up with you, madame" she added; "I am taking the milk and the
newspaper up to my landlord."

Arrived on the second floor above the entresol, La Cibot beheld a door
of the most villainous description. The doubtful red paint was coated
for seven or eight inches round the keyhole with a filthy glaze, a grimy
deposit from which the modern house-decorator endeavors to protect the
doors of more elegant apartments by glass "finger-plates." A grating,
almost stopped up with some compound similar to the deposit with which
a restaurant-keeper gives an air of cellar-bound antiquity to a merely
middle-aged bottle, only served to heighten the general resemblance to
a prison door; a resemblance further heightened by the trefoil-shaped
iron-work, the formidable hinges, the clumsy nail-heads. A miser, or a
pamphleteer at strife with the world at large, must surely have invented
these fortifications. A leaden sink, which received the waste water
of the household, contributed its quota to the fetid atmosphere of the
staircase, and the ceiling was covered with fantastic arabesques traced
by candle-smoke--such arabesques! On pulling a greasy acorn tassel
attached to the bell-rope, a little bell jangled feebly somewhere
within, complaining of the fissure in its metal sides.

Every detail was in keeping with the general dismal effect. La Cibot
heard a heavy footstep, and the asthmatic wheezing of a virago within,
and Mme. Sauvage presently showed herself. Adrien Brauwer might have
painted just such a hag for his picture of _Witches starting for the
Sabbath_; a stout, unwholesome slattern, five feet six inches in height,
with a grenadier countenance and a beard which far surpassed La
Cibot's own; she wore a cheap, hideously ugly cotton gown, a bandana
handkerchief knotted over hair which she still continued to put in curl
papers (using for that purpose the printed circulars which her master
received), and a huge pair of gold earrings like cart-wheels in her
ears. This female Cerberus carried a battered skillet in one hand,
and opening the door, set free an imprisoned odor of scorched milk--a
nauseous and penetrating smell, that lost itself at once, however, among
the fumes outside.

"What can I do for you, missus?" demanded Mme. Sauvage, and with a
truculent air she looked La Cibot over; evidently she was of the opinion
that the visitor was too well dressed, and her eyes looked the more
murderous because they were naturally bloodshot.

"