dings--"

"Come with me, sir, and you shall see. But--well, anyhow, there is a
garret. Let us see what Mme. Topinard says."

Schmucke followed like a sheep, while Topinard led the way into one of
the squalid districts which might be called the cancers of Paris--a spot
known as the Cite Bordin. It is a slum out of the Rue de Bondy, a double
row of houses run up by the speculative builder, under the shadow of the
huge mass of the Porte Saint-Martin theatre. The pavement at the higher
end lies below the level of the Rue de Bondy; at the lower it falls away
towards the Rue des Mathurins du Temple. Follow its course and you
find that it terminates in another slum running at right angles to the
first--the Cite Bordin is, in fact, a T-shaped blind alley. Its two
streets thus arranged contain some thirty houses, six or seven stories
high; and every story, and every room in every story, is a workshop and
a warehouse for goods of every sort and description, for this wart upon
the face of Paris is a miniature Faubourg Saint-Antoine. Cabinet-work
and brasswork, theatrical costumes, blown glass, painted porcelain--all
the various fancy goods known as _l'article Paris_ are made here. Dirty
and productive like commerce, always full of traffic--foot-passengers,
vans, and drays--the Cite Bourdin is an unsavory-looking neighborhood,
with a seething population in keeping with the squalid surroundings. It
is a not unintelligent artisan population, though the whole power of the
intellect is absorbed by the day's manual labor. Topinard, like every
other inhabitant of the Cite Bourdin, lived in it for the sake of
comparatively low rent, the cause of its existence and prosperity. His
sixth floor lodging, in the second house to the left, looked out upon
the belt of green garden, still in existence, at the back of three or
four large mansions in the Rue de Bondy.

Topinard's apartment consisted of a kitchen and two bedrooms. The first
was a nursery with two little deal bedsteads and a cradle in it, the
second was the bedroom, and the kitchen did duty as a dining-room.
Above, reached by a short ladder, known among builders as a
"trap-ladder," there was a kind of garret, six feet high, with a
sash-window let into the roof. This room, given as a servants' bedroom,
raised the Topinards' establishment from mere "rooms" to the dignity of
a tenement, and the rent to a corresponding sum of four hundred francs.
An arched lobby, lighted from the kitchen