In a house of respectable appearance on Rue d'Angoulême, about half-past eleven one evening, the street bell was pulled so violently that it caused Monsieur Baudoin, the concierge, to leap from his chair, upon which he was beginning to doze, while his wife Hildegarde took advantage of his nodding to open a small cupboard and take therefrom a bottle, the neck of which she proceeded to introduce into her mouth, and took several swallows of a fluid which she seemed to enjoy greatly.
Baudoin the concierge was a tall, thin man, with a pale face and light hair, who had passed his fiftieth year, but was still very straight, and as active as a young man. To his occupation of concierge, he added that of clerk in a stage office, which kept him only until six o'clock. He was an honest man, to whom one could fearlessly entrust his house and his treasure; he did promptly whatever he was ordered to do, unless he did not fully understand; but in that case it was not safe to reproach him, for Baudoin lost his temper very readily, having an immeasurable self-esteem and claiming that he never made a mistake. When he did lose his temper, Baudoin swore like a trooper, and turned as red as a turkey-cock.
Hildegarde, the concierge's wife, was two or three years older than her husband; she had once been pretty and sentimental; she was not very well preserved, and her inclination to sentiment having with age become diverted to brandy, Madame Baudoin had neglected herself considerably; there was a deplorable carelessness in her dress, which resulted in nothing ever being in place. Baudoin, who was always neat and decently dressed, often reproached his wife for her heedlessness in that respect, and as he had also discovered her unlucky fondness for liquor, he sometimes added to his reproaches lessons of an impressive sort, which made Hildegarde bellow loudly, and promise never to give way again to her miserable failing; but she never failed to forget that promise, whenever she thought that her husband would know nothing about it.
Moreover, Madame Baudoin was a genuine type of concierge: talkative, inquisitive, gossiping, scandal-loving, incautious, not evil-minded at bottom, but capable of setting the whole quarter at odds with remarks made without ill-intent. Her husband often scolded her for it; but "what's bred in the bone will come out in the flesh!"