The boy looked about him as he passed down the dim corridor. Apparently
he and Jean alone were awake in this gloomy maze of closed doors and
sleeping passages. One sign of humanity--and one alone--came to his
senses with a suggestion of sordid drama. On the floor, at the closed
door of one of the rooms, stood a battered black tray on which reposed
an empty champagne bottle and two soiled glasses.

Life! His quick imagination conjured a picture--conjured and shrank from
it. He turned away with a sense of sharp disgust and almost ran down the
corridor to where Jean was fitting a key into the door of his
prospective bedroom.

"The room, monsieur!" Jean's voice was full of pride. He had lived for
ten years in the Hôtel Railleux, working as six men and six women
together would not have worked in the fashionable quarter, and he had
never been shaken in his belief that Paris held no more inviting
hostelry.

The boy obediently stepped forward into the tiny apartment, in which a
big wooden bedstead loomed out of all proportion. His movements were
hasty, as though he desired to escape from some impression; his voice,
when he spoke, was vague.

"Very nice! Very nice!" he said. "And--and what is the view?"

"The view? Oh, but monsieur will like the view!" Jean stepped to the
window, drew back the heavy cretonne curtains, and threw open the long
window, admitting a breath of chilling cold. "The court-yard! See,
monsieur! The court-yard!"