ven lodgers appeared. It was almost like
a family party. Every one came down in dressing-gown and slippers,
and the conversation usually turned on anything that had happened
the evening before; comments on the dress or appearance of the dinner
contingent were exchanged in friendly confidence.

These seven lodgers were Mme. Vauquer's spoiled children. Among them
she distributed, with astronomical precision, the exact proportion of
respect and attention due to the varying amounts they paid for their
board. One single consideration influenced all these human beings thrown
together by chance. The two second-floor lodgers only paid seventy-two
francs a month. Such prices as these are confined to the Faubourg
Saint-Marcel and the district between La Bourbe and the Salpetriere;
and, as might be expected, poverty, more or less apparent, weighed upon
them all, Mme. Couture being the sole exception to the rule.

The dreary surroundings were reflected in the costumes of the inmates of
the house; all were alike threadbare. The color of the men's coats were
problematical; such shoes, in more fashionable quarters, are only to be
seen lying in the gutter; the cuffs and collars were worn and frayed at
the edges; every limp article of clothing looked like the ghost of its
former self. The women's dresses were faded, old-fashioned, dyed and
re-dyed; they wore gloves that were glazed with hard wear, much-mended
lace, dingy ruffles, crumpled muslin fichus. So much for their
clothing; but, for the most part, their frames were solid enough; their
constitutions had weathered the storms of life; their cold, hard faces
were worn like coins that have been withdrawn from circulation, but
there were greedy teeth behind the withered lips. Dramas brought to a
close or still in progress are foreshadowed by the sight of such actors
as these, not the dramas that are played before the footlights and
against a background of painted canvas, but dumb dramas of life,
frost-bound dramas that sere hearts like fire, dramas that do not end
with the actors' lives.

Mlle. Michonneau, that elderly young lady, screened her weak eyes from
the daylight by a soiled green silk shade with a rim of brass, an object
fit to scare away the Angel of Pity himself. Her shawl, with its scanty,
draggled fringe, might have covered a skeleton, so meagre and angular
was the form beneath it. Yet she must have been pretty and shapely once.
What corrosive had destroyed the feminine