"Ah, pardon, monsieur! it is not of my fault; orders you see must be obeyed, and the landlord ..."
Then he told me the story. It seemed that a month or two before he had been a witness to the turning out from a miserable hole of a poor family; the father called himself an artist, poor devil! his wife had a baby in her arms, and there was a little girl. Seeing their utter distress, and remembering a couple of miserable rooms dignified by the name of "Appartements de garçon," but which did not let easily as they were dark and uncomfortable, he had asked the landlord to allow them to occupy them temporarily. { 103} Shortly afterward the poor wife, a delicate, consumptive creature, died; the baby did not survive her many hours, and the two were buried at the expense of the parish, "But now it is impossible that they stay longer, the rooms are let, and they must leave. What will you? monsieur perceives that it is not of my fault." Monsieur feels a pang cut to his very heart. In that same house, where such a short time since he was feasting and laughing, a weary heart, perhaps, was breaking, and a young child struggling with sorrow that made it old.
I asked the man if I might be allowed to see this unfortunate artist, and I saw the child's face brighten as she slipped from his side to mine. I took her hand and we went up, not the broad, handsome staircase which led to my friends' apartments, but a dingy flight of stairs at the back of the court. I was quite out of breath when we at last reached the door of this "appartement de garçon." The child ran in, crying out: "Papa, papa I voici an monsieur qui vient te voir."
A man dressed in miserable, ragged clothes, with a pitiful remnant of gentility about him, was sitting at a rickety white wood table, his face buried in his poor, thin hands, which I noticed were white and finely shaped. At the sound of his child's voice be hastily got up, and seeing me, bowed and offered me the only chair in the room, with a grace worthy of a drawing room. I felt the tears well up to my eyes as I looked at this poor wreck, and thought to myself how many dead hopes and dead aspirations lay buried on that heart. I did not accept the chair, but held out my hand. Something in the simple action, or in my face, perhaps, expressed the sympathy I felt; it was too much for the poor man; be threw himself on the bed sobbing convulsively; you see he was weakened by hunger and cold and sickness. I put some money in the _concierge's_ hand, and he left us, bowing respectfully.