Above the Public Writer’s door, which he threw open every morning to his clients, this legend was inscribed:--“The Tomb of Secrets.” The passer-by thus learned that there--in the words of a French chronicler--“behind those four coarsely-whitened windows of the entrance door, was an ear and a hand which held the key of human infirmities; that there, smiling and serviceable, Discretion resided in flesh and blood. Curious to see everything, you approached; a few specimens of petitions to the Chief of the State, drawn up on official paper and sealed with wafers, gave you a foretaste of the master’s dexterity. Moreover you could read, in a position well exposed to view, some piece of poetic inscription, deficient in neither rhyme nor even reason, and cleverly calculated to allure you forthwith. The running hand, the round hand, the English hand, and the Gothic hand alternated freely in the ingenious composition, not to mention the flourishings with which the lines ended, the page encased in ornamented spirals, the capitals complicated with arabesques, and so forth. One day we read one of the writings peculiar to this profession, and copied it with a haste which we do not regret to-day when the booth where we saw it has been removed. This booth, a mere plank box, three feet square, whence issued during forty years an incalculable number of letters, petitions, and other documents, was situated in the quarter of Saint-Victor, at the foot of the Rue des Fossés, Saint-Bernard. Its occupant was a man named Étienne Larroque, an old bailiff whom misfortune had reduced to this poor trade. Nearly eighty years of age, this Nestor of public writers was known to everybody.” [Illustration: PRIVATE COACHMAN.] To the pedestrian his signboard proclaimed the particulars of his profession in a piece of poetry which might at all events have been much worse, and of which the metre was marred only by one fault--a certain line with a foot too much. Dressed in a frock coat maltreated by years, the writer, continues the before-mentioned chronicler, sat in his office, with his spectacles on his nose, and all his pens cut before him. He placed himself eagerly at the service of anyone who crossed the threshold. Sometimes the strangest revelations were confided to him. Installed in his cane arm-chair, furnished with a cushion which he had sat upon till it was crushed to a pancake, he lent a grave ear to the pretty little rosy mouths that came to tell him everything, as though he were a confessor or a physician, and took up his pen to write for them their letters of love or complaint. More than one unhappy girl came to him to sigh and weep and to accuse the monster who had sworn to wed her; more than one fireman came to confess to him the flame which was burning in his breast; more than one soldier to request him to pen a challenge. [Illustration: HACKNEY COACHMAN.]