that it is the
cumulative effect of these minute touches that is necessary
for the true realisation of character.

_I.--In a Paris Boarding-House_

Madame Vauquer, nee Conflans, is an elderly lady who for forty years
past has kept a Parisian middle-class boarding-house, situated in the
Rue Neuve Sainte-Genevieve, between the Latin Quarter and the Faubourg
Saint Marcel. This pension, known under the name of the Maison Vauquer,
receives men as well as women--young men and old; but hitherto scandal
has never attacked the moral principles on which the respectable
establishment has been conducted. Moreover, for more than thirty years,
no young woman has been seen in the house; and if any young man ever
lived there, it was because his family were able to make him only a very
slender allowance. Nevertheless, in 1819, the date at which this drama
begins, a poor young girl was found there.

The Maison Vauquer is of three stories, with attic chambers, and a tiny
garden at the back. The ground floor consists of a parlour lighted by
two windows looking upon the street. Nothing could be more depressing
than this chamber, which is used as the sitting-room. It is furnished
with chairs, the seats of which are covered with strips of alternate
dull and shining horsehair stuff, while in the centre is a round table
with a marble top. The room exhales a smell for which there is no name,
in any language, except that of _odour de pension_. And yet, if you
compare it with the dining-room which adjoins, you will find the
sitting-room as elegant and as perfumed as a lady's boudoir. There
misery reigns without a redeeming touch of poesie--poverty, penetrating,
concentrated, rasping. This room appears at its best when at seven in
the morning Madame Vauquer, preceded by her cat, enters it from her
sleeping chamber. She wears a tulle cap, under which hangs awry a front
of false hair; her gaping slippers flop as she walks across the room.
Her features are oldish and flabby; from their midst springs a nose like
the beak of a parrot. Her small fat hands, her person plump as a church
rat, her bust too full and tremulous, are all in harmony with the room.
About fifty years of age, Madame Vauquer looks as most women do who say
that they have had misfortunes.

At the date when this story opens there were seven boarders in the
house. The first floor contained the two best suites of rooms. Madame
Vauquer occupied the small, and the other wa