it was during a winter like this that one of our lodgers hung himself, a
trick which cost us fifty francs, in good, honest money, besides giving
us a bad name in the neighborhood. The fact is, one never knows what
lodgers are capable of doing. You should go up to the top floor, and see
how they are getting on there."

"Pooh, pooh!" replied her husband, M. Loupins; "they will do well
enough."

"Is that really your opinion?"

"I know that I am right. Daddy Tantaine went out as soon as it was
light, and a short time afterward Paul Violaine came down. There is no
one upstairs now but little Rose, and I expect that she has been wise
enough to stick to her bed."

"Ah!" answered the landlady rather spitefully. "I have made up my mind
regarding that young lady some time ago; she is a sight too pretty for
this house, and so I tell you."

The Hotel de Perou stands in the Rue de la Hachette, not twenty steps
from the Place de Petit Pont; and no more cruelly sarcastic title could
ever have been conferred on a building. The extreme shabbiness of the
exterior of the house, the narrow, muddy street in which it stood,
the dingy windows covered with mud, and repaired with every variety of
patch,--all seemed to cry out to the passers by: "This is the chosen
abode of misery and destitution."

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