a couple of attics in the roof. The first room
did duty as dining-room and lobby; it was exactly the same length as
the passage below, less the space taken up by the old-fashioned wooden
staircase; and was lighted by a narrow casement on the street and a
bull's-eye window looking into the yard. The chief characteristic of the
apartment was a cynic simplicity, due to money-making greed. The bare
walls were covered with plain whitewash, the dirty brick floor had never
been scoured, the furniture consisted of three rickety chairs, a round
table, and a sideboard stationed between the two doors of a bedroom
and a sitting-room. Windows and doors alike were dingy with accumulated
grime. Reams of blank paper or printed matter usually encumbered the
floor, and more frequently than not the remains of Sechard's dinner,
empty bottles and plates, were lying about on the packages.

The bedroom was lighted on the side of the yard by a window with leaded
panes, and hung with the old-world tapestry that decorated house fronts
in provincial towns on Corpus Christi Day. For furniture it boasted
a vast four-post bedstead with canopy, valances and quilt of crimson
serge, a couple of worm-eaten armchairs, two tapestry-covered chairs in
walnut wood, an aged bureau, and a timepiece on the mantel-shelf. The
Seigneur Rouzeau, Jerome-Nicolas' master and predecessor, had furnished
the homely old-world room; it was just as he had left it.

The sitting-room had been partly modernized by the late Mme. Sechard;
the walls were adorned with a wainscot, fearful to behold, painted
the color of powder blue. The panels were decorated with
wall-paper--Oriental scenes in sepia tint--and for all furniture,
half-a-dozen chairs with lyre-shaped backs and blue leather cushions
were ranged round the room. The two clumsy arched windows that gave upon
the Place du Murier were curtainless; there was neither clock nor candle
sconce nor mirror above the mantel-shelf, for Mme. Sechard had died
before she carried out her scheme of decoration; and the "bear," unable
to conceive the use of improvements that brought in no return in money,
had left it at this point.

Hither, _pede titubante_, Jerome-Nicolas Sechard brought his son, and
pointed to a sheet of paper lying on the table--a valuation of plant
drawn up by the foreman under his direction.

"Read that, my boy," said Jerome-Nicolas, rolling a drunken eye from the
paper to his son, and back to the paper. "You will