The house was one of those which belong to the class called cabajoutis.  This significant name is given by the populace of Paris to houses which are built, as it were, piecemeal.  They are nearly always composed of buildings originally separate but afterwards united according to the fancy of the various proprietors who successively enlarge them; or else they are houses begun, left unfinished, again built upon, and completed,—­unfortunate structures which have passed, like certain peoples, under many dynasties of capricious masters.  Neither the floors nor the windows have an ensemble,—­to borrow one of the most picturesque terms of the art of painting; all is discord, even the external decoration.  The cabajoutis is to Parisian architecture what the capharnaum is to the apartment,—­a poke-hole, where the most heterogeneous articles are flung pell-mell.

“Madame Etienne?” asked Jules of the portress.

This portress had her lodge under the main entrance, in a sort of chicken coop, or wooden house on rollers, not unlike those sentry-boxes which the police have lately set up by the stands of hackney-coaches.

“Hein?” said the portress, without laying down the stocking she was knitting.

In Paris the various component parts which make up the physiognomy of any given portion of the monstrous city, are admirably in keeping with its general character.  Thus porter, concierge, or Suisse, whatever name may be given to that essential muscle of the Parisian monster, is always in conformity with the neighborhood of which he is a part; in fact, he is often an epitome of it.  The lazy porter of the faubourg Saint-Germain, with lace on every seam of his coat, dabbles in stocks; he of the Chaussee d’Antin takes his ease, reads the money-articles in the newspapers, and has a business of his own in the faubourg Montmartre.  The portress in the quarter of prostitution was formerly a prostitute; in the Marais, she has morals, is cross-grained, and full of crotchets.

On seeing Monsieur Jules this particular portress, holding her knitting in one hand, took a knife and stirred the half-extinguished peat in her foot-warmer; then she said:—­

“You want Madame Etienne; do you mean Madame Etienne Gruget?”

“Yes,” said Jules, assuming a vexed air.

“Who makes trimmings?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, monsieur,” she said, issuing from her cage, and laying her hand on Jules’ arm and leading him to the end of a long passage-way, vaulted like a cellar, “go up the second staircase at the end of the court-yard—­where you will see the windows with the pots of pinks; that’s where Madame Etienne lives.”

“Thank you, madame.  Do you think she is alone?”

“Why shouldn’t she be alone? she’s a widow.”

Jules hastened up a dark stairway, the steps of which were knobby with hardened mud left by the feet of those who came and went.  On the second floor he saw three doors but no signs of pinks.  Fortunately, on one of the doors, the oiliest and darkest of the three, he read these words, chalked on a panel:  “Ida will come to-night at nine o’clock.”