The name of Mondétour exactly describes the windings of all this lay-stall. A little farther on it was found even better expressed by the Rue Pirouette, which threw itself into the Rue Mondétour. The wayfarer who turned out of the Rue St. Denis into the Rue de la Chanvrerie saw it gradually contract before him, as if he had entered an elongated funnel. At the end of the street, which was very short, he found the passage barred on the side of the Halles by a tall row of houses, and he might have fancied himself in a blind alley had he not perceived on his right and left two black cuts through which he could escape. It was the Rue Mondétour, which joined on one side the Rue des Prêcheurs, on the other the Rue du Cygne. At the end of this sort of blind alley, at the corner of the right-hand cutting, a house lower than the rest, forming a species of cape in the street, might be noticed. It is in this house, only two stories high, that an illustrious cabaret had been installed for more than three hundred years. This inn produced a joyous noise at the very spot which old Théophile indicated in the two lines: "Là branle le squelette horrible D'un pauvre amant qui se pendit." The spot was good, and the landlords succeeded each other from father to son. In the time of Mathurin Régnier, this cabaret was called the _Pot-aux-Roses,_ and as rebuses were fashionable, it had for a sign a poteau (post) painted in rose-color. In the last century, worthy Natoire, one of the fantastic masters disdained at the present day by the stiff school, having got tipsy several times in this inn at the same table where Régnier had got drunk, painted, out of gratitude, a bunch of currants on the pink post. The landlord, in his delight, changed his sign, and had the words gilded under the bunch, _Au raisin de Corinthe_,--hence the name of Corinth. Nothing is more natural to drunkards than ellipses, for they are the zigzags of language. Corinth had gradually dethroned the rose-pot, and the last landlord of the dynasty, Father Hucheloup, not being acquainted with the tradition, had the post painted blue.