FURNISHED ROOMS.
Brasserie passage, a dark and gloomy passage, but little known,
although situated in the center of Paris, extended on one side from
the Rue Traversiere Saint Honore to the Cour Saint Guillaume on the
other. About the middle of this wet, muddy, dark, and gloomy street,
where the sun scarcely ever penetrates, stood a furnished house.
On a rascally-looking sign was to be seen, "_Furnished Rooms_;"
on the right of an obscure alley opened the door of a shop not less
obscure, where the proprietor was generally to be found. This man,
whose name has been several times mentioned on Ravageur's Island, was
Micou; openly a seller of old iron; but secretly he bought and sold
stolen metal, such as iron, lead, copper, and tin. To say that Micou
was in business and friendly relations with the Martials, is
sufficiently to appreciate his morality.
Micou was a corpulent man of about fifty years of age, with a low,
cunning look, a pimply nose, and bloated cheeks; he wore an otter-skin
cap, and was wrapped up in an old green garrick. Over the little iron
stove near which he was warming himself, a board with numbers painted
on it was nailed against the wall; there were suspended the keys of
the rooms whose lodgers were absent. The window looking into the
street was soaped in such a manner that those without could not see
what was going on within the shop; this window was heavily barred with
iron. Throughout this large shop reigned great obscurity: on the damp
and blackish walls were suspended rusty chains of all sorts and sizes;
the floor was nearly covered with fragments and clippings of iron and
lead. Three peculiar knocks at the door attracted the attention of
Micou.
"Come in!" cried he, and Nicholas appeared. He was very pale; his face
seemed still more sinister-looking than the evening previous, and yet
it will be seen he feigned a kind of noisy gayety during the following
conversation. This scene took place the morning after his quarrel with
his brother Martial.
"Oh! here you are, good fellow!" said the lodging-house keeper,
cordially.
"Yes, Daddy Micou; I come to have some business with you."
"Shut the door."
"My dog and little cart are there--with the swag."
"What do you bring me? folded tripe (stolen sheet-lead)?"
"No, Micou."
"It is not dredge, you are too cunning now; you are no longer a
_ravageur_; perhaps it is iron?"
"No, Micou; it is copper. There must be at least one hundred and fifty
pounds; my dog has as much as he can draw."
"Go and bring the stuff; we will weigh it."
"You must help me, Micou; I have a lame arm."
"What is the matter with your arm?"
"Nothing--a bruise."
"You must make some iron red hot, put it into some water, and bathe
your arm in this almost boiling water; it is a dealer-in-old-iron's
remedy, but it is excellent."
"Thank you, Daddy Micou."
"Come, let us bring in the metal: I will help you, lazybones!"
The copper was then brought in from a little cart drawn by an enormous
dog, and placed in the shop.
"That barrow is a good idea," said Micou, adjusting the scales.
"Yes; when I have anything to bring, I put my dog and cart into my
boat, and I harness him when I land. A jarvey might blab: my dog
can't."
"All well at home?" demanded the receiver, weighing the copper: "your
mother and sister are in good health?"
"Yes, Micou."
"The children also?"
"The children also."
"And your nephew Andre, where is he?"
"Don't speak of it! he was in luck yesterday. Barbillon and the Big
Cripple took him away; he only came back this morning; he is already
gone on an errand to the post-office, Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau."
"And your brother Martial, is still savage?"
"I do not know anything about him."
"You don't know anything about him?"
"No," said Nicholas, affecting an indifferent manner; "for two days we
have not seen him; perhaps he has returned to his old trade of a
poacher--unless his boat, which was very old, has sunk in the river,
and he with--"
"That don't give you much concern, good-for-nothing, for you can't
feel it much!"
"It is true, one has his own ideas. How many pounds of copper are
there?"
"You made a good guess--one hundred and forty-eight pounds, my boy."
"And you will owe me--"
"Exactly thirty francs."
"Thirty francs, when copper is a franc a pound? Thirty francs!"
"We will say thirty-five, and don't turn up your nose, or I will send
you to the devil--you, copper, dog and cart."
"But, Micou you cheat me too much! there's no sense in it."
"Prove to me this copper belongs to you, and I will give you fifteen
sous a pound for it."
"Always the same song. You are all alike; get out, you nest of
thieves! Can one gouge a friend in such style? But this is not all. If
I take your merchandise in exchange, you should give me good measure
at least!"
"Just so! What do you want? chains or hooks for your boat?"
"No; I want four or five iron plates, very strong, such as would
answer to line window-shutters with."
"I have just what you want--the third of an inch thick; a pistol ball
could not go through."
"Just the thing!"
"What size?"
"In all, seven or eight feet square."
"Good! what else do you want?"
"Three iron bars, three to four feet long, and two inches square."
"I tore down the other day some grating from a window; that will suit
you like a glove. What next?"
"Two strong hinges and a latch; to fix and shut at will, a wicket two
feet square."
"A trap, you mean to say?"
"No; a wicket."
"I cannot comprehend what you can want with it?"
"That is possible, but I can."
"Very well, you have only to choose; there are the hinges. What else
do you need?"
"That's all."
"It is not much."
