I in my turn went on a voyage of discovery, with the address given, two hundred and forty years before, by Bassompierre. I crossed the Petit Pont, passed the Markets, and followed the Rue Saint-Denis as far as the Rue aux Ours, on the right; the first street on the left, ending in the Rue aux Ours, is the Rue Bourg-l'Abbé. Its inscription, smoky as though through time and a fire, gave me good hope. I found the "third little door on the side of the Rue Saint-Martin," so faithful are the historian's directions. There, unfortunately, the two centuries and a half, which at first I thought had lingered in the street, disappear. The frontage of the house is modern; no light issued from the first, nor from the second, nor from the third floor. From the attic-windows, beneath the roof, hung a garland of nasturtiums and sweet peas; on the ground-floor, a hairdresser's shop displayed a variety of towers of hair behind the window-panes. In great discomfiture, I entered this museum of the Eponines: since the Roman Conquest, the Gallic women have always sold their yellow tresses to foreheads less richly decked; my Breton countrywomen still let themselves be shorn on certain fair-days, and barter the natural veil of their heads for an Indian kerchief. Addressing a barber, who was drawing a wig over an iron comb: "Sir," said I, "do you happen to have purchased the hair of a young sempstress who used to live at the sign of the Two Angels, near the Petit Pont?" He stood dumfoundered, unable to say either yes or no. I asked a thousand pardons, and made my way out through a labyrinth of toupees. I wandered next from door to door: no sempstress, twenty years of age, making me "deep courtesies;" no frank, disinterested, passionate young woman, "her head dressed for the night, wearing naught but a very fine shift, a short petticoat of green stuff, and slippers on her feet, with a wrapper around her." A grumbling old crone, ready to join her teeth in the tomb, was near to beating me with her crutch: perhaps it was the aunt of the assignation!