by a small round window, did
duty as an ante-chamber, and filled the space between the bedroom, the
kitchen, and house doors--three doors in all. The rooms were paved with
bricks, and hung with a hideous wall-paper at threepence apiece; the
chimneypieces that adorned them were of the kind called _capucines_--a
shelf set on a couple of brackets painted to resemble wood. Here in
these three rooms dwelt five human beings, three of them children. Any
one, therefore, can imagine how the walls were covered with scores and
scratches so far as an infant arm can reach.

Rich people can scarcely realize the extreme simplicity of a poor man's
kitchen. A Dutch oven, a kettle, a gridiron, a saucepan, two or three
dumpy cooking-pots, and a frying-pan--that was all. All the crockery in
the place, white and brown earthenware together, was not worth more than
twelve francs. Dinner was served on the kitchen table, which, with a
couple of chairs and a couple of stools, completed the furniture. The
stock of fuel was kept under the stove with a funnel-shaped chimney,
and in a corner stood the wash-tub in which the family linen lay, often
steeping over-night in soapsuds. The nursery ceiling was covered with
clothes-lines, the walls were variegated with theatrical placards and
wood-cuts from newspapers or advertisements. Evidently the eldest boy,
the owner of the school-books stacked in a corner, was left in
charge while his parents were absent at the theatre. In many a French
workingman's family, so soon as a child reaches the age of six or seven,
it plays the part of mother to younger sisters and brothers.

From this bare outline, it may be imagined that the Topinards, to use
the hackneyed formula, were "poor but honest." Topinard himself was
verging on forty; Mme. Topinard, once leader of a chorus--mistress, too,
it was said, of Gaudissart's predecessor, was certainly thirty years
old. Lolotte had been a fine woman in her day; but the misfortunes of
the previous management had told upon her to such an extent, that it
had seemed to her to be both advisable and necessary to contract a
stage-marriage with Topinard. She did not doubt but that, as soon as
they could muster the sum of a hundred and fifty francs, her Topinard
would perform his vows agreeably to the civil law, were it only to
legitimize the three children, whom he worshiped. Meantime, Mme.
Topinard sewed for the theatre wardrobe in the morning; and with
prodigious effort, the br