The house, beneath whose weather-worn roof he had spent such wild nights of old, had been spared from demolition by accident only, and was soon to be numbered with the things of the past. Its doom was fixed, it existed only on sufferance, pending the complete reconstruction of the quarter. A mighty Boulevard, marching on with progress as relentless as Juggernaut’s car, had cut the narrow, dingy old street across, at right angles, letting daylight in upon all its shabbiness, its teeming life, its contented poverty, its secret crime, squalid miseries, and sordid vices.
The house in which Desrolles had lived had but just escaped demolition. It stood at the corner of the broad, new Boulevard, where mighty stone palaces were being raised upon the ashes of departed hovels. Its next door neighbour had been razed to the ground, and the gaudy papers that had lined the vanished rooms were revealed to the open day, showing how, stage by stage, the rooms had waxed shabbier, lower, smaller, till on the sixth story they had dwindled to mere pigeon holes. The ragged paper rotted on the wall; black patches showed where the fire-places had stood; and a great black column marked the course of a demolished chimney-stack. This outside wall had been shored up, but, even thus supported, the tall, narrow, corner house, contemplated from the street below, had an insecure look.
Desrolles was delighted to find his ancient den still standing. How well he remembered the little wine-shop on the ground floor, the bright-coloured bottles in the windows, the odour of brandy within, the blouses sitting on the benches against the wall, squabbling loudly over dominoes, or playing écarte with the limpest and smallest of cards.
He inquired in the wine-shop if there was une chambre de garçon—a bachelor’s room—to be had upstairs.
‘There is always room for a bachelor,’ answered the buxom female behind the counter. ‘Yes, there is a pretty little room on the fifth story, all that there is of the most commodious, où, monsieur aurait toutes ses aises.’
Desrolles shrugged his shoulders dubiously.
‘The fifth story,’ he exclaimed. ‘Do you think my legs are as young as they were twenty years ago?’
‘Monsieur looks full of youth and activity,’ said the woman.
‘Does La Veuve Chomard still keep the house?’
Alas, no. The widow Chomard had departed some nine years ago to the narrowest of houses in the cemetery of Mount Parnassus. The present proprietor was a gentleman in the commerce of wines, and also the proprietor of the shop.