"Get my goods ready at once, Daddy Micou, I will take them as I pass;
I have some more errands to do."
"With your cart? I say, I saw a bale of goods in the bottom; is it
something more that you have taken from everybody's cupboard, little
glutton?"
"As you say, Daddy Micou: but you don't eat this; don't make me wait
for my iron, for I must be back to the island by twelve o'clock."
"Don't be uneasy, it is eight o'clock; if you are not going far, in an
hour you can return, all will be ready, Will you take a drop?"
"To be sure; you can well afford to pay it!"
Daddy Micou took out of an old chest a bottle of brandy, a cracked
glass, a cup without a handle, and poured out the liquor.
"Your health, old 'un!"
"Yours, my boy, and the ladies' at home!"
"Thank you; and your lodgings come on well?"
"So, so. I have always some lodgers for whom I fear the visits of the
grabs; but they pay more in consequence."
"Why?"
"How stupid you are! Sometimes I lodge as I buy; to such I no more ask
for their passports than I ask you for an invoice."
"Understood! but to those you let as dear as you buy of me cheap."
"Must take care of one's self. I have a cousin who keeps a fine hotel
in the Rue Saint Honore, while his wife is a mantua-maker, who employs
as many as twenty assistants, either at her shop, or at their own
homes."
"Say now, old obstinacy, there must be some pretty ones there?"
"I guess so! there are two or three that I have seen sometimes
bringing in their work. Crimini! ain't they nice! One little puss, who
works at home, always laughing, called Rigolette. Oh, my lark! what a
pity I ain't twenty!"
"Come, come, papa, put yourself out, or I'll cry fire!"
"But she is virtuous, my boy; she is virtuous."
"Get out! and you say that your cousin--"
"Keeps a very good house, and, as she is of the same number as little
Rigolette--"
"Virtuous?"
"Exactly."
"Over!"
"She will not have lodgers without passports or papers; but if any
present themselves, knowing I am not very particular, she sends them
to me."
"And they pay in consequence?"
"Always."
"But are they all friends of the family, those who have no papers?"
"No. Ah, now, speaking of that, my cousin sent me, a few days ago, a
customer. May the devil burn me, if I can understand it! Come, another
turn?"
"Agreed; the liquor is good. Your health, Micou!"
"Yours, lad! I say, then, that the other day my cousin sent me a
customer whom I cannot make out. Just imagine a mother and her
daughter, who had a very seedy look, it is true; they carried their
luggage in a handkerchief. Well, although they must, of course, be
nobody, since they had no papers, and they lodge by the fortnight;
since they have been here they do not stir out; no one comes to see
them, my pal--no one! and yet, if they were not so thin and so pale,
they'd be two fine women, the little one above all. She is not more
than fifteen at least; she is as white as a white rabbit, with large
black eyes--large as that! What eyes! what eyes!"
"You'll get on fire again; I'll call the engines! What do these women
do for a living?"
"I tell you I comprehend nothing about it; they must be virtuous, and
yet no papers; without counting that they receive letters without
address, their name must be bad to write."
"How is that?"
"They sent, this morning, my nephew Andre to the office of the letters
to be called for, to reclaim a letter addressed to Madame X. Z. The
letter was to come from Normandy, from a place called Aubiers. They
wrote that on a piece of paper, so that Andre might get the letter.
You see they can be no great things, women who take the name of X and
a Z."
"They will never pay you."
"It is not for an old ape like me to learn to make faces. They have
taken a room without a fireplace, for which I make them pay twenty
francs a fortnight, and in advance. They are, perhaps, sick; for two
days they have not come down. It certainly is not from indigestion;
for I do not think they have cooked anything since they have been
here."
"If you had only such lodgers as they, Micou--"
"That comes and goes. If I lodge people without passports, I lodge
great folks also; I have at this moment two traveling clerks, a
post-office carrier, the leader of the orchestra of the Cafe des Aveugles,
and an independent lady, all very genteel people. They save the
reputation of the house, if the police wish to examine too closely;
they are not lodgers by night, not they; they are lodgers in the full
light of the sun."
"Whenever it shines in your passage, Daddy--"
"Joker, one more turn."
"And the last, for I must take my hook. By-the-bye, does Robin, the
big lame man, lodge here yet?"
"Upstairs, next door to the mother and daughter. He has consumed all
his prison money, and I believe he has none left."
"I say, look out; he's broke his ticket-of-leave."
"I know it well; but I can't get rid of him. I believe he is after
something. Little Tortillard, the son of Bras-Rouge, came here the
other night with Barbillon, to look for him. I am afraid he will do
some harm to my good lodgers that damnable Robin. As soon as his term
is up, I shall put him out, telling him his room is engaged by an
embassador, or by the husband of Madame de Saint Ildefonso?"
"The lady?"
"I should think so! Three rooms and a cabinet on the front, nearly
furnished, without counting a garret for her female servant, eighty
francs a month, and paid in advance by her uncle, to whom she gives
one of her rooms as a stopping-place when he comes from the country.
After all, I believe his country house is the Rue Vivienne, Rue Saint
Honore, or in the environs of those places."
"Understood! she is an independent lady, because the old one pays her
rent."
