of us.

I have a half-bed in a little street, with a man who is a good fellow,
considering he is a square-head--a German. The red tiles of my staircase
are very clean, and slippery with beeswax. My landlord rents a portion
of the third floor of the house, and under-lets it fearfully. One
apartment has been penned off into four, and mine is the fourth section
at the end. To reach me one must pass through the first pen, which is
occupied by Monsieur and Madame. There they work, eat, and sleep; as for
Madame, she never leaves it. Monsieur only goes away to wait upon the
_griffe_, his master, when he wants more work; his _griffe_ is a slop
tailor. Monsieur and Madame sleep in a recess, which looks like a
sarcophagus. A little Italian tailor also sleeps in the same pen; but
whereabouts I know not--his bed is a mystery. The next pen is occupied
by two carpenters, seldom at home. When they come home, all of us know
it; for they are extremely musical. In the third pen live three more
tailors, through whose territory I must pass to my own cabinet. But how
snug that is! Although only eight feet by ten, it has two corner
windows; and, if there is little furniture and but a scanty bed, there is
a looking-glass fit for a baron, and some remains of violet-coloured
hangings and long muslin curtains; either white or brown, I am not sure.
I and the German pay for this apartment fifteen shillings monthly.

There is a kind of lodgers worth especial mention. The men working in
the yards of masons, carpenters, and others--masons
especially--frequently come from the provinces. They are not part of the
fixed population; but are men who have left their wives and families to
come up to the town and earn a sum of money. For this they work most
energetically; living in the most abstemious manner, in order that they
may not break into their hoard. They occupy furnished lodgings, flocking
very much together. Thus the masons from the departments of la Creuse
and la Haute Vienne occupy houses let out in furnished rooms exclusively
to themselves, in the quarters of the Hotel de Ville, the Arsenal, Saint
Marcel, and in other parts of Paris. The rigid parsimony of these men is
disappointed terribly when any crisis happens. They are forced to eat
their savings, to turn their clothing and their tools into food, and, by
the revolution of eighteen hundred and forty-eight, were reduced to such
great destitution, that in some of the house