Or he might have been a receiver
at the door of a public slaughter-house, or a sub-inspector of
nuisances. Indeed, the man appeared to have been one of the beasts of
burden in our great social mill; one of those Parisian Ratons whom
their Bertrands do not even know by sight; a pivot in the obscure
machinery that disposes of misery and things unclean; one of those
men, in short, at sight of whom we are prompted to remark that, "After
all, we cannot do without them."
Stately Paris ignores the existence of these faces bleached by moral
or physical suffering; but, then, Paris is in truth an ocean that no
line can plumb. You may survey its surface and describe it; but no
matter how numerous and painstaking the toilers in this sea, there
will always be lonely and unexplored regions in its depths, caverns
unknown, flowers and pearls and monsters of the deep overlooked or
forgotten by the divers of literature. The Maison Vauquer is one of
these curious monstrosities.
Two, however, of Mme. Vauquer's boarders formed a striking contrast to
the rest. There was a sickly pallor, such as is often seen in anaemic
girls, in Mlle. Victorine Taillefer's face; and her unvarying
expression of sadness, like her embarrassed manner and pinched look,
was in keeping with the general wretchedness of the establishment in
the Rue Nueve-Saint-Genevieve, which forms a background to this
picture; but her face was young, there was youthfulness in her voice
and elasticity in her movements.
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