LITTLE CHEBE'S STORY

In Paris the common landing is like an additional room, an enlargement of
their abodes, to poor families confined in their too small apartments.
They go there to get a breath of air in summer, and there the women talk
and the children play.

When little Chebe made too much noise in the house, her mother would say
to her: "There there! you bother me, go and play on the landing." And
the child would go quickly enough.

This landing, on the upper floor of an old house in which space had not
been spared, formed a sort of large lobby, with a high ceiling, guarded
on the staircase side by a wrought-iron rail, lighted by a large window
which looked out upon roofs, courtyards, and other windows, and, farther
away, upon the garden of the Fromont factory, which was like a green
oasis among the huge old walls.

There was nothing very cheerful about it, but the child liked it much
better than her own home. Their rooms were dismal, especially when it
rained and Ferdinand did not go out.

With his brain always smoking with new ideas, which unfortunately never
came to anything, Ferdinand Chebe was one of those slothful, project-
devising bourgeois of when there are so many in Paris. His wife, whom he
had dazzled at first, had soon detected his utter insignificance, and had
ended by enduring patiently and with unchanged demeanor his continual
dreams of wealth and the disasters that immediately followed them.