Apparently he and Jean alone were awake in this gloomy maze of closed doors and sleeping passages.

One sign of humanity--and one alone--came to his senses with a suggestion of sordid drama.

On the floor, at the closed door of one of the rooms, stood a battered black tray on which reposed an empty champagne bottle and two soiled glasses.
Life! His quick imagination conjured a picture--conjured and shrank from it.

He turned away with a sense of sharp disgust and almost ran down the corridor to where Jean was fitting a key into the door of his prospective bedroom.
"The room, monsieur!" Jean's voice was full of pride.

He had lived for ten years in the Hotel Railleux, working as six men and six women together would not have worked in the fashionable quarter, and he had never been shaken in his belief that Paris held no more inviting hostelry.
The boy obediently stepped forward into the tiny apartment, in which a big wooden bedstead loomed out of all proportion.