ly uneven, the
wainscot rises to elbow height, and the rest of the wall space is
decorated with a varnished paper, on which the principal scenes from
_Telemaque_ are depicted, the various classical personages being
colored. The subject between the two windows is the banquet given by
Calypso to the son of Ulysses, displayed thereon for the admiration of
the boarders, and has furnished jokes these forty years to the young
men who show themselves superior to their position by making fun of the
dinners to which poverty condemns them. The hearth is always so clean
and neat that it is evident that a fire is only kindled there on great
occasions; the stone chimney-piece is adorned by a couple of vases
filled with faded artificial flowers imprisoned under glass shades, on
either side of a bluish marble clock in the very worst taste.

The first room exhales an odor for which there is no name in the
language, and which should be called the _odeur de pension_. The damp
atmosphere sends a chill through you as you breathe it; it has a stuffy,
musty, and rancid quality; it permeates your clothing; after-dinner
scents seem to be mingled in it with smells from the kitchen and
scullery and the reek of a hospital. It might be possible to describe
it if some one should discover a process by which to distil from the
atmosphere all the nauseating elements with which it is charged by the
catarrhal exhalations of every individual lodger, young or old. Yet,
in spite of these stale horrors, the sitting-room is as charming and
as delicately perfumed as a boudoir, when compared with the adjoining
dining-room.

The paneled walls of that apartment were once painted some color, now
a matter of conjecture, for the surface is incrusted with accumulated
layers of grimy deposit, which cover it with fantastic outlines. A
collection of dim-ribbed glass decanters, metal discs with a satin sheen
on them, and piles of blue-edged earthenware plates of Touraine ware
cover the sticky surfaces of the sideboards that line the room. In a
corner stands a box containing a set of numbered pigeon-holes, in which
the lodgers' table napkins, more or less soiled and stained with wine,
are kept. Here you see that indestructible furniture never met with
elsewhere, which finds its way into lodging-houses much as the wrecks of
our civilization drift into hospitals for incurables. You expect in such
places as these to find the weather-house whence a Capuchin issues on
wet d