In her narrow old grey streets, many-shuttered, which huddle about the broad Boule Miche that is the students’ highway on the left bank of the river--in the time-honoured Latin quarter--over against the Ile de la Cité, there stands a narrow way where artists do largely abide. In the whitest house of the block, or the one that at least attempts the nearest to approach a dingy suggestion of whiteness, where at any rate whiteness is become less a bygone tradition than with the rest of its fellows down the length of the alley, there stood at its topmost window, his hands behind his back, and in pensive fashion, a handsome young fellow in the slouched black hat and short black coat, flowing tie, and baggy brown corduroy pantaloons of the student of Paris; but the yellow hair was the hair of Horace Malahide. His brooding eyes were on the end of the alley, where in the reek of the lilac dusk Paris glittered her myriad lamps, her flaming streets sweeping away into the shadow of the night, showing afar dim sparks of fire that winked up the heights and were lost in the purple firmament, where a white star trembled into liquid light above the gaunt scaffolding of the huge basilica a-top of the distant hill of Montmartre. A cracked voice in the dark room asked: “Monsieur wishes that I shall light the candle?” Before the brooding youth at the window gave answer, a match was struck, and discovered a little old man guarding the flame of a candle with his hand. The old fellow set the candle on a table. Horace turned, with a sigh, into the room, sat down on a chair, and pushed back his hat; he came down into the world. “Husband of concierges,” said he---- The little old man, with skull-cap a-top, coughed, held out a protesting hand: “Pardon, monsieur--husband of _the_ concierge!” Horace laughed: “Husband of the concierge of concierges,” said he--and he held out a jewelled box of cigarettes--“we will smoke--to disinfect the room.” The old shoulders rose in the shrug of protest: “Good God, monsieur, the room is absolutely polished”--the shoulders swore it--“clean as a dish--not a grain of dust. I said it should be so. I did not trust the _femme de ménage_ alone. I did it myself.” Shoulders and arms and hands, all bore confirmatory evidence. Horace nodded: “Smoke,” said he. “It is an honour to smoke with so clean a husband of concierges.” The old man laughed, shook his head, and shuffling to Horace’s side, took a cigarette: “Ah, monsieur the student he is always gay--always gay. He has always his joke against his concierge.... I have known students for thirty years--and who would have it otherwise? When students fall away from joy of life they take to believing too much in themselves, and cross the river to Montmartre, and drink absinthe, and die, and are buried.” “Come, my husband of concierges,” cried Horace, “don’t let us weep. Light all the candles, and let us see what the room looks like----” “But, monsieur, not all the candles?”