The usual mounds of refuse. Also, the turf damaged with ruts, and burnt away in places by the fair people’s fires. The annual fête over, not a soul but myself loiters on this portion of the Seine river-bank. Only gloom and desolation. Nothing but waste. Again, _terrain vague_. II IN A CELLAR Bright things and sombre things, tarnished things and threadbare things, frail things, fast-fading things; things and things, and all of them old things.... The past in this cellar; in every nook and corner of it—the past. Come here through a hole in the wall of a narrow, cobbled Paris street—come down a number of crooked stone steps—I now look curiously about me, and wonder what to do next. No one challenges me: the cellar appears to be uninhabited. Yet above its crude, primitive entrance, on a weather-beaten board, I discern the name—Veuve Mollard. An autumnal mist filled the street outside; and the mist, pouring through the hole in the wall, has invaded the cellar and made it chilly and ghostly. It is a rambling, chaotic place—suggestive of three or four cellars having been thrown into one; for it twists and it turns, and it bulges and recedes, and it slopes and ascends; and the grimy brick ceiling—lofty enough at the entrance—suddenly dips towards the middle, and almost precipitates itself to the ground at the far end. Here and there an unshaded lamp, of the kitchen description, burns dimly. On a stool I perceive a workbox, crowded with sewing materials—but not a sign, not a sound of “Widow” Mollard. I cough loudly. I advance farther into the cellar. And, as I advance, I pass bright things and sombre things, tarnished things and threadbare things, frail things, fast-fading—— “Monsieur?” An apparition, a spectre! There, in the background, appears a tall, gaunt woman, with a pale, wrinkled face, large, luminous dark eyes and tumbled white hair. In the dim light from the lamps Veuve Mollard looks a hundred years old. There she stands, old and alone, in a rambling old cellar, amidst old, discarded things. “Monsieur?” A deep, even a sepulchral voice—and then from myself an explanation. I should like to examine the old things—all of them, not knowing myself what I want. I have a fancy for old things; like to wonder over them; like, O most respectfully, to handle them. No; unnecessary to turn up the lamps; they give, just as they are, the very light for old things. “Faîtes donc, faîtes donc,” assents the deep voice. Retiring to a corner, Widow Mollard seats herself on a stool and proceeds to darn a rent in a faded yellow velvet curtain. Silence in the cellar. Shadows, ambiguities, and the mist from the street.