nd
interpretation of her lodging-house, as surely as her lodging-house
implies the existence of its mistress. You can no more imagine the one
without the other, than you can think of a jail without a turnkey. The
unwholesome corpulence of the little woman is produced by the life she
leads, just as typhus fever is bred in the tainted air of a hospital.
The very knitted woolen petticoat that she wears beneath a skirt made
of an old gown, with the wadding protruding through the rents in the
material, is a sort of epitome of the sitting-room, the dining-room,
and the little garden; it discovers the cook, it foreshadows the
lodgers--the picture of the house is completed by the portrait of its
mistress.

Mme. Vauquer at the age of fifty is like all women who "have seen a deal
of trouble." She has the glassy eyes and innocent air of a trafficker
in flesh and blood, who will wax virtuously indignant to obtain a higher
price for her services, but who is quite ready to betray a Georges or
a Pichegru, if a Georges or a Pichegru were in hiding and still to be
betrayed, or for any other expedient that may alleviate her lot. Still,
"she is a good woman at bottom," said the lodgers who believed that
the widow was wholly dependent upon the money that they paid her, and
sympathized when they heard her cough and groan like one of themselves.

What had M. Vauquer been? The lady was never very explicit on this head.
How had she lost her money? "Through trouble," was her answer. He had
treated her badly, had left her nothing but her eyes to cry over his
cruelty, the house she lived in, and the privilege of pitying nobody,
because, so she was wont to say, she herself had been through every
possible misfortune.

Sylvie, the stout cook, hearing her mistress' shuffling footsteps,
hastened to serve the lodgers' breakfasts. Beside those who lived in the
house, Mme. Vauquer took boarders who came for their meals; but these
_externes_ usually only came to dinner, for which they paid thirty
francs a month.

At the time when this story begins, the lodging-house contained seven
inmates. The best rooms in the house were on the first story, Mme.
Vauquer herself occupying the least important, while the rest were let
to a Mme. Couture, the widow of a commissary-general in the service of
the Republic. With her lived Victorine Taillefer, a schoolgirl, to whom
she filled the place of mother. These two ladies paid eighteen hundred
francs a year.

The t