This room afforded him his ultimate impression. Upstairs
on the fourth floor he was well-nigh suffocated. All the scents, all the
blasts of heat, had found their goal there. The yellow ceiling looked
as if it had been baked, and a lamp burned amid fumes of russet-colored
fog. For some seconds he leaned upon the iron balustrade which felt warm
and damp and well-nigh human to the touch. And he shut his eyes and drew
a long breath and drank in the sexual atmosphere of the place. Hitherto
he had been utterly ignorant of it, but now it beat full in his face.
"Do come here," shouted Fauchery, who had vanished some moments ago.
"You're being asked for."
At the end of the corridor was the dressing room belonging to Clarisse
and Simonne. It was a long, ill-built room under the roof with a garret
ceiling and sloping walls. The light penetrated to it from two deep-set
openings high up in the wall, but at that hour of the night the dressing
room was lit by flaring gas. It was papered with a paper at seven sous a
roll with a pattern of roses twining over green trelliswork. Two boards,
placed near one another and covered with oilcloth, did duty for dressing
tables. They were black with spilled water, and underneath them was
a fine medley of dinted zinc jugs, slop pails and coarse yellow
earthenware crocks.
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