I informed the concierge that I did not wish the man to be sent away; but it seemed that the landlord cared for nothing but his rent. That evening, about eight o’clock, I heard the tailor singing with all his lungs; he executed trills and flourishes. Who would ever have believed that the man had not a sou? I remembered the fable of the cobbler and the banker; suppose I should go to my neighbor and give him money to keep silent? But perhaps that would make him sing all the louder; for one could find few cobblers like the one in the fable. However, I yielded to the idea of going to my neighbor. If he was an obliging person, perhaps he would consent to sing not quite so loud. But I had little hope of it, for the Germans are obstinate and they are fond of music. Never mind, I would go to see the tailor none the less. I ascended the stairs which separated me from the attic. My neighbor’s voice guided me to his door. The key was on the outside, but for all that I knocked before opening the door. He continued to sing a passage from _Der Freischütz_, and did not reply; thereupon I opened the door. I entered a room in which there was a mattress with a wretched coverlid thrown over it, in one corner. A rickety chair, a few broken jars and a long board which served doubtless as a table, but which was then standing against the wall--that was all the furniture. Leaning on the sill of the window, which was open, was a man, still young, whose good-humored, bloated face was not unfamiliar to me. He was in his shirt sleeves, and was seated after the manner of tailors, with his knees outside the window, a position which made him likely to fall into the courtyard at the slightest forward movement. On my arrival he stopped in the middle of a trill and exclaimed: “Hello! I thought it was the concierge to ask for money again. I should have said to him: ‘prout, prout!’ Sit you down, monsieur.” I sat down, for my neighbor seemed quite unceremonious; he had not risen. I do not know whether he thought that I had come to hear him sing; but he seemed inclined to resume his performance. I stopped him at once. “Monsieur, I am your neighbor.” “Indeed! you are my neighbor, are you? Beside me or below?” “Below.” “Oh, yes! it’s a fact that on this floor there’s nobody but the cooks of the house, all old women, unluckily. They don’t sing, they don’t make love, they don’t know how to make anything but sauces,--reduced consommés, as the one from the first floor says. For my part, I would give all her consommés for a bottle of beaune. Ah! how delicious beaune is! If I had any, I would give you some; but it is three days now that I haven’t drunk anything but water. Prout, prout! I must make the best of it.” While the tailor was talking, I examined him, because I was confident that I had seen him somewhere before, but I could not remember where.