human
Eh; b'en, M'sieu'? of good old père Hanicq, who is porter here. He is a _père_, you understand, by the title of affection and respect, and not by virtue of ordination. You may not think it worth your while to be over humble and deferential in your deportment towards porters as a general rule; but I think you may be so now; for, if I do not mistake, you are speaking to a venerable old man who will die in the odor of sanctity. Père Hanicq is not paid for his services, {434} troublesome and arduous as you would very soon find his to be if you were porter even here. He is porter for the love of God. You see he does not stop making the rosary, which is yet unfinished in his hand, while he talks to you. He does not recompense himself by that business either, as shoemaker porters, tailor porters, and the like eke out their scanty salaries; but it enables him to find some well-earned sous to give away to others poorer than himself. You say this lodge is not a very comfortable place, with its cold brick floor. It is not. Neither is that narrow roost up the step-ladder a very luxurious bed. Right again, it is not. But the Père Hanicq is not over particular about these things. Besides, he is not worse off in this respect than the hundred other people who live in this place nearest to heaven. Indeed, most of them have a much narrower and drearier apartment than his. Now that you have said a pleasant word to the good old soul, (for he dearly loves a kindly salutation, and it is the only imperfection I think he has,) you may pass the inner door, and you observe that you are in a square courtyard, a three-story irregularly shaped building occupying two sides of it; stables and outhouses a third, and the street wall the fourth. Before you go further, I would advise you to look into one of those tumble-down looking outhouses. It looks something like a rag and bottle shop. It is a shop, and the Almoner of the poor keeps it. Here the residents of these buildings may find bargains in old odds and ends of second-hand, and it may be seventy times seventh-hand furniture, either left or cast off by former occupants. Here the Almoner,--that voluble and sweet tempered young man in a long black cassock,--disposes of these articles of trade, enhancing their value by all the superlatives he can remember, for the benefit of certain old crones and hobbling cripples, whom perhaps you saw on the right of the courtyard receiving soup and other food from another young man in a long black cassock, who is the Almoner's assistant. You don't know it, perhaps, but I can tell you that the Almoner's assistant, as he ladles out the soup and divides the bread and meat, is mentally going down on his knees and kissing the ragged and worn-out clothes of these old bodies whom he helps, for the sake of Him whom they represent, and who will one day say to him:
gpt
Because you did it unto the least of these my brethren, you did it unto me.
human
Angel Guardian house over the way, like Father Haskins's house in Roxbury, Massachusetts (there ought to be angels, you know, not far off from the nearest place to heaven), where the
gpt
as the Parisians call them,--the
human
or