Explore "El Dorado" by Emma Orczy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Blakeney had more than one pied-à-terre in Paris, and never stayed longer than two or three days in any of these. It was not difficult for a single man, be he labourer or bourgeois, to obtain a night's lodging, even in these most troublous times, and in any quarter of Paris, provided the rent -- out of all proportion to the comfort and accommodation given -- was paid ungrudgingly and in advance.
Emigration and, above all, the enormous death-roll of the past eighteen months, had emptied the apartment houses of the great city, and those who had rooms to let were only too glad of a lodger, always providing they were not in danger of being worried by the committees of their section.