"Hush, here is her maid."
A woman rather advanced in life, wearing a white apron of doubtful
purity, entered the shop. "What can I do for you, Madame Charles?"
"Daddy Micou, your nephew is not here?"
"He has gone on an errand to the post-office; he will soon return."
"M. Badinot wishes he would take this letter to its address; there is
no answer, but it is very urgent."
"In a quarter of an hour it shall be on the way."
"Let him hurry."
"Be easy." The maid retired.
"That's the servant of one of your lodgers, Micou?"
"Madame Saint Ildefonso's. But M. Badinot is her uncle; he came
yesterday from the country, "answered Micou. "But see, now, what fine
acquaintances they have! I told you they were people of style; he
writes to a viscount."
"No!"
"Well, look: 'To his Lordship the Viscount of Saint Remy, Rue de
Chaillot. Haste, haste! (_Private_).' I hope that when one lodges
people who have uncles who write to viscounts, one can very well
overlook a poor devil in the fourth story who has no passport!"
"I think so. Well, good-bye for the present, Micou; I am going to
fasten my dog and cart to your door; I will carry what I have to carry
myself. Have my goods and money ready on my return."
"All shall be ready. But, I say, before you go I must tell you, since
you have been here, I have watched you."
"Well?"
"I don't know, but you seem to have something the matter with you."
"I?"
"Yes."
"You are a fool. I am hungry."
"Hungry! it is possible, but I should say that you wish to appear
lively, but at the bottom there is something that bites and pinches
you--conscience, as they say; and to trouble you it must bite hard,
for you are no prude."
"I tell you, you are crazy, Micou," said Nicholas, shuddering in spite
of himself.
"One would say that you tremble."
"My arm pains me."
"Then don't forget my recipe: it will cure you."
"Thank you, Father Micou. Good-bye," said Nicholas, taking his
departure.
The receiver, after having concealed the copper, busied himself in
collecting the different articles for Nicholas, when a new personage
entered the shop. He was a man of about fifty, with a knowing face,
heavy gray whiskers, and gold spectacles; he was dressed with some
care; the large sleeves of his brown paletot, with velvet cuffs,
displayed his straw-colored gloves; his boots undoubtedly the evening
previous had been brilliantly polished.
Such was M. Badinot, the uncle of Madame de Saint Ildefonso, whose
social position was the pride and security of Micou the Fence.
Badinot, formerly a lawyer, but struck off the rolls, and now a
chevalier d'industrie, and agent of equivocal affairs, served as a spy
for the Baron de Graün (Rudolph's friend), and gave the diplomatist a
great deal of information concerning several characters of this
narration.
"Madame Charles has just given you a letter?" said Badinot to the
receiver.
"Yes, sir; my nephew will soon return; in a moment he will be off
again."
"No, give me the letter; I have changed my mind; I will go myself to
the Viscount de Saint Remy," said Badinot, emphasizing purposely the
aristocratic address.
"Here is the letter, sir; have you no other commission?"
"No, friend Micou," said Badinot, with a patronizing air; "but I have
reproaches to make to you."
"To me, sir?"
"Very grave reproaches."
"How, sir?"
"Certainly Madame de Saint Ildefonso pays very dear for your first
floor. My niece is one of those lodgers to whom one should pay the
greatest respect; she came with confidence to this house, disliking
the noise of the large streets; she hoped she would be here as in the
country."
"And she is; just like a village. You ought to find it so, sir, who
live in the country--it is just like a real village here."
"A village? Very fine--always the most infernal noise."
"Yet it is impossible to find a more quiet house. Over madame, there
is the leader of the orchestra of the Cafe des Aveugles and a
traveling clerk; over them another clerk; over him again, there is--"
"It is not of these persons I complain; they are very quiet; my niece
finds no inconvenience from them; but in the fourth story there is a
lame man, whom Madame de Saint Ildefonso met yesterday drunk on the
staircase; he uttered horrible, savage cries; she almost fainted, she
was so much alarmed. If you think with such occupants your house
resembles a village--"
"I swear to you, sir, that I only wait an opportunity to put this lame
man out of doors; he has paid me his term in advance, otherwise he
would have been already shown how to get out."
"You should not have taken him for a lodger."
"But I hope madame has no other cause of complaint? There is a
postman, who is the very cream of honest people! and over him,
alongside of the lame man, a woman and her daughter, who keep as close
as mice."
"I repeat, Madame de Saint Iledefonso only complains of the lame man;
he is the nightmare of the whole house, that knave! and I warn you, if
you keep him, he will cause all the respectable people to leave."
"I will send him off, be assured--I do not hold to him."
"And you will do well, for they will not remain."
"Which would not answer my purpose. So, sir, you may regard the lame
man as off, for he only has four days to remain here."
"That is too many; however, it is your business. At the very first
insult my niece leaves the house."
"Be assured."
"All this is for your interest; profit by it, for I only speak once,"
said Badinot, in a patronizing manner, as he left the shop.
Is it not needless for us to say that this woman and girl who lived so
solitary, were victims of the cupidity of the notary? We will conduct
the reader into the miserable room they occupied.