The vestibule,--long, dingy, and ill-smelling,--was really a narrow
corridor, at one side of which was the janitor's lodge.
On passing this lodge, if you glanced inside, where it was encumbered
with furniture till no room was left, you could always make out a fat
woman, motionless, very swarthy, in whose arms reposed a pale weakling
of a child, long and thin, like a white earthworm. It seemed that
above the window, instead of "Janitor" the legend should have read:
"The Woman-Cannon and her Child," or some similar sign from the circus
tents.
If any question were addressed to this voluminous female she would
answer in a shrill voice accompanied by a rather disagreeable gesture
of disdain. Leaving the den of this woman-cannon to one side, you
would proceed; at the left of the entrance began the staircase, always
in darkness, with no air except what filtered in through a few high,
grated windows that opened upon a diminutive courtyard with filthy
walls punctured by round ventilators. For a broad, roomy nose endowed
with a keen pituitary membrane, it would have been a curious sport to
discover and investigate the provenience and the species of all the
vile odours comprising that fetid stench, which was an inalienable
characteristic of the establishment.
The author never succeeded in making the acquaintance of the persons
living upon the upper floors.
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