“I sometimes wonder how Mme. Sauvage can stop in his service,” said the portress, by way of comment; she was following in Mme. Cibot’s wake.  “I will come up with you, madame” she added; “I am taking the milk and the newspaper up to my landlord.”

Arrived on the second floor above the entresol, La Cibot beheld a door of the most villainous description.  The doubtful red paint was coated for seven or eight inches round the keyhole with a filthy glaze, a grimy deposit from which the modern house-decorator endeavors to protect the doors of more elegant apartments by glass “finger-plates.”  A grating, almost stopped up with some compound similar to the deposit with which a restaurant-keeper gives an air of cellar-bound antiquity to a merely middle-aged bottle, only served to heighten the general resemblance to a prison door; a resemblance further heightened by the trefoil-shaped iron-work, the formidable hinges, the clumsy nail-heads.  A miser, or a pamphleteer at strife with the world at large, must surely have invented these fortifications.  A leaden sink, which received the waste water of the household, contributed its quota to the fetid atmosphere of the staircase, and the ceiling was covered with fantastic arabesques traced by candle-smoke—­such arabesques!  On pulling a greasy acorn tassel attached to the bell-rope, a little bell jangled feebly somewhere within, complaining of the fissure in its metal sides.

Every detail was in keeping with the general dismal effect.  La Cibot heard a heavy footstep, and the asthmatic wheezing of a virago within, and Mme. Sauvage presently showed herself.  Adrien Brauwer might have painted just such a hag for his picture of Witches starting for the Sabbath; a stout, unwholesome slattern, five feet six inches in height, with a grenadier countenance and a beard which far surpassed La Cibot’s own; she wore a cheap, hideously ugly cotton gown, a bandana handkerchief knotted over hair which she still continued to put in curl papers (using for that purpose the printed circulars which her master received), and a huge pair of gold earrings like cart-wheels in her ears.  This female Cerberus carried a battered skillet in one hand, and opening the door, set free an imprisoned odor of scorched milk—­a nauseous and penetrating smell, that lost itself at once, however, among the fumes outside.

“What can I do for you, missus?” demanded Mme. Sauvage, and with a truculent air she looked La Cibot over; evidently she was of the opinion that the visitor was too well dressed, and her eyes looked the more murderous because they were naturally bloodshot.

“I have come to see M. Fraisier; his friend, Dr. Poulain, sent me.”

“Oh! come in, missus,” said La Sauvage, grown very amiable of a sudden, which proves that she was prepared for this morning visit.

With a sweeping courtesy, the stalwart woman flung open the door of a private office, which looked upon the street, and discovered the ex-attorney of Mantes.