M. Bergeret looked through the dirty window of the hall to see if there were any letter or paper in the box; he still took an interest in letters from a distance or in literary reviews. But to-day there were only visiting-cards, which suggested to him nothing more interesting than personalities as shadowy and pale as the cards themselves, and a bill from Mademoiselle Rose, the modiste of the Tintelleries. As his eyes fell on this, the thought suddenly occurred to him that Madame Bergeret was becoming extravagant and that the house was stuffy. He could feel the weight of it on his shoulders, and as he stood in the hall, he seemed to be bearing on his back the whole flooring of his flat, in addition to the drawing-room piano and that terrible wardrobe that swallowed up his little store of money and yet was always empty. Thus weighted with domestic troubles, M. Bergeret grasped the iron handrail with its ample curves of florid metal-work, and began, with bent head and short breath, to climb the stone steps. These were now blackened, worn, cracked, patched, and ornamented with worn bricks and squalid paving-stones, but once, in the bygone days of their early youth, they had known the tread of fine gentlemen and pretty girls, hurrying to pay rival court to Pauquet, the revenue-tax farmer who had enriched himself by the spoils of a whole province. For it was in the mansion of Pauquet de Sainte-Croix that M. Bergeret lived, now fallen from its glory, despoiled of its splendour and degraded by a plaster top-storey which had taken the place of its graceful gable and majestic roof. Now the building was darkened by tall houses built all round it, on ground where once there were gardens with a thousand statues, ornamental waters and a park, and even on the main courtyard where Pauquet had erected an allegorical monument to his king, who was in the habit of making him disgorge his booty every five or six years, after which he was left for another term to stuff himself again with gold. This courtyard, which was flanked by a splendid Tuscan portico, had vanished in 1857 when the Rue des Tintelleries was widened. Now Pauquet de Sainte-Croix’s mansion was nothing but an ugly tenement-house badly neglected by two old caretakers, Gaubert by name, who despised M. Bergeret for his quietness and had no sense of his true generosity, because it was that of a man of moderate means. Yet whatever M. Raynaud gave they regarded with respect, although he gave little when he was well able to give much: to the Gauberts, his hundred-sou piece was valuable because it came from great wealth.