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I found him in a hole about as big as my fist, almost pitch-dark, without the smallest scrap of curtain or hanging to cover the nakedness of his walls, a couple of straw-bottomed chairs, a truckle-bed with a quilt riddled by the moths, a box in the corner of the chimney and rags of every sort stuck upon it, a small tin lamp to which a bottle served as support, and on a shelf some dozen first-rate books.
Having made this stipulation, our little heroine placed the black martyr on an old-fashioned straw-bottomed chair near the window, and getting hold of a quantity of paper and some old cotton dresses, she piled the whole round Blackie to represent faggots. This done, she stepped back and surveyed her work as an artist might study a picture.
Seated in old armchairs in front of the stage, Fauchery and Bordenave were discussing various points while the prompter, Father Cossard, a little humpbacked man perched on a straw-bottomed chair, was turning over the pages of the manuscript, a pencil between his lips. "Well, what are they waiting for?" cried Bordenave on a sudden, tapping the floor savagely with his heavy cane.
Within a few minutes he had gone in and out again, carrying now one of the black linen bags used by valets de chambres to carry their masters' clothes in. He winked at me as he passed, and we walked together to a shady, retired spot in the little square where the cab-stand is, and sat in the newspaper kiosk on a couple of straw-bottomed chairs of the Central café.
Nothing could be more plain than the furniture of this sleeping-room, composed of a bed, a chest of drawers, a secretary of black walnut, four straw-bottomed chairs, and a table; white cotton curtains covered the windows and the bed recess; the only ornaments on the mantelpiece were a decanter and a glass.
He filled out spaces with dim symbols of scenes; he caught the gleam of white statues at the base of which, with his letters out, he could tilt back a straw-bottomed chair. But his drift was, for reasons, to the other side, and it floated him unspent up the Rue de Seine and as far as the Luxembourg.
"Does the smell of the pipe annoy you?" he said, placing the dilapidated straw-bottomed chair for his lawyer. "But, Colonel, you are dreadfully uncomfortable here!" The speech was wrung from Derville by the distrust natural to lawyers, and the deplorable experience which they derive early in life from the appalling and obscure tragedies at which they look on.
Yet their faces were red with blushes, and their eyes aflame, and they wriggled restlessly on their straw-bottomed chairs. Rosalie started up and hurried forward. "Madame wants something?" She had come to see them, to chat with them, and have their company. However, she felt a sudden shame, and dared not say that she required nothing. "Have you any hot water?" she asked, after a silence.
"Don't you wish to see Lucienne?" he added, addressing himself to M. de Tregars rather more than to the commissary. For all answer, they followed him at once. A cheerless-looking place was Mlle. Lucienne's room, without any furniture but a narrow iron bedstead, a dilapidated bureau, four straw-bottomed chairs, and a small table.
The huge attic was icy-cold, and the furniture consisted of a couple of rickety straw-bottomed chairs, or rather frames of chairs. The General set the lantern down upon the chimney-piece. Then he spoke: "It is necessary for your own safety to hide you in this comfortless attic. And, as you have my promise to keep your secret, you will permit me to lock you in."
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