But, to change the subject, I have been to see a curious receptacle for our mortality. It is a sort of bone-house, called "_Le Caveau des Morts_," placed under the tower of an old church, now converted into a station for a telegraph. The first notice we had of such a place being in existence, (for the people of Bordeaux know nothing,) was the sight of the name placarded on the door, and entering, we found ourselves in the inside of an old Gothic building, in company with an animal that at first view might be taken for Caliban. He was a shapeless man, dressed in a rough, shaggy coat, that descended to two feet clad in immeasurable _sabots_. On his head he wore a large black nightcap, that alone suffered to appear the lower part of his face and two small dark eyes, together with the tips of a pair of elephantine ears. For the first few minutes we could get nothing from him but a kind of growling bark, which proved to be cough, and he himself turned out the sexton and bell-ringer, and very readily, in consideration of a franc, conducted us down a narrow staircase in the wall, to descend which, I was obliged to bow my head, and my companion to go almost double. On getting to the bottom we entered an almost circular vault, roofed by Gothic arches and paved with the mouldering remains of frail humanity. B---- took the candle from our sexton, and standing in the midst, held it high above his head, looking like some colossal spectre; while the light gleamed faintly round, catching on the groins of the vault and the rows of ghastly dead, half skeleton half mummy, which were ranged along the walls. As soon as he had lighted a lamp in the middle, our guide, in the true tone of a showman at a fair, began to give us an account of the place and what it contained. He told us first, that the ground on which we stood was fifty feet deep in dead. When the family vaults of the cemetery, he said, were full, the bodies which were not found corrupted were removed to this cavern, and took their station against the wall, as we saw them; and pointing to the one next the door, he assured us that it had lain in the earth for five hundred years, although the skin and flesh, dried to a thick kind of leather, were still hanging about its bones. He then went round them all, occasionally giving us little bits of their history, which might or might not be true, sometimes moralising and sometimes jesting, bringing strongly to my mind the grave-digger in Hamlet. It was strange to see him, just dropping into the grave, joking with the grim tenants of the tomb as if he were himself immortal. At length, he conducted us once more into the upper air of the tower, from whence we immediately issued into the most populous part of Bordeaux, swarming with the busy and the gay, the beautiful and the strong, all hurrying through an agitated existence towards the same great receptacle we had just left. It was a strange contrast.