“Good-day, monsieur!”

The words were a travesty in view of the miserable dawn, but the boy took heart.  There was greeting in the tone.  He moistened his lips, which felt dry as his tongue in his momentary nervousness, then he stepped closer to the counter.

“Good-day, monsieur!  I require a bedroom.”

“A bedroom?  But certainly, monsieur!” The shrewd though tired eyes of the man passed over his visitor’s clothes and the valise in his hand.  “We can give you a most excellent room at”—­he raised his eyebrows in tactful hesitation—­“at five francs?”

The boy’s eyes opened in genuine, instant surprise.  “For so little?” he exclaimed.  Then, covered with confusion, he reddened furiously and stammered, “For—­for so much, I mean?”

The man in the office was all smooth, politeness, anxious to cover a foreigner’s slip of speech.  ’But certainly, no!  If five francs was more than monsieur cared to pay, then for three francs there was a most charming, a most agreeable room on the fifth floor.  True, it did not look upon the street, but then perhaps monsieur preferred quiet.  If monsieur would give himself the trouble of mounting—­’

Monsieur, still confused by his own mistake, and nervously anxious to insist upon his position, repeated again that five francs was out of the question, and that, without giving himself the trouble of mounting, he would then and there decide upon the agreeable and quiet room at three francs.

‘But certainly!  It was understood!’ The guardian of the office, now fully awake and aroused to interest in this princely transaction, disappeared from behind the counter into the back regions of the hotel, and could be heard calling “Jean!  Jean!” in a high, insistent tone.

After some moments of silence he returned, followed by a large and amiable individual in a dirty blue blouse, who had apparently but lately arisen from sleep.

‘Now if monsieur would intrust his baggage to the valet—­’

The guardian of the office took a key from a nail in the wall.  Jean stepped forward, pleased and self-conscious, and took the valise from the boy’s hand.  Then all three smiled and bowed.

It was one of those foolish little comedies—­utterly unnecessary, curiously pleasant—­that occur twenty times a day in Parisian life.  Involuntarily the adventurer’s heart warmed to the pallid clerk and to the dirty hotel porter.  He had arrived here without luggage, shabby, unrecommended, yet no princely compatriot of his own could have been made more sensible of welcome.  He stepped out of the office and followed his guide, conscious that, if only for an instant, Paris had lifted her mask and smiled—­the radiant, anticipated smile.

There is no such unnecessary luxury as a lift in the Hotel Railleux.  At the back of the hall the spiral staircase begins its steep ascent, mounting to unimagined heights.

Jean, breathing audibly, led the way, pausing at every landing to assure monsieur that the ascent was nothing—­a mere nothing, and that before another thought could pass through monsieur’s mind the fifth floor would be reached.  The boy followed, climbing and ever climbing, until the meagre hand-rail appeared to lengthen into dream-like coils, and the threadbare, drab-hued carpet, with its vivid red border, to assume the proportions of some confusing scroll.