As Grenette Square was formerly the business center of Grenoble,--still is in fact,--so St. André's Square was the real heart of the town, since there the religious, the municipal and the judicial life met, and even now are represented by their monuments. The past of Dauphiné dwells there, but one has to search a while to find it, for in this capital of long ago, the old is everywhere hidden beneath the new. As you alight at the station, you see only newly-built districts, houses scarcely finished, and wide avenues, whose perspective terminates in the far-away mountains. An industrious and prosperous town, you conclude, born yesterday in noble surroundings and lacking historic coloring. Even the streets have been renamed; the old "Rue des Jésuites," where Stendhal was born, is now called "Jean Jacques Rousseau." A few fortified gates opened in the ramparts have been ruthlessly dismantled, but those still standing interest the pedestrian, who, little by little, by following the winding paths of L'Ile Verte, finds traces of the wall of enclosure, perceives the bastions against the sides of Mont Rachois, imagines from these evidences of defensive toil the battles of old, and is prepared to discover by chance somewhere in the bright city one or other of those expressions of the spirit of a race which has maintained its integrity with a tenacity that has resisted all the labors of architects and engineers. Saint André's Square should still be satisfying, but it is only half so. There at the western end is the tall tower of the town hall which was once the palace of the Constable de Lesdiguières, and there above the low houses which crowd about it and hide its door, is the church whose venerable octagonal stone steeple is wrought with double windows in a pointed arch. But the court house where the Parliament of Dauphiné sat, shows a façade half Gothic, half Renaissance, the materials of which have been scratched away here, replaced there, and still retain even in the sunlight that cold newness which only the touch of time melts. As to the statue of Bayard,--who is represented as dying against the trunk of a tree,--it only encumbers the narrow square without adorning it. M. Tabourin had never noticed many monuments from his window. From the time of moving into these offices he had taken pleasure only in the nearness of the court house--which he particularly appreciated when troubled by rheumatism. The brief of a case requiring special knowledge; seizure, dispossession, "the whole gamut," as he said enthusiastically, and involving heavy charges, when handed to him in its light blue envelope was much more attractive than the past of the province with all its memories. So he read the lawyer's petition without sentimental curiosity, and remarked only that Mme. Derize intended to apply for a separation _de plano_, that is, without preliminary investigation, which would reduce the fee. "Have you had the corroborative evidence?" he inquired. "No, sir."