de.' A horrible smell like
a hairdresser's shop, otto of roses and macassar, mingled with the
stifling fumes, of glue. Vedrine called once more in the direction of
the back of the shop where the bedroom was; then they left, Freydet
chuckling at the idea of a humpbacked Lovelace.

'Perhaps he's at a tryst,' he said.

'You are pleased to laugh; but, my dear fellow, the humpback is on the
best of terms with all the beauties of Paris, if one may believe the
testimony of his bedroom walls, which are covered with photographs
bearing the owners' names, and headed "To Albin," "To my dear little
Fage." There is never any lady to be seen here, but he sometimes comes
and tells me about his fine octavo, or his pretty little duodecimo, as
he calls his conquests, according to their height and size.'

'And he is ugly, you say?'

'A perfect monster.'

'And no money?'

'A poor little bookbinder and worker in cardboard, living on his work and
his bit of a garden, but very intelligent and learned, with a marvellous
memory. We shall probably find him wandering about in some corner of
the building. He is a great dreamer is little Fage, like all
sentimentalists.--This way, but look where you step; there are some
awkward places.'

They were going up a huge staircase, of which the lower steps still
remained, as did the balustrade, rusty, split, and in places twisted.
Then suddenly they turned off by a fragile wooden bridge, resting on
the supports of the staircase, between high walls on which were dimly
visible the remains of huge frescoes, cracked, decayed, and blackened
with soot, the hind legs of a horse, a woman's torso undraped, with
inscriptions almost illegible on panels that had lost their gilding,
'Meditation,' 'Silence,' 'Trade uniting the nations of the world.'

On the first floor a long gallery with a vaulted roof, as in the
amphitheatre at Aries or Nimes, stretched away between smoke-stained
walls, covered with huge fissures, remains of plaster and iron work, and
tangled vegetation. At the entrance to this passage was inscribed on the
wall, 'Corridor des Huissiers.' On the next floor they found much the
same thing, only that here, the roof having given way, the gallery was
nothing but a long terrace of brambles climbing up to the undestroyed
arcades and falling down in disordered waving festoons to the level of
the courtyard. From this second floor could be seen the roofs of the
neighbouring houses, the whitewashed walls