The women wore faded, re-dyed, washed-out dresses, old darned lace, gloves shiny with wear, collarettes that always looked soiled and frayed fichus.20 Yet despite these clothes, almost without exception, they had solid physiques, constitutions which had survived life’s storms, and cold, hard faces, as worn as écu coins withdrawn from circulation. Their thin lips concealed greedy teeth. Each lodger’s appearance hinted at a tragedy, either fully played-out, or in progress; not a tragedy performed in the glare of the footlights against a backdrop of painted scenery, but a silent, real-life tragedy, so chilling it stirs and warms the heart, a tragedy with no final curtain.

The elderly, weary-eyed Mademoiselle Michonneau was never seen without a grubby green taffeta eye-shade edged with wire, which would have scared off the Angel of Mercy. Her shawl, with its balding, drooping fringe, appeared to be draped over a skeleton, so angular were the shapes it clung to. What acid had eaten away this woman’s feminine curves? She must have been pretty once, and shapely too: was it vice, grief, cupidity? Had she loved too much? Perhaps she had been a dealer in second-hand finery,21 or simply a whore? Was she atoning for a shameless youth spent in pursuit of profit and pleasure, with an old age which made passers-by turn away? Her blank expression chilled, her scraggy face threatened. Her voice was as shrill as a solitary cicada scraping in the undergrowth at the approach of winter. She said that she had cared for an old gentleman suffering from an inflammation of the bladder and abandoned by his children who believed him to be destitute. This old man had bequeathed to her a life annuity of one thousand francs, which was periodically disputed by his heirs, who called her every kind of name. Although her face had been ravaged by the passions that had distorted it, the texture of her skin was still delicate and white in places, perhaps indicating that her body also retained some vestigial beauty.

Monsieur Poiret was a kind of blundering automaton. To see him – looming like a grey shadow along a path in the Jardin des Plantes, a drooping old cap on his head, barely able to grip the yellowing ivory handle of his stick, the crumpled skirts of his frock-coat flapping, miserably failing to hide his empty, sagging breeches and blue-stockinged legs that gave way like a drunkard’s, and revealing his dirty white waistcoat and the concertinaed coarse muslin shirt frill which had worked loose from the tie twisted round his scrawny turkey’s neck – you wouldn’t be alone in asking yourself whether this pantomime figure could possibly belong to the audacious tribe of the sons of Japet22 who flit about on the Boulevard des Italiens. What kind of employment had knocked the stuffing out of him? What passion had left such a stamp of bewilderment on his bulbous face, which would have seemed overdone drawn as a caricature. What kind of a man had he been? Perhaps he’d been employed by the Ministry of Justice, in the office to which executioners addressed their memoranda of expenses, accounts of supplies of black veils for parricides, of sawdust for baskets, of rope for the guillotine. He might have once been a receiver at the entrance to an abattoir or an assistant health inspector. In all, he appeared to have been one of the mill-horses that keep the great wheel of society turning, one of those Parisian cats that never know for which monkeys they are pulling chestnuts out of the fire,23 one of many pivots on which some public tragedy or controversy has revolved, one of those men that we look at and say: After all, someone has to do it. The fine folk of Paris are oblivious to faces such as his, drained by mental or physical suffering. But then Paris is an ocean. Heave in the lead as often as you like, you’ll never sound its depths. Explore it, describe it: however exhaustive your exploration or description, however numerous and inquisitive the explorers of that sea, there will always be virgin territory, an unknown cave, flowers, pearls, monsters, something unheard of, forgotten by literary divers. The Maison Vauquer is one of these curious monstrosities.

Two faces stood out in striking contrast to the majority of the boarders and lodgers. Although Mademoiselle Victorine Taillefer had the sickly complexion of a young lady suffering from chlorosis,24 and her habitual melancholy, troubled countenance and air of weakness and fragility blended seamlessly into the background of general suffering, at least she wasn’t old and her tongue and her movements were agile. This young unfortunate resembled a shrub with yellowing leaves, recently planted in the wrong kind of soil. Her sallow features, her slick of tawny hair, her painfully thin waist, gave her the kind of grace which modern poets have found in medieval statues. Her grey eyes flecked with black expressed a Christian gentleness and resignation, while her simple, inexpensive clothes showed off her youthful curves. Compared with the other boarders, she was pretty. If she had been happy, she would have been ravishing: happiness is a woman’s poetry, as powders and pomades are her persona. If the exhilaration of a ball could have imparted a rosy bloom to her pale face; if the sweet delights of an elegant life could have filled out her cheeks – already somewhat hollow – and made them glow; if love could have rekindled some spark in her downcast eyes, Victorine would have been the equal of the most beautiful of young women. She lacked what creates a woman anew: fine clothes and love letters. Her story would have made a good novel. Believing he had good reason not to recognize her as his daughter, her father refused to have her under his roof, gave her only six hundred francs per year and had wound up his estate so that his son would be the sole inheritor. Victorine’s mother had died of despair in the house of a distant relative, Madame Couture, who had cared for the orphan ever since as if she were her own child. Unfortunately the widow of the Commissary-General to the Armies of the Republic had nothing to her name but her dower and her pension; one day she might have to leave this poor girl, entirely without experience and resources, to the mercy of the world.