That made nothing, Desrolles told the woman. All he wanted was a comfortable room on the first or second floor.
Unhappily the chambrette de garçon on the fifth stage was the only unoccupied room in the house, and after some hesitation Desrolles followed an ancient female of the portress species up the dirty old staircase, and into the chambrette.
‘That gives upon the new boulevard,’ said the portress, opening a small window. ‘C’est crânement gai. It is awfully lively!’
Desrolles looked down upon the broad new street, with its omnibuses, and waggons, and builders’ trollies, circulating up and down—its monstrous scaffolding, and lofty ladders, and workmen dangling between earth and sky, with an appearance of being in immediate peril of death.
The room was small, but to Desrolles’ eye it looked snug. There were comfortable stuff curtains to the mahogany bedstead, curtains to the window, a carpet on the red-tiled floor, a hearth on which a wood fire might burn cheerily, a cupboard for firewood, and a bureau with a lock and key, in which a man might put away a bottle or two for occasional use.
‘It’s an infernal way up,’ he said. ‘A man might as well live on the top of the gate of St. Denis. But I must make it serve. I am a staunch Conservative. I like old quarters.’
Of old the house had been free and easy in its habits. A lodger could come in at any hour he liked with his pass-key. Desrolles made an inquiry or two of the portress as to the present rule. He found that the old order still obtained. The present proprietor was un bon enfant. He asked nothing of his lodgers, but that they should pay him his rent, and not embroil themselves with the police.
Desrolles flung down the small valise which contained all his worldly gear, paid the portress a month’s rent in advance, and went out to enjoy his Paris. That enchantress had him in her clutch already. He made up his mind by this time that he would defer his journey southward for a few weeks; perhaps until after the procession of the Bœuf Gras had delighted the lively inhabitants of the liveliest city in the world.
He went back to his old haunts, loved twenty years ago, and always remembered with fondness. He found many changes, but the atmosphere was still the same. Absinthe was the one great novelty. That murderous stimulant had not attained a universal popularity at the beginning of the Second Empire. Desrolles took to absinthe as an infant takes to the gracious fountain heaven has provided for its sustenance. He renounced brandy in favour of the less familiar poison. He found plenty of new companions in his old haunts. They were not the same men, but they had the same habits, the same vices; and Desrolles’ idea of a friend was a bundle of sympathetic wickedness. He found men to gamble with and drink with, men whose tongues were as foul as his own, and who looked at life in this world and the next from the same standpoint.
His brutal nature sank even to a lower depth of brutality in such congenial company. Money gave him a temporary omnipotence. He was spending it with royal recklessness, believing himself secure against all future evils, when one morning chance flung an English newspaper in his way, and he read the report of John Treverton’s first appearance at the Bow Street Police-court.