows struck at the door in a particular way attracted the attention of the landlord, huckster, receiver.
"Come in!" he cried.
It was Nicholas, the son of the felon's widow. He was very pale, his features looked even more evil than they did on the previous evening, and yet he feigned a kind of overgaiety during the following conversation. (This scene takes place on the day after his quarrel with. Martial.)
"Ah, is it you, my fine fellow?" said Micou, cordially.
"Yes, Father Micou, I have come to see you on a trifle of business."