taircase, and at the top
passed through a passage that opened on one side upon a narrow court;
then there was a little wicket of iron, which, when it turned, tinkled
a bell. Sometimes the abbe would hear the bell, and open his door down
at the end of the corridor; and sometimes a lodger, who occupied a
room looking into the last-mentioned court, would draw, slyly, a
corner of his curtain, and peep out, to see who was passing. Sometimes
I would loiter myself to look down upon the lower windows in the
court, or to glance up at story resting above story, and at the peaked
roof, and dot of a loop-hole at the top.

A single small door opened into the court, and occasionally an old
woman, or bustling, shabbily-dressed man would shuffle across the
pavement; the faces at the windows seemed altogether sordid and
every-day faces, so that I came to regard the quarters of the abbe,
notwithstanding the quaint-fashioned windows and dim stairway, and
suspicious quiet, a very matter of fact, and so, very uninteresting
neighborhood.

As the abbe and myself passed out sometimes together through the
open-sided corridor, I would point into the court, and ask who lived
in the little room at the top.

"Ah, _mon cher_, I do not know," the abbe would say.

Or, "who lives in the corner, with the queer narrow window and the
striped curtain?"

"I cannot tell you, _mon cher_."

Or, "whose is the little window with so many broken panes, and an old
placard pinned against the frame?"

"Ah, who knows! perhaps a _chiffonier_, or a shopman, or perhaps--"
and the abbe lifted his finger, and shook his head expressively, and
continued,

"It is a strange world we live in, _mon ami_."

What could the abbe mean? I looked up at the window again; it was
small, and the panes were set in rough metal casing; it was high up on
the fourth or fifth floor. I could see nothing through but the dirty
yellow placard.

"Is it in the same hotel with you?" said I.

"_Ma foi_, I do not know."

I tried to picture satisfactorily to my own mind the appearance of the
chamber to which the little window belonged. Small it must be, I knew,
for in that quarter few were large even upon the first floor, and
looking upon the street. Dirty, too, it should surely be, and
comfortless, and tenanted by misery, or poverty, or sin, or, very
likely, all together. Possibly some miserly old wretch lived there,
needing only a little light to count up his hoard, and caring little