On the day following his arrival the youngster assisted his mother at
the table.

All the borders, except the Baroness and her girl, were seated in the
dining-room, presided over by the landlady with her wrinkle-fretted,
parchment-hued face and its thirty-odd moles.

The dining-room, a long, narrow habitation with a window opening on
the courtyard, communicated with two narrow corridors that switched
off at right angles; facing the window stood a dark walnut sideboard
whose shelves were laden with porcelain, glassware and cups and
glasses in a row. The centre table was so large for such a small room
that when the boarders were seated it scarcely left space for passage
at the ends.

The yellow wall-paper, torn in many spots, displayed, at intervals,
grimy circles from the oil of the lodgers' hair; reclining in their
seats they would rest the back of the chairs and their heads against
the wall.

The furniture, the straw chairs, the paintings, the mat full of
holes,--everything in that room was filthy, as if the dust of many
years had settled upon the articles and clung to the sweat of several
generations of lodgers.

By day the dining-room was dark; by night it was lighted by a
flickering kerosene lamp that smudged the ceiling with smoke.

The first time that Manuel, following his mother's instructions,
served at table, the landlady, as usual, presided. At her right sat an