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La Cibot was impressed by Remonencq's respect for this singular person; real power, moreover, even when it cannot be explained, is always felt; the portress was supple and obedient, she dropped the autocratic tone which she was wont to use in her lodge and with the tenants, accepted Magus' conditions, and agreed to admit him into Pons' museum that very day.
I knock; a portress opens the door to me; she asks me what I want, but I make no answer; she tries to stop me, but I pass on; once in the convent, I walk over it from top to bottom, calling my children with all my might." "But, M. Dagobert, the nuns?" said Mother Bunch, still trying to detain the soldier. "The nuns run after me, screaming like so many magpies. I know them.
At every detail she uttered loud exclamations; then, when the portress warned her to be less noisy, she excused herself in a whisper. They made a circle around me to see me eat my dinner; each mouthful I took was accompanied by their expressions of satisfaction and thankfulness. Never had the King of France, when he dined in public, excited such admiration among the spectators.
Never did a more beautiful youth come down from the hills of the Latin Quarter. Glorious as a Greek god, Lucien took a cab, and reached the Cafe Servel at a quarter to seven. There the portress gave him some tolerably complicated directions for the ascent of four pairs of stairs.
To some dusky landing before a shabby Parisian quatrième, to an open door revealing a greasy antechamber, and to Madame leaning over the banisters, while she holds a faded dressing-gown together and bawls down to the portress to bring up her coffee. Miss Spencer's visitor was a very large woman, of middle age, with a plump, dead-white face, and hair drawn back a la chinoise.
A very sonorous bell, placed beside the portress, and which was audible throughout the house, indicated by its varied peals, which formed a sort of acoustic telegraph, all the actions of material life which were to be performed, and summoned to the parlor, in case of need, such or such an inhabitant of the house. Each person and each thing had its own peal.
It was closed, but I induced the portress to let me in a silent, cadaverous person, in a black coif, like a béguine, who sat knitting in one of the windows while I went the rounds. The number of Roman fragments is small, and their quality is not the finest; I must add that this impression was hastily gathered. This excellent man was a connoisseur, and the visitor is doubtless often an ignoramus.
The sister, accustomed as she was to austerities, felt a tear spring to her eyes. The clock struck six. Fantine did not seem to hear it. She no longer seemed to pay attention to anything about her. Sister Simplice sent a serving-maid to inquire of the portress of the factory, whether the mayor had returned, and if he would not come to the infirmary soon. The girl returned in a few minutes.
"Ah! you would have the grand jeu; I have treated you as an old acquaintance. I only want a hundred francs " "Cibot, going to die?" gasped the portress. "So I have been telling you very dreadful things, have I?" asked Mme. Fontaine, with an extremely ingenuous air. "Why, yes!" said La Cibot, taking a hundred francs from her pocket and laying them down on the edge of the table.
She drove at five o'clock to a high floor in a narrow street in the quarter of the Piazza Navona, and was admitted by the portress of the convent, a genial and obsequious person. Isabel had been at this institution before; she had come with Pansy to see the sisters.
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