materials of demolished structures, with blocks of
stone, old blinds with no rooms to shelter, boards with hanging hinges,
a vast boneyard of a whole demolished quarter.

Innumerable signs swayed in the wind over the door, which was adorned
with a large case of photographs, white with dust, before which Jenkins
paused for a moment. Had the illustrious physician come so far to have
his picture taken? One might have thought so from the interest which
detained him in front of that case, containing fifteen or twenty
photographs representing the same family in different groups and
attitudes and with different expressions: an old gentleman with his
chin supported by a high white stock, and a leather satchel under his
arm, surrounded by a bevy of maidens with their hair arranged in braids
or in curls. Sometimes the old gentleman had sat with only two of his
daughters; or perhaps one of those pretty, graceful figures appeared
alone, her elbow resting on a truncated column, her head bending over a
book, in a natural and unstudied pose. But it was always the same
motive with variations, and there was no other male figure in the case
but the old gentleman in the white cravat, and no other female figures
than those of his numerous daughters.

"Studios on the fifth floor," said a sign over the case. Jenkins
sighed, measured with his eye the distance from the ground to the
little balcony up among the clouds; then he made up his mind to enter.
In the hall he passed a white cravat and a majestic leather satchel,
evidently the old gentleman of the showcase. Upon being questioned, he
replied that M. Maranne did in fact live on the fifth floor. "But," he
added with an engaging smile, "the floors are not high." With that
encouragement the Irishman started up an entirely new and narrow
staircase, with landings no larger than a stair, a single door on each
floor and windows which afforded glimpses of a melancholy paved
courtyard and other stairways, all empty: one of those horrible modern
houses, built by the dozen by contractors without a son, their greatest
disadvantage consisting in the thinness of the partitions, which forces
all the lodgers to live together as in a Fourierite community. For the
moment that disadvantage was not of serious consequence, only the
fourth and fifth floors being occupied, as if the tenants had fallen
from the sky.

On the fourth, behind a door bearing a copper plate with the words: M.
JOYEUSE, _Expert in H