It was a small sum, but might be important to the people, whoever they were, living in one of the poorest and most wretchedly-crowded quarters of Paris. Still, as Sir Godfrey smiled on that occasion cheerfully, and resumed his English newspaper, he did not, he could not tell all the painful and pertinacious impressions, of circumstances unknown or acts untraced, which any allusion to his late brother’s former stay in Paris still called up. Everything did not exactly go on in the household as in England, indeed, but all was as nearly so as a quiet assiduity could make it. The house, a somewhat dull and dilapidated mansion, very barely furnished, and taken by the month from an adjoining notary, stood far to the western or court-end of the city, though rather involved in the dinginess of a sort of minor fauxbourg, where, in those days, between the sudden curve of the river and the lesser alleys of the Champs Elysées, a motley population still clustered about the tan-pits or dye-houses, and towards the bridge and quays: it occupied one corner of a short, deserted-looking street, the other end of which was reduced to a narrow lane by the high enclosure of a convent; in front was a small paved court, very shady and damp, by the help of two or three stunted poplars it contained, yet not by any means private, being overlooked by dusty or broken staircase windows, one over the other, from at hand; while it, nevertheless, could boast of a wall surmounted by a railing, with a heavily-pillared gate of open ironwork, a little lodge on one side within, where the porter lived—at one end of the house a diminutive stable and coach-shed, at the other an entrance to a high-walled garden, laid out in intricate confusion, without sign of flowers, and overgrown with a luxury of weeds. Some rising bourgeois had probably at first designed it, with a moderate eye to fashion; although its prime recommendation from the notary was, that successive families of the English nobility had chosen it for their temporary residence; nor did the old concierge fail to point out, with some emphasis, when showing the garden, that it was in the English style. The place was, at all events, at a convenient distance from the central parts of Paris, and within an easy drive to the Protestant Episcopal chapel. At a sharp angle with the street ran a main thoroughfare from the city barrier, one way confused in the dense suburb, the other way breaking towards a leafy promenade of the public park; sending all day a busy throng of passengers into that brighter current, where it glimpsed broad past the gap of light, with the glitter of equipages, the shifting glow of dresses, and the constant hum and babble of its gaiety; while nearer by was an opening in the contiguous street, through which the first-floor windows of their house looked at the motion along the quay, and saw the stately piles of building on the opposite bank, in brighter perspective,