A poor garret on the sixth floor of one of the poorest houses in the poorest quarters of Paris, does not give much opportunity for a detailed description.  There is little to be said about the furniture, which in this case consisted of a rickety old table, a wooden stool, and a small charcoal stove, all of the commonest kind, but all clean, and the room was not quite without adornment.  The window, to be sure, was in the roof, but pinned to the wall were a few newspaper prints in strong blacks and whites, and—­most remarkable of all—­there was an alcove for the bed, which was carefully shut off from the room by a gaily variegated chintz.  In spite of its poverty and bareness, there was nothing squalid or unwholesome about the place.

The house itself was a tall narrow slip.  People of different callings, and different degrees of respectability, lived in it; on the whole it had not a bad character.  The landlord was an immensely fat man, called Plon—­a name which, irresistibly converted into Plon-Plon, seemed to give an aristocratic air to the house—­and he lived and made shoes in a small room at the foot of the lowest flight of stairs, so that he acted as his own concierge, and boasted that no one came in or out without his knowledge.  Probably some of his lodgers contrived to elude his vigilance, but he was as obstinate in his belief as an old Norman has a right to be, and was a kind-hearted old fellow in the main, though with the reputation of a grognard, and a ridiculous fear of being discovered in a good action.  Perhaps with this fear, the more credit was due to him for occasionally running the risk, as when he saw young Monnier, the artist, coming down the stairs one evening with a look in his eyes, which Plon told himself gave him an immediate shuddering back-sensation, as of cold water and marble slabs.  Plon did something for him, perhaps knocked off the rent, but he implored Monnier to show his gratitude by saying nothing, and he never gave him more of a greeting than the sidelong twist he vouchsafed to the other lodgers.  For the rest, his benevolence depended in a great measure upon his temper, and he prided himself upon being very terrible at times.

With five floors we have nothing to do, and need waste no time over them.  The inmates mostly went out early and came in late, but the house kept better hours than its neighbours, for the simple reason that those who arrived after a certain time found themselves shut into the street for the night.  They might hammer and appeal in the strongest language of their vocabulary, but Plon snored unmoved, and nothing short of a fire in the house would have turned him out of his bed.  Gradually this became so well understood, that his lodgers accommodated themselves to it as to any other of the inexorable laws of fate.

On the sixth and highest floor the crowded house resolved itself into comparative quiet.  Besides the garret of which we have spoken, there were two other rooms, but for some years past these had been used merely as store-rooms for furniture.  No one knew to whom the furniture belonged, some curious speculators avowing that Plon had a child—­a girl—­at school in Normandy, and had collected it as part of her dowry; others that some mysterious tie of gratitude bound him to the owner.  Whoever was right or wrong, the rooms remained closed and unlet.