a nude negro at the knees of a white woman in a decolletée
ball dress in an arbour. Opposite the mantelpiece, a man's
cap and a woman's bonnet hang from nails on either side
of a cracked mirror.

At the end of the room is a bed. That is to say, a mattress
laid on two planks that rest upon a couple of trestles. Over
the bed, other boards, with openings between them, support
an undesirable heap of linen, clothes and rags. An
imitation cashmere, called "French cashmere," protrudes
between the boards and hangs over the pallet.

Mingled with the hideous litter of all these things are
dirtiness, a disgusting odour, spots of oil and tallow, and
dust everywhere. In the corner near the bed stands an
enormous sack of shavings, and on a chair beside the sack
lies an old newspaper. I am moved by curiosity to look at
the title and the date. It is the "Constitutionnel" of April 25,
1843.

And now what can I add? I have not told the most
horrible thing about the place. The house is odious, the
room is abominable, the pallet is hideous; but all that is
nothing.

When I entered a woman was sleeping on the bed--a
woman old, short, thickset, red, bloated, oily, tumefied, fat,
dreadful, enormous. Her frightful bonnet, which was
awry, disclosed the side of her head, which was grizzled,
pink and bald.