"If you don't want to go up, bourgeois, because it tires you, why I will take you on my back. I am strong and I won't drop you; I would carry you that way through the streets if you wanted."
"Thanks, my boy, but that new style of locomotion does not attract me, and I doubt whether I could make it the fashion. Besides, they say that one must walk about and exercise with the gout. So I will go up on my feet."
"If you must exercise, you see that it is much better that you should live on the fifth floor."
Roncherolle inspected the lodgings, heaved a profound sigh in spite of himself, and reflected:
"After all, what can one expect to get for two hundred francs? It's all I can afford—in fact, rather more."
He gave the concierge her earnest money, informing her that he relied upon her to do the housework and to make his coffee; whereupon the old woman redoubled her reverences and her politeness, crying:
"I hope monsieur will like our house; I shall always be ready to wait on him; whenever he needs anything, all he has got to do is to put his head out of the window and call Mère Lamort, and I will go up in a second."
"What did you say that I must call you, madame?"
"Mère Lamort."
"Ah! your name is Lamort, is it?"