Mention has already been made of the Hôtel Carnavalet, where the genius of Jean Goujon may really be studied. It owes its name to the widow of M. Kernevenoy, whose Breton name had become softened into that of Carnavalet, and who in his lifetime had been the worthy friend of Ronsard and of Brantôme. Madame “Carnavalet” bought the house for herself and her son. She maintained it in its original beauty, which it was impossible to increase. She did, however, add some ornaments, especially the sculptured masks which figure here and there on the façade, and which, according to the ingenious idea of M. Fournier, may have been intended to suggest, through the “Carnival,” her husband’s family name. CHAPTER XXIII. THE MONT-DE-PIÉTÉ. “Uncle” and “Aunt”--Organisation of the Mont-de-Piété--Its Various Branches--Its Warehouses and Sale-rooms. French idioms, and particularly slang ones, are seldom translatable into English. The cant Parisian word, however, for a pawnbroker bears quite a comic resemblance to the word employed in London. The medical student of our metropolis, when he is at low water, takes his watch to his “uncle.” The medical student of Paris resorts, under like circumstances, to his “aunt.” Neither would think of employing the dignified historical word used by the student of Brussels, who, as if mindful of the pawnbroker’s origin, calls him “the Lombard.” The English student speaks of the unfortunate watch in question as being “up the spout”; the Parisian declares that his is “on the nail”--the idea apparently being that the chronometer is “hung up” until more prosperous days. The great pawnbroking establishment, or Mont-de-Piété, of Paris, is situated in the Rue des Blancs Manteaux, with a principal branch office in the Rue Bonaparte; but it may be interesting meanwhile to glance at those minor establishments which are scattered over the whole of the French capital. Like their counterparts in London, they excite in the philosophic beholder a melancholy curiosity, above all in the poorer quarters, where dire necessity compels the levying of those loans which, in more fashionable parts, are the result of an extravagant life. The Paris pawnshop has the aspect of quite an ordinary house, and nothing would particularly attract to it the attention of an observer--not even the incessant stream of its visitors in and out--were it not that these wear a suspiciously stealthy air as they enter or quit the place; a sort of shame on their arrival and an uneasy haste at their departure.