anchoretic fare M. Desmoulin and myself ordered Sauterne and Apollinaris;
but the contents of the water bottle sufficed for M. Zola and the other
gentleman.

With waiters moving to and fro, nearly always within hearing, there was
little conversation at table, but we afterwards chatted in all freedom in
M. Zola's room just under the roof. Ah! that room. I have already
referred to the dingy aspect which it presented. Around Grosvenor Hotel,
encompassing its roof, runs a huge ornamental cornice, behind which are
the windows of rooms assigned, I suppose, to luggageless visitors. From
the rooms themselves there is nothing to be seen unless you throw back
your head, when a tiny patch of sky above the top line of the cornice
becomes visible. You are, as it were, in a gloomy well. The back of the
cornice, with its plaster stained and cracked, confronts your eyes; and
with a little imagination you can easily fancy yourself in a dungeon
looking into some castle moat.

'_Le fosse de Vincennes_,' so M. Zola suggested, and that summed up
everything. Yet it seemed to him very appropriate to his circumstances,
and he absolutely refused to exchange rooms with M. Desmoulin, who was
somewhat more comfortably lodged.

The appointments of M. Zola's chamber were, I remember, of a summary
description. There were few chairs, and so one of us sat on the bed. We
succeeded in procuring some black coffee, though the chambermaid regarded
this as a most unusual 'bedroom order' at that hour of the day; and when
M. Desmoulin had lighted a cigar, his friend a pipe, and myself a
cigarette, a regular Council of War was held. [N.B.--M. Zola gave up
tobacco in his young days, when it was a question of his spending
twopence per diem on himself, or of allowing his mother the wherewithal