“You may have confidence in me, monsieur, that you may! Madame Vauthier, it is well known, would rather have nothing than a single penny that ought to go to others.” Madame Vauthier soon came to terms with Godefroid who would not take the rooms unless he could have them by the single month and furnished. These miserable rooms of students and unlucky authors were rented furnished or unfurnished as the case might be. The vast garret which extended over the whole building was filled with such furniture. But Monsieur Bernard, she said, had furnished his own rooms. In making Madame Vauthier talk, Godefroid discovered she had intended to keep boarders in the building, but for the last five years had not obtained a single lodger of that description. She lived herself on the ground-floor facing towards the boulevard; and looked after the whole house, by the help of a huge mastiff, a stout servant-girl, and a lad who blacked the boots, took care of the rooms, and did the errands. These two servants were, like herself, in keeping with the poverty of the house, that of the tenants, and the wild and tangled look of the garden. Both were children abandoned by their parents to whom the widow gave food for wages,--and what food! The lad, whom Godefroid caught a glimpse of, wore a ragged blouse and list slippers instead of shoes, and sabots when he went out. With his tousled head, looking like a sparrow when it takes a bath, and his black hands, he went to measure wood at a wood-yard on the boulevard as soon as he had finished the morning work of the house; and after his day’s labor (which ends in wood-yards at half-past four in the afternoon) he returned to his domestic avocations. He went to the fountain of the Observatoire for the water used in the house, which the widow supplied to the tenants, together with bundles of kindling, sawed and tied up by him. Nepomucene, such was the name of the widow Vauthier’s slave, brought the daily journal to his mistress. In summer the poor forsaken lad was a waiter in the wine-shops at the barrier; and then his mistress dressed him properly. As for the stout girl, she cooked under direction of the widow, and helped her in another department of industry during the rest of the day; for Madame Vauthier had a business,--she made list shoes, which were bought and sold by pedlers. Godefroid learned all these details in about an hour’s time; for the widow took him everywhere, and showed him the whole building, explaining its transformation into a dwelling. Until 1828 it had been a nursery for silk-worms, less for the silk than to obtain what they call the eggs. Eleven acres planted with mulberries on the plain of Montrouge, and three acres on the rue de l’Ouest, afterwards built over, had supplied this singular establishment.