Through this depressing white gloom, Stella and her mother are driven in a rattling little omnibus, with a couple of other travellers, through a Paris as silent as the grave, to the Hôtel Bedford, Rue Pasquier. An Englishwoman at Nice once recommended it to the Baroness as that wonder of wonders, a first-class hotel with second-class prices, and it is under English patronage. English lords and ladies now and then occupy the first story, and consequently the garret-rooms are continually inhabited by impoverished but highly distinguished scions of English "county families." In the reading-room, between 'Burke's Peerage' and Lodge's 'Vicissitudes of Families' is placed an album containing the photographs of two peeresses. The clientèle is as aristocratic as it is economical: each despises all the rest, and one and all dispute the weekly bills. Stella and her mother are by no means enchanted with this hotel, and they sally forth as soon as they are somewhat rested, in search of furnished lodgings.
But the funds are scanty: their expenses ought to be paid out of a hundred and fifty francs a month!
The first day passes, and our Austrians have as yet found nothing suitable. The cheapest lodgings are confined and dark, and smell, as the ladies express it, of English people; that is, of a mixture of camphor, patchouli, and old nut-shells. The bedrooms in these cheap lodgings consist of a sort of windowless closets, entirely dependent for ventilation upon a door into the drawing-room which can be left open at night.
Meanwhile, the living at the Bedford is dear. The Baroness arrives at the conclusion that private quarters at three hundred francs a month would be more economical, and finally decides to spend this sum upon her winter residence.
For three hundred francs very much better lodgings are to be had; the bedrooms have windows, but there are still all kinds of discomforts to be endured, the worst of which consists perhaps in the fact that none of the proprietors of these rooms, which are mostly intended for bachelors, is willing to undertake to provide food for the two ladies.
At last in the Rue de Lêze an appartement is found which answers their really moderate requirements; but just at the last moment the Baroness discovers that the concierge is a very suspicious-looking individual, and remembers that the previous year a horrible murder was committed in the Rue de Lêze; wherefore negotiations are at once broken off.
A pretty appartement in the Rue de l'Arcade pleases Stella particularly, perhaps because the drawing-room is furnished with buhl cabinets. The Baroness is just about to close with the concierge, who does the honours of the place,--there is merely a question of five francs to be settled,--when with a suspicious sniff she remarks, "'Tis strange how strongly the atmosphere of this room is impregnated with musk!"
Whereupon the concierge explains that the rooms have lately been occupied by Mexican gentlemen, who shared the reprehensible Southern habit of indulging too freely in perfumes; and when the Baroness glances doubtfully at a dressing-table which scarcely presents a masculine appearance, and which boasts a sky-blue pincushion stuck full of different kinds of pins, he hastens to add, without waiting to be questioned, that the Mexican gentlemen had chiefly occupied themselves in collecting and arranging butterflies.
"Mexican men would seem to have long fair hair, mamma," Stella here interposes, having just pulled a golden hair at least a yard long out of the crochetted antimacassar of a low chair.
The face of the Baroness, who always suspects French immorality everywhere, turns to marble; tossing her head, she grasps Stella by the hand and hurries out with her, passing the astounded concierge without so much as deigning to bid him good-bye.