The front of the building, three storeys high and topped with garrets, is built of rough stone daubed in that shade of yellow which gives a dingy air to almost every house in Paris. Each floor has five small-paned windows, whose slatted blinds all hang aslant so that no two line up as they should. The building has two windows to its depth; those on the ground floor are furnished only by iron bars, covered with mesh. At the back is a yard about twenty feet across, where pigs, chickens and rabbits live together companionably, with a shed stacked with wood at one end. Hanging between the shed and the kitchen window is the pantry; the slops from the sink flow out beneath it. The yard has a narrow door leading to the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève, through which the cook sweeps away the household’s waste, sluicing the cesspool that forms there with water to keep the stench at bay.

The ground floor is naturally appointed to the activity of a boarding house. A French window opens into the front room, whose two street-facing windows let in some light. The drawing room communicates with the dining room, which is separated from the kitchen by a flight of wooden stairs laid with scrubbed and re-stained tiles. There is no more dispiriting sight than that drawing room furnished with easy and hard-backed chairs upholstered in haircloth12 with matt and shiny stripes. In the middle is a round table with a grey-and-white marble top bearing the obligatory white porcelain coffee service with worn gilt trim found everywhere these days. This room, whose floor is rather crooked, is wainscoted to elbow height. The remaining wall space is covered with glazed wallpaper showing scenes from Telemachus,13 whose classical characters appear in colour. In the panel between the barred windows, the boarders may contemplate the scene of the banquet given by Calypso for Ulysses’ son. For forty years this picture has provided material for endless quips by the younger boarders, who make believe they’re superior to their circumstances by mocking the dinner to which poverty condemns them. The stone fireplace, whose permanently spotless hearth attests to the fact that no fire is ever kindled there except on special occasions, is adorned with two vases crammed with decrepit artificial flowers, set on either side of a bluish marble clock in the worst taste. Our language has no name for the odour given off by this first room, which ought to be called ‘essence of boarding house’. It smells of all that is stale, mildewy, rancid; it chills you, makes your nose run, clings to your clothes; it repeats like last night’s dinner; it reeks of the scullery, the pantry, the poorhouse. If a method were invented for measuring the foul and fundamental particles contributed by the catarrhal conditions specific to each boarder, young and old, perhaps it really could be described. And yet, despite these dreary horrors, if you compare it with the dining room next door, you will find the drawing room as elegant and fragrant as any self-respecting boudoir. This room, panelled throughout, was once painted a colour which can no longer be discerned, providing a backdrop for the grime which has printed over it in layers, forming intriguing patterns. It is crammed with an assortment of sticky sideboards upon which you see nicked, stained carafes, round moiré14 stands and stacks of thick china plates with blue edging, made in Tournai. In one corner is a rack of numbered pigeon holes housing each boarder’s food- or wine-stained serviette. In this room you find those indestructible pieces of furniture that nobody else will have, stranded here like the debris of civilization in a Hospital of Incurables. You might see a weather house with a Capuchin monk that comes out when it rains, tasteless prints that spoil your appetite, all framed in varnished black wood with gilt-piping; a tortoiseshell wall-clock with copper detail; a green stove, Argand lamps15 coated in a blend of dust and oil, a long table covered with oilcloth greasy enough for a facetious diner to write his name on using his finger as a pen, warped chairs, shabby rush placemats, forever uncoiling but just about holding together; and finally, pitiful plate-warmers with broken grates, slack hinges and charred wood. A full explanation of how old, cracked, rotten, shaky, worm-eaten, armless, seedy, creaking and generally on its last legs the furniture is would require a description so lengthy it would delay the main interest of this story, something that those of you in a hurry would find unforgivable. The floor, laid with red tiles, is pitted with craters caused by repeated scrubbing and staining. In all, an unpoetic wretchedness reigns throughout; a mean, reduced, threadbare wretchedness. Although there is not yet filth, there are stains; although there are neither holes nor rags, everything is sliding into decay.

The room may be seen in all its splendour at around seven in the morning, at which time Madame Vauquer’s cat, running ahead of its mistress, jumps up onto the sideboards, sniffs at the milk kept in various jugs covered with plates and makes its morning prrruing sound. Now the widow herself appears, shuffling along in her puckered slippers, a crooked hair-piece poking out beneath the tulle bonnet perched on her head. Her flabby, sagging face, her protruding parrot’s beak of a nose, her stubby, pudgy hands, her plump tick of a body, her overstuffed, wobbling bodice, are all entirely in keeping with this room, where the walls sweat misfortune, where enterprise kicks its heels and whose fetid fug Madame Vauquer breathes in without gagging. Her face is as cold as the first autumn frost, the expression in her crow-footed eyes shifts between the fixed smile of a dancer and the baleful glower of a discounter;16 in all, everything about her points to the boarding house, just as the boarding house leads to her.