small square openings in the floors of the upper rooms in these houses. In our days they were used to summon servants from below, but their original purpose had been for watching the captives unobserved. In the panels of the great oaken door that opened on the street, in our house, were little grated squares through which those who knocked for admittance could be cautiously examined, and this feature gave a further idea of the strange and perilous circumstances of bygone days. The kitchen, which was entered from a stone hall, was our delight; it was called the every-day kitchen. Enormous logs burned in a vast open fireplace, archaically carved. At that time coal was little known in the country, and the joints were roasted on a spit before this fire, which looked like the entrance to an inferno. There was a little oven for stews and sweets, etc. Under a square glass case on the mantel-shelf, lifted high above the busy scene, stood a statue of the Virgin, very old and very ugly, dressed in tinsel, a necklace of colored beads around its neck. This was a cherished possession of Nicole's, an old cook of my grandmother's, who followed us everywhere, and at its foot, under the glass cover, lay her withered orange-flower wedding-wreath. The kitchen was lighted at night by numbers of tallow candles that burned in tall brass candlesticks, each with its pincers and snuffer. (A candle with us does not "take snuff"; it has "its nose blown"--_on mouchait la chandelle_.) Brass warming-pans, which we children called Bluebeard's wives, were ranged along the walls, and a multitude of copper saucepans hung in order of size, glittering with special splendor on those spaces that could be seen from the street, for "_où l'orgueil ne va t'il pas se nicher_?" Through an opening in the wall opposite the big windows dishes could be passed to the servants in the dining-room during meals.