It was an insecure-looking old pile, which might yet have seemed a sort of city in itself; compressed back, as it appeared, and almost held up between others less elevated, though of greater prominence and somewhat more respectable appearance, to the vast height of at least seven storeys: the general outer door stood fixedly open, and the cord which held it so, conducting by staple and pulley along the low entrance-passage, as through the arch of a cellar, turned in on one side to a dark little den, half lighted by a cooking-lamp and partly from a back-yard covered with rank grass and all sorts of rubbish, with an old wooden pump in the midst, to which the passage itself led through. Here an old woman, the portress, sat in a crazy leathern arm-chair that had been gilded once; she was busy trying to boil something by the lamp, and talking in a cross voice to herself, her cat, or some one else not visible to Sir Godfrey; her old features were sour enough, probably from the rheumatism which controlled her motions; but at his appearance and inquiries she became sufficiently alert and communicative, curtseying at every sentence, and trying to nod her head obsequiously, with the utmost eagerness to do anything in the matter of Suzanne Deroux, whom she knew so well, and who was so deserving—who, indeed, was never from home, except to go to mass on saints’ days at Notre Dame. There was the low fawning cunning and curiosity of old age, joined to the practised manner of some quondam servant, in the portress’s desire that he should be saved the flight of stairs, down which, where it wound up from opposite her lodge, came but the dull glimmer of daylight in some high window: her little girl, however, whom she had screamed for over and over again, between fits of coughing and fresh suggestions to the visitor, at last appeared with her pitcher from the pump, to be angrily despatched up-stairs as a guide to Madame Peltier. _That_ was the appellation expected by the daughter and the son-in-law—the portress informed him—for they were proud, and respected their mother to an extreme—though, properly, it seemed Madame had no right to that title, not having been married—and, doubtless, the marriage even of her daughter must at best have been _à la Jacques_, since nowadays it was so with all workmen—who had nothing, of course, to inherit or to leave. As for this worthy Suzanne, though she seemed to affect to be religious, her frugality, so unavoidable—her simplicity, which was almost hopeless, did not entitle her—nothing but her misfortunes could entitle her—to such respect.