attics, the roof came to an end, and the gutter alone continued on its way to discharge the rain water into the pipes placed for the purpose. And what tended to increase still further the austere bareness of the frontage was the total absence of any blind or shutter, for at no season of the year did the sun ever shine on these pale and melancholy stones. This frontage, with its venerable air, its middle-class severity, slumbered solemnly amid the peacefulness of the neighbourhood, the silence of the street, seldom disturbed by the passage of vehicles. In the interior of the mansion was a square courtyard surrounded by arcades, a kind of Place Royale on a reduced scale, paved with enormous flags, which finished giving to this lifeless abode the appearance of a cloister. Facing the porch a fountain, a lion's head half worn away, the gaping jaws of which were alone distinguishable, discharged from an iron tube a thick and monotonous water into a trough all green with moss, its edges polished by wear. This water was icy cold. Tufts of grass sprouted up between the flagstones. In summer-time a narrow ray of sunshine entered the courtyard, and this occasional visit had whitened a corner of the frontage on the south side, whilst the three other walls, morose and blackish, were streaked with mildew. There, in the depths of this courtyard as chilly and silent as a well, lighted with the white glimmer of a wintry day, one could have thought oneself a thousand leagues away from that new Paris wherein was flaring every passionate enjoyment, amidst the hubbub of the millions. The apartments of the mansion possessed the sad calm, the cold solemnity of the courtyard. Reached by a broad staircase with an iron handrail, where the footsteps and the coughing of visitors resounded as in the aisle of a church, they extended in long suites of vast and lofty rooms, in which the ancient furniture of dark woodwork and squat design seemed lost; and the pale light was only peopled by the figures on the tapestries, whose great colourless bodies were just vaguely distinguishable. All the luxury pertaining to the old Parisian middle classes was there, a stiff and wear-resisting luxury, chairs the oak seats of which are scarcely covered with a handful of tow, beds of inflexible material, linen chests in which the roughness of the boards would peculiarly compromise the slender existence of modern dresses. Monsieur Béraud Du Châtel had selected his apartments in the darkest portion of the mansion, on the first floor, between the street and the courtyard. He was there in a marvellous surrounding of peacefulness, silence and shade. When he pushed open the doors, traversing the solemnity of the rooms with his slow and serious step, one could have fancied him one of those members of the old parliaments, whose portraits adorned the walls, returning home wrapt in reverie after discussing and refusing to sign an edict of the king's.