"The existence of the block of houses which runs alongside of the old Louvre is one of those protests which the French people like to make against good sense, so that Europe may be reassured as to the grain of intelligence accorded them and may fear them no more.... Anybody who comes towards the Rue de la Musée from the wicket leading to the Pont du Carrousel ... may notice some half-score of houses with ruined façades, which the discouraged owners never repair, and which are the residue of an ancient quarter in course of demolition ever since Napoleon resolved to complete the Louvre. The Rue and Impasse de Doyenné are the only streets within this sombre, deserted block, the inhabitants of which are probably phantoms, for one never sees a soul there.... These houses, buried already by the raising of the Place [du Carrousel], are enveloped in the eternal shadow projected by the high galleries of the Louvre, which are blackened on this side by the north wind. The darkness, the silence, the chilly air, the cavernous depth of the ground combine to make these houses kinds of crypts, living tombs. When one passes in a cabriolet along this dead half-quarter, and one's look penetrates the little alley de Doyenné, a chill strikes one's soul, and one wonders who can live there and what must happen there in the evening when that alley changes into a den of cut-throats, and the vices of Paris, wrapped in the mantle of night, flourish at their height."