There was another wizened little old gentleman, whose name I have forgotten, who used to tell us anecdotes of the straits to which he was put during his life in London; but after all, it might have been worse, and he was able to feed himself for very little money. In the cheap slum in which he lived there used to appear every morning a man with little pieces of meat on skewers; for two or three pence you could obtain “des petites portions,” quite enough for a meal, “et ma foi! ça n’était pas trop mauvais; ça s’appelle Kami.” He was dealing with the cat’s-meat man! I used often to be taken to see the venerable Marquise du Mesnil, who had been lady-in-waiting to Marie Antoinette. The old lady lived in a wonderful apartment full of glorious old furniture, Gobelins tapestry, Sèvres china, vernis Martin, fans and pictures, memorials of the old Court which would fetch a king’s ransom to-day. I sometimes wondered whether the windows of those rooms had ever been opened since the house was built, for the air was thick with a peculiar musty, stuffy, mousey smell, over which neither musk nor verveine could prevail. Here she sat bolt upright with a priceless snuffbox in her wizened hand, telling tales which made me gasp with terror, until I could almost see Judith carrying the bleeding head out of the tapestry in the boudoir to the music of the _carmagnole_ in the street below. At the Musée Carnavalet, or looking at the Princess de Lamballe’s little pink slipper at the Cluny, I am reminded of that house of fear from which I used to escape trembling, but to which, such was its weird fascination, I always used to beg to be taken every time my people went to visit there. The old lady was always very kind to the little boy who never quite knew whether he feared or loved her, but who had a lurking suspicion that she must be some relation of that fairy who was not asked to the christening. A great pleasure on our homeward walk from the Rive Gauche was to be allowed, after recrossing the river, to go through the Place du Carrousel, between the Louvre and the Tuileries, not then the magnificent, dull and highly respectable space that it now is, but a regular fair, with all sorts of cheap booths, where dogs and cats and monkeys, many strange beasts, birds from over-sea islands, parrots and fowls with gaudy plumage, snakes, tortoises, cheap and entrancing sham jewellery and rubbish were for sale. It was very picturesque, very smelly and very dirty, the screams of the macaws, the barking of the dogs, and the cries of the vendors made the day noisome and hideous, but we youngsters loved it with all its filth, and the present spick-and-spanness is no compensation for the magnets of attraction that have been swept away.