WHITEWASH
dimmed tricolor. The hallway within is not spacious, and the stair leading to the floor above is inclined at the angle of Jacob s-ladder, and covered by a frayed ingrain carpet of uncertain color. On the second story, a hallway, dark as Erebus, gives access to the rooms of the locataires. There are four such rooms on the side and one at the end, offering the same general aspect—dark papers of the fashion of thirty years ago, walnut furniture, iron bedsteads, each boasting two fat eider-down pillows, covered with turkey red and further decorated with squares of Nottingham lace. The black-framed mirrors that hang above each wash-stand present a varied assortment of discolorations. To contemplate one's self therein is by no means a tribute to vanity; on the contrary, it is conducive to serious thoughts upon the precariousness of human existence, so green, distorted, and scarred is the reflection that meets the eye. The gas-brackets, protruding aggressively, are so many dark and shapely hands of bronze, emerging from frilled bronze cuffs, and uplifting tiny torches of the same metal, upon which bulge engraved globes of a
