Among other things in Boston at that period there was a fencing school and pistol gallery, kept by an old soldier of the First Empire, Monsieur Hypolite Bagasse. The way to it was up a long, narrow boarded alley which led out of Washington street, ran straight for about twenty steps, and then with the natural disposition of every street, avenue, alley, lane or court in Boston, made an effort to achieve the line of beauty and of grace by slanting off to the left, in which bent it was followed by the blind, brick walls, covered in one spot with a patch of theatre posters on the left hand side of it, and by a large dingy old brick building, preternaturally full of windows, on the right hand side of it. In this building was the fencing school. A large, long, dim, unfinished interior, lighted on one side only by a row of windows looking on the alley, clap-boarded all around on the other sides, and with rafters overhead. Cool and dry, with a faint acrid smell of powder-smoke pervading its musty atmosphere. One section of the oblong space, to the left of the door, unwindowed, and lying in complete shadow. Three or four square wooden posts, down the long centre, supporting the raftered ceiling. On the left hand, under the windows, the pistol gallery—a fenced lane, with a target at one end, and a bench, with arms and ammunition on it, at the other. Near this a wooden settee with a tin can of cheap claret wine upon it. Opposite, hanging on the boarded wall in the rear of the pistol bench, and in the range of two or three of the windows, rows of foils and yellow buckskin fencing-gloves, black wire masks for the face, leathern plastrons for the breast, and a few single-sticks and blunt broadswords. No other furniture, save three or four old chairs, scattered here and there about the room.