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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text
Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1895 edition. Excerpt: ...up the milk and the newspaper of my proprietor. When they reached the second floor above the entresol, Madame Cibot found herself face to face with a door of a villanous description. The paint, a mongrel red, was plastered with a layer of black dirt a foot square, such as the hands deposit after a certain length of time and which architects attempt to counteract in the better class of houses by putting glass shields above and below the locks. The wicket of the door, choked with dusty cobwebs (like those that caterers collect to give the look of age to their wine-bottles), served no purpose except to justify the nickname of the prison-door,--a name that was sustained, moreover, by the trefoil iron work, the formidable hinges, and the huge nail-heads with which the door was studded. Some miser, or some pamphleteer at war with all the world, must have invented such defensive apparatus. A leaden gutter through which the waste-water of each household was poured added its quota to the evil savors of the staircase, whose ceilings were decorated with arabesques sketched in candle-smoke. And what arabesques! The bell-rope, at the end of which hung a filthy brass olive, rang a little bell, whose feeble tinkle betrayed a crack in its metal. Every surrounding object added some touch in harmony with the general effect of this hideous picture. The Cibot heard the noise of a heavy step and the asthmatic breathing of a powerful woman; and then Madame Sanvage revealed herself. She was one of those old women of whom Adrien Brauwer had a vision when he drew his Witches starting for their Sabbath,--a woman five feet six inches tall and unhealthily fat, with the face of a grenadier and far more beard than Madame Cibot could show, arrayed in a frightful...
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