The observer might have fancied it a robbers’ den, but he would have been wrong; for the inhabitants were fairly honest.  The Hotel de Perou was one of those refuges, growing scarcer and more scarce every day, where unhappy men and women, who had been worsted in the battle of life, could find a shelter in return for the change remaining from the last five-franc piece.  They treat it as the shipwrecked mariner uses the rock upon which he climbs from the whirl of the angry waters, and breathes a deep sigh of relief as he collects his forces for a fresh effort.  However wretched existence may be, a protracted sojourn in such a shelter as the Hotel de Perou would be out of the question.  The chambers in every floor of the house are divided into small slips by partitions, covered with canvas and paper, and pleasantly termed rooms by M. Loupins.  The partitions were in a terrible condition, rickety and unstable, and the paper with which they were covered torn and hanging down in tatters; but the state of the attics was even more deplorable, the ceilings of which were so low that the occupants had to stoop continually, while the dormer windows admitted but a small amount of light.  A bedstead, with a straw mattress, a rickety table, and two broken chairs, formed the sole furniture of these rooms.  Miserable as these dormitories were, the landlady asked and obtained twenty-two francs for them by the month, as there was a fireplace in each, which she always pointed out to intending tenants.

The young woman whom M. Loupins alluded to by the name of Rose was seated in one of these dreary dens on this bitter winter’s day.  Rose was an exquisitely beautiful girl about eighteen years of age.  She was very fair; her long lashes partially concealed a pair of steely blue eyes, and to a certain extent relieved their hard expression.  Her ripe, red lips, which seemed formed for love and kisses, permitted a glimpse of a row of pearly teeth.  Her bright waving hair grew low down upon her forehead, and such of it as had escaped from the bondage of a cheap comb, with which it was fastened, hung in wild luxuriance over her exquisitely shaped neck and shoulders.  She had thrown over her ragged print gown the patched coverlet of the bed, and, crouched upon the tattered hearthrug before the hearth, upon which a few sticks smouldered, giving out hardly a particle of heat, she was telling her fortune with a dirty pack of cards, endeavoring to console herself for the privations of the day by the promise of future prosperity.  She had spread those arbiters of her destiny in a half circle before her, and divided them into threes, each of which had a peculiar meaning, and her breast rose and fell as she turned them up and read upon their faces good fortune or ill-luck.  Absorbed in this task, she paid but little attention to the icy chilliness of the atmosphere, which made her fingers stiff, and dyed her white hands purple.

“One, two, three,” she murmured in a low voice.  “A fair man, that’s sure to be Paul.  One, two, three, money to the house.  One, two, three, troubles and vexations.  One, two, three, the nine of spades; ah, dear! more hardships and misery,—­always that wretched card turning up with its sad story!”