At the foot of the ascent, wheeled carriages are left behind. The lanes, though dignified with the name of streets, are accessible only to foot-passengers or donkeys. The principal one is the Rue Longue, noticed as having been an ancient thoroughfare, protected at each end by a vaulted gateway and guardhouse. The gates have been long since removed, leaving free access to all who feel any interest in perambulating the narrow passage, now sunk into the character of a back street. Being paved with small rounded stones, with an inclination to a central gutter, and environed with tall antique buildings, you feel pretty much as if walking along the bottom of a drain; but there the resemblance ends, for, to do the inhabitants justice, the road is remarkably clean, which is more than can be said for some of the pretentious thoroughfares. The massive tenements, five or six stories in height, are laid out in separate dwellings, reached by narrow common stairs. In the lower floor were the shops, consisting of dingy vaults with round-topped doorways, some down and others up a step, and a good deal of irregularity throughout. The Quai Bonaparte having drawn away all general traffic, the Rue Longue has, in a business sense, correspondingly declined. You see vaults which had been great shops in their day, sorrowfully shut up, their clumsy old-fashioned doors dreadfully in want of paint, fastened with queer-looking decayed padlocks. As, however, there must still be a demand in the crowded floors above for the essentials of existence, the street is not without some traces of commerce. When grand concerns disappear, hucksters step in to occupy the field, just as when some imposing order of forest trees is swept to destruction, shrubs of various species start beneficently into existence. In the Rue Longue, accordingly, you will not be surprised, but rather on the whole gratified, to see a certain class of dealers—old women selling bread, oranges, and candles, modestly exhibited on a slip of shelf outside the door, with meal and flour in a small way in bags inside the threshold, along with possibly cheap cuts of salt fish in steep to meet demands on Fridays; establishments purporting to be a _Débit de Vin_; a _Boucherie_, authorised to sell _bœuf, agneau et de veau au 2^{me} qualité_; or a respectable middle-aged spinster retailing a miscellany of tapes and other small wares. Dull and composed even at mid-day, the long Rue has an air of solitude. There is little stirring. The only sound heard is that of a shoemaker, who, seated outside his door for the sake of light, is industriously hammering his leather; besides which spectacle of activity you will have the satisfaction of observing a wrinkled old crone airing herself on the outside step of a doorway, and spinning with the distaff—a picture for your sketch-book, if artistically inclined.