Only in her visits to our fifth floor did she dare to give way to her grief, and truly at such times both my Clélie and I were greatly affected. Upon one occasion indeed she filled us both with alarm.
“Do you know what I shall do?” she said, stopping suddenly in the midst of her weeping. “I'll bear it as long as I can, and then I'll put an end to it. There's—there's always the Seine left, and I've laid awake and thought of it many a night. Father and me saw a man taken out of it one day, and the people said he was a Tyrolean, and drowned himself because he was so poor and lonely—and—and so far from home.”
Upon the very morning she made this speech I saw again our friend of the sixth floor. In going down-stairs I came upon him, sitting upon one of the steps as if exhausted, and when he turned his face upward, its pallor and haggardness startled me. His tall form was wasted, his eyes were hollow, the peculiarities I had before observed were doubly marked—he was even emaciated.
“Monsieur,” I said in English, “you appear indisposed. You have been ill. Allow me to assist you to your room.”
“No, thank you,” he answered. “It's only weakness. I—I sorter give out. Don't trouble yourself. I shall get over it directly.”
Something in his face, which was a very young and well-looking one, forced me to leave him in silence, merely bowing as I did so. I felt instinctively that to remain would be to give him additional pain.
As I passed the room of the concierge, however, the excellent woman beckoned to me to approach her.
“Did you see the young man?” she inquired rather anxiously. “He has shown himself this morning for the first time in three days. There is something wrong. It is my impression that he suffers want—that he is starving himself to death!”
Her rosy countenance absolutely paled as she uttered these last words, retreating a pace from me and touching my arm with her fore-finger.
“He has carried up even less bread than usual during the last few weeks,” she added, “and there has been no bouillon whatever. A young man cannot live only on dry bread, and too little of that. He will perish; and apart from the inhumanity of the thing, it will be unpleasant for the other locataires.”