He was just reaching the seventh landing, when another soldier--an artillery man this time--who had come out of a room on the second floor, bumped up against him; he was running downstairs very fast and, after setting Amédée on his feet again, passed on, muttering a laughing excuse in Italian, for Fleurissoire was stumbling from fatigue and looked as if he were drunk. The first uniform had reassured him, but the second made him uneasy. “These soldiers are a noisy lot,” thought he. “Fortunately my room is on the third floor. I prefer to have them below me.” He had no sooner passed the second floor than a woman in a gaping dressing-gown, with her hair undone, came running from the other end of the passage and hailed him. “She takes me for someone else,” thought he, and hurried on, turning his eyes away so as not to embarrass her by noticing the scantiness of her attire. He arrived panting on the third floor, where he found Baptistin; he was talking Italian to a woman of uncertain age, who reminded him extraordinarily--though she was not so fat--of the Blafaphas’ cook. “Your portmanteau is in No. sixteen--the third door. Take care as you pass of the pail which is in the passage.” “I put it outside because it was leaking,” explained the woman in French. The door of No. sixteen was open; outside No. fifteen a tin slop-pail was standing in the middle of a shiny repugnant-looking puddle, which Fleurissoire stepped across. An acrid odour emanated from it. The portmanteau was placed in full view on a chair. As soon as he got inside the stuffy room, Amédée felt his head swim, and flinging his umbrella, his shawl and his hat on to the bed, he sank into an arm-chair. His forehead was streaming; he thought he was going to faint. “This is Madame Carola, the lady who talks French,” said Baptistin. They had both come into the room. “Open the window a little,” sighed Fleurissoire, who was incapable of movement. “Goodness! how hot he is!” said Madame Carola, sponging his pallid and perspiring countenance with a little scented handkerchief, which she took out of her bodice. “Let’s push him nearer the window.” Both together lifted the arm-chair, in which Amédée swung helpless and half unconscious, and put it down where he was able to inhale--in exchange for the tainted atmosphere of the passage--the varied stenches of the street. The coolness, however, revived him. Feeling in his waistcoat pocket, he pulled out the screw of five lire which he had prepared for Baptistin: “Thank you very much. Please leave me now.” The facchino went out. “You oughtn’t to have given him such a lot,” said Carola. She too used the familiar “thou,” which Amédée accepted as a custom of the country; his one thought now was to go to bed; but Carola showed no signs of leaving; then, carried away by politeness, he began to talk. “You speak French as well as a Frenchwoman.” “No wonder. I come from Paris. And you?” “I come from the south.”