In Paris, a lodging-house (or, as they prefer to style it, a hotel meuble) is a little town in itself; a beehive swarming from basement to attic; a miniature model of the great world beyond, with all its loves and hatreds, jealousies, aspirations, and struggles.  Like that world, it contains several grades of society, but with this difference, that those who therein occupy the loftiest position are held in the lowest estimation.  Thus, the fifth-floor lodgers turn up their noses at the inhabitants of the attics; while the fifth-floor is in its turn scorned by the fourth, and the fourth is despised by the third, and the third by the second, down to the magnificent dwellers on the premier etage, who live in majestic disdain of everybody above or beneath them, from the grisettes in the garret, to the concierge who has care of the cellars.

The house in which I lived in the Cite Bergere was, in fact, a double house, and contained no fewer than thirty tenants, some of whom had wives, children, and servants.  It consisted of six floors, and each floor contained from eight to ten rooms.  These were let in single chambers, or in suites, as the case might be; and on the outer doors opening round the landings were painted the names, or affixed the visiting-cards, of the dwellers within.  My own third-floor neighbors were four in number.  To my left lived a certain Monsieur and Madame Lemercier, a retired couple from Alsace.  Opposite their door, on the other side of the well staircase, dwelt one Monsieur Cliquot, an elderly employe in some public office; next to him, Signor Milanesi, an Italian refugee who played in the orchestra at the Varietes every night, was given to practising the violoncello by day, and wore as much hair about his face as a Skye-terrier.  Lastly, in the apartment to my right, resided a lady, upon whose door was nailed a small visiting-card engraved with these words:—­

MLLE. HORTENSE DUFRESNOY.

Teacher of Languages.

I had resided in the house for months before I ever beheld this Mademoiselle Hortense Dufresnoy.  When I did at last encounter her upon the stairs one dusk autumnal evening, she wore a thick black veil, and, darting past me like a bird on the wing, disappeared down the staircase in fewer moments than I take to write it.  I scarcely observed her at the time.  I had no more curiosity to learn whether the face under that veil was pretty or plain than I cared to know whether the veil itself was Shetland or Chantilly.  At that time Paris was yet new to me:  Madame de Marignan’s evil influence was about me; and, occupied as my time and thoughts were with unprofitable matters, I took no heed of my fellow-lodgers.  Save, indeed, when the groans of that much-tortured violoncello woke me in the morning to an unwelcome consciousness of the vicinity of Signor Milanesi, I should scarcely have remembered that I was not the only inhabitant of the third story.