At the opposite end of
the room stood a tall earthenware stove. The walls were wainscoted five
feet up from the dark polished floor, and were hung with several smoky
old paintings, of no great artistic value. The chairs and tables were
plain, but very heavy and solid, and of a dark hue like the room. The
window was nearly as wide as it was high, and opened laterally from the
center on hinges. The other rooms were of the same general appearance,
but smaller. We both liked the place, and soon made ourselves very
comfortable in it. I hired a piano, and had it conveyed upstairs to the
parlor; while Paton disposed his architectural paraphernalia on and in
the massive writing-table near the window. Our cooking and other
household duties were done for us by the wife of the _portier_,
the official corresponding to the French _concierge_, who, in all
German houses, attends at the common door, and who, in this case, lived
in a couple of musty little closets opening into the lower hall, and
eked out his official salary by cobbling shoes. He was an odd,
grotesque humorist, of most ungainly exterior, black haired and
bearded, with a squint, a squab nose, and a short but very powerful
figure.
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