254 THE PROSCRIBED. 



On the first floor were two chambers, which, taking good years 

 with bad, were let to strangers upon an average of forty Paris sous 

 each. This exorbitant price was justified by the luxury with which 

 these two apartments were furnished. The walls were hung with 

 Flemish tapestry. An ample bed, adorned with curtains, whose 

 scanty dimensions admitted not of folds, in green serge like those of 

 our peasants, was honourably furnished with mattresses, to which 

 were added equally respectable sheets of pretty fine texture. Each 

 room had also its chauffe-doux, a kind of stove of which it would be 

 useless to give a description. The floor, carefully rubbed and kept 

 in order, by the apprentices of Tirechair, shone like the wood-work 

 of a shrine. Instead of stools to sit on, the lodgers were accommo- 

 dated with chairs of walnut-tree, carved ; the plunder no doubt of 

 some noble castle. Two coffers, covered with leather, and incrusted 

 with pewter, and a table with legs like twisted columns, com- 

 pleted an apartment, worthy the most topping knight-baronet who 

 might be led by their affairs to Paris. The windows of these two 

 chambers looked upon the river. By one of them you could only 

 have seen the banks of the Seine and the three desert islands, the 

 two first of which have since been united, and form, what is now 

 called, the isle of Saint-Louis ; the third is the island Louviers. 

 But, from the other, you must have perceived through an interval 

 in the Port Saint Landry, the quarter of the Greve, the bridge of 

 Notre-Dame, with its houses, the high towers of the Louvre recently 

 built by Philip Augustus, and which overlooked that Paris, so poor 

 and mean in reality, of which the imagination of our poets leads 

 them to relate, in our days, such false wonders. The lower part of 

 the maison d Tirechair, to employ an expression then in use, was 

 composed of a large room, where his wife carried on her operations, 

 and through which the lodgers were obliged to pass, in order to 

 gain their own apartments, to which they were conducted by a stair- 

 case resembling that of a mill. Behind this, were the kitchen and 

 bed-chamber, which had a view over the Seine. A little garden, 

 won from the waters, exhibited at the foot of this humble dwelling 

 its squares of green cabbages, its onions, and a few stunted rose- 

 bushes, all defended by stakes forming a hedge or fence. A shed, 

 constructed of wood and mud, served as a kennel for a large dog, a 

 necessary guardian to so isolated a dwelling. At the kennel com- 

 menced an enclosure, in which resided the poultry, whose eggs sup- 

 plied the tables of the canons. Here and there, upon the soil, 

 muddy or dry according to the caprice of the Parisian atmosphere, 

 arose some small trees, far from enviably situated, incessantly beaten 

 by the winds, twisted and broken by passing idlers ; in mournful 

 contrast with their happier neighbours, vivacious willows, flourishing 

 rushes, tall weeds, and rank grass. This piece of land, the house, 

 the Seine, the Port, were framed or tacked, to the west, by the 

 immense church of Notre-Dame, which projected, at the sun's 

 pleasure, its cold shadow over the whole scene. Then, as now, 

 Paris possessed not a spot more solitary, a landscape more solemn 

 or more melancholy. The grand voice of the water, the chant of 

 the priests, or the whistling of the wind alone breathed through this 



