Page:French life in town and country (1917).djvu/319

 These, too, have their ideal of conduct, which owes nothing to education, and which a lady need not disown.

The concierge belongs to a more complex order of being. These often run down to desperate depths of degradation, and, in the wealthy quarters especially, constitute one of the curses of Parisian life. I suspect it is the tips and the endless sources of gossip that demoralise them. And yet I can remember a delightful old lady, who looked as if she had stepped out of a perfumed page of the last century, with her lovely white hair fluffy and soft under a black mantilla; tiny, elegant, wrinkled hands; gentle glance and exquisite smile, with the manners as well as the appearance of a French marquise. She was my concierge, and a sweeter, more disinterested little creature I have never known. I lived on the fifth floor, and had no servant, contenting myself with the services of a femme de ménage in the morning. I was seriously ill for months; and had this dear, gentle old lady been a relative or a friend she could not have nursed me more devotedly, and never a farthing in coin would she accept. She overwhelmed me with thousands of charming attentions, and the only payment she would take gratefully was the assurance that they gave me pleasure.

So, though I constantly hear terrible tales of the wicked doings of the Paris concierge, I have