Sketches in Paris in 1825

FROM THE TRAVELING NOTE-BOOK OF GEOFFREY CRAYON, GENT.

A Parisian hotel is a street set on end, the grand staircase forming the
highway, and every floor a separate habitation. Let me describe the one in
which I am lodged, which may serve as a specimen of its class. It is a huge
quadrangular pile of stone, built round a spacious paved court. The ground
floor is occupied by shops, magazines, and domestic offices. Then comes the
_entre-sol_, with low ceilings, short windows, and dwarf chambers;
then succeed a succession of floors, or stories, rising one above the
other, to the number of Mahomet's heavens. Each floor is like a distinct
mansion, complete in itself, with ante-chamber, saloons, dining and
sleeping rooms, kitchen and other conveniences for the accommodation of a
family. Some floors are divided into two or more suites of apartments. Each
apartment has its main door of entrance, opening upon the staircase, or
landing-places, and locked like a street door. Thus several families and
numerous single persons live under the same roof, totally independent of
each other, and may live so for years without holding more intercourse than
is kept up in other cities by residents in the same street.

Like the great world, this little microcosm has its gradations of rank and
style and importance. The _Premier_, or first floor, with its grand
saloons, lofty ceilings, and splendid furniture, is decidedly the
aristocratical part of the establishment. The second floor is scarcely less
aristocratical and magnificent; the other floors go on lessening in
splendor as they gain in altitude, and end with the attics, the region of
petty tailors, clerks, and sewing-girls. To make the filling up of the
mansion complete, every odd nook and corner is fitted up as a _joli petit
appartement à garçon_ (a pretty little bachelor's apartment), that is to
say, some little dark inconvenient nestling-place for a poor devil of a
bachelor.

The whole domain is shut up from the street by a great
_porte-cochère_, or portal, calculated for the admission of carriages.
This consists of two massy folding-doors, that swing heavily open upon a
spacious entrance, passing under the front of the edifice into the
courtyard. On one side is a spacious staircase leading to the upper
apartments. Immediately without the portal is the porter's lodge, a small
room with one or two bedrooms adjacent, for the accommodation of the
_concierge_, or porter and his family. This is one of the most
important functionaries of the hotel. He is, in fact, the Cerberus of the
establishment, and no one can pass in or out without his knowledge and
consent. The _porte-cochère_ in general is fastened by a sliding bolt,
from which a cord or wire