Above the passage
entrance was a yellow signboard which simply bore the name of Madame
Rouche in big letters. She herself proved to be a person of five- or
six-and-thirty, gowned in black and spare of figure, with a leaden
complexion, scanty hair of no precise color, and a big nose of unusual
prominence. With her low, drawling speech, her prudent, cat-like
gestures, and her sour smile, he divined her to be a dangerous,
unscrupulous woman. She told him that, as the accommodation at her
disposal was so small, she only took boarders for a limited time, and
this of course enabled him to curtail his inquiries. Glad to have done
with her, he hurried off, oppressed by nausea and vaguely frightened by
what he had seen of the place.
On the other hand, Madame Bourdieu's establishment, a little
three-storied house in the Rue de Miromesnil, between the Rue La Boetie
and the Rue de Penthievre, offered an engaging aspect, with its bright
facade and muslin-curtained windows. And Madame Bourdieu, then
two-and-thirty, rather short and stout, had a broad, pleasant white face,
which had greatly helped her on the road to success. She expatiated to
Mathieu on the preliminary training that was required by one of her
profession, the cost of it, the efforts needed to make a position, the
responsibilities, the inspections, the worries of all sorts that she had
to face; and she plainly told the young man that her charge for a boarder
would be two hundred francs a month.
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