The Inn of Death was located in the Rue Cujas, near by the Rue Champollion. Over its grim black-painted portal burned an ashy blue and brimstone flame. It seemed like entering a charnel house. My student friend led the way down a gloomy passage into a room hung with funeral cloth. Coffins served as tables, and upon each was placed a lighted taper. From the ceiling hung a grewsome-looking chandelier, known as “Robert Macaire’s chandelier.” It was formed of skulls and bones. In the skulls were placed lights. The waiters of the cabaret were garbed like _croque-morts_ (undertaker’s men). In sepulchral tones one of these gloomy-looking garçons, a trifle more cadaverous than his confrères, sidled up to us like a huge black raven and croaked out, “Name your poison, gentlemen. We have on tap distilled grave-worms, deadly microbes, the bacteria of all diseases under the sun,” etc. Whatever one called for in this undertaking establishment, the result was the same—beer of doubtful quality. After drinking a bock we descended a flight of grimy stairs to another apartment which was hung with black cloth, ornamented with white tears, like the decorations furnished by the _Pompes Funèbres_ (Undertakers’ Trust) of Paris, on state occasions. Here we were solemnly greeted by a couple of quasi Capuchin monks with the words: “_Voilà des Machabées!_” We seated ourselves on a wooden bench and waited for the séance to begin. Among the spectators were several students and their grisettes, a little piou-piou (soldier), and a fat gentleman with a waxed moustache and imperial, who might have been a _chef de cuisine_ in disguise or a member of the _Académie Française_. A curtain at one end of the room was pulled aside, revealing a stage set to represent a mouldy crypt, in the center of which stood upright an empty coffin. A volunteer being called for, my medical friend agreed to stand in the grim box for the dead. One of the monks wrapped about the young man’s body a winding sheet. A strong light was turned on him. Presently a deathly pallor overcame the ruddy hue of health on his cheeks. His face assumed the waxen color of death. His eyes resolved themselves {106} into cavernous sockets; his nose disappeared; and presently his visage was metamorphosed into a grinning skull. The illusion was perfect. During this ghastly transformation the monks intoned: “_Voilà Machabæus!_ He dies! He wastes away! Dust to dust! The eternal worm awaits you all!” A church bell was solemnly tolled and an organ played. The scene would have delighted that stern genius, Hans Holbein, whose Dance of Death has chilled many a human heart. We looked again, and the skeleton in the coffin vanished. “He has risen to Heaven!” cried the Capuchins.