Paris of earlier date than the Revolution.

In their explorations into the libraries, bureaus, museums, and streets of Paris, the authors have met with countless kindnesses. The unlettered concierge who guards an historic house is proud of its traditions, or, if ignorant of them, as may chance, will listen to the tale with a courtesy that simulates sympathy. The exceptions to this general amenity have been few and ludicrous, and mostly the outcome of exasperation caused by the ceaseless questioning of foreigners. The concierge of Châteaubriand's last home, in Rue du Bac, considers a flourish of the wet broom, with which he is washing his court, a fitting rejoinder to the inquiring visitor. That visitor will find Balzac's Passy residence as impossible of entrance now as it was to his creditors. The unique inner court of the Hôtel de Beauvais must be seen from the outer vestibule, admission being refused by a surly concierge under orders from an ungenerous owner. The urbanity of the noble tenant of the mansion built over the grave of Adrienne Lecouvreur is unequal to the task of answering civil inquiries sent in stamped envelopes. All these are but shadows in the pervading sunshine of Parisian good-breeding. In making this acknowledgment to the many who must necessarily remain unnamed, the authors wish to record their recognition of the sympathetic counsel of Mlle. Blanche Taylor, of Paris, and of George H. Birch, Esq., Curator of the Soane Museum, London. Cordial thanks are especially given to the officials of the Hôtel de Ville, in the bureau of the Conservation du Plan de Paris, to M. Charles Sellier of the Musée Carnavalet, to M. Monval, Librarian of the Comédie Française, to M. G. Lenôtre, and to M. Victorien Sardou, for unmeasured aid of all sorts, prompted by a disinterestedness that welcomes the importunate fellow-worker, and makes him forget that he is a stranger and a foreigner.

THREE TIME-WORN STAIRCASES

THREE TIME-WORN STAIRCASES

We are to see a Paris unknown to the every-day dweller there, who is content to tread, in wearied idleness, his swarming yet empty boulevards; a Paris unseen by the hurried visitor, anxious to go his round of dutiful sight-seeing. This Paris is far away from the crowd, bustling in pursuit of pleasure, and hustling in pursuit of leisure; out of sound of the teasing clatter of cab-wheels, and the tormenting toot of tram-horns, and the petulant snapping of whips; out of sight of to-day's pretentious structures and pompous monuments. To find this Paris we must explore remote quarters, lose ourselves in untrodden streets, coast along the alluring curves of the quays, cruise for sequestered islands behind the multitudinous streams of traffic. We shall not push ahead just to get somewhere, nor restlessly "rush in to peer and praise." We shall learn to flâner, not without object, but with art and conscience; to saunter, in the sense of that word, humorously derived by Thoreau from Sainte-Terre, and so transform ourselves into pilgrims to the spots sacred in history and legend, in art and literature. In a word, if you go with us, you are to become Sentimental Prowlers.

In this guise, we shall not know the taste of Parisine, a delectable poison, more subtle than nicotine or strychnine, in the belief of Nestor Roqueplan, that modern Voltaire of the boulevards. And we shall not share "the unwholesome passion" for his Paris, to which François Coppée owns himself a victim. Nor, on the other hand, shall we find "an insipid pleasure" in this adventure, as did Voltaire. Yet even he confesses, elsewhere, that one would "rather have details about Racine and Despréaux, Bossuet and Descartes, than about the battle of Steinkerk. There is nothing left but the names of the men who led battalions and squadrons. There is no return to the human race for one hundred engagements, but the great men I have spoken of prepared pure and lasting pleasures for mortals still unborn." It is in this spirit that we start, sure of seeking an unworn sentiment, and of finding an undraggled delight, in the scenes which have inspired, and have been inspired by, famous men and women. Their days, their ways, they themselves as they moved and worked, are made alive for us once more by their surroundings. Where these have been disturbed by improvements, "more fell than anguish, hunger, or the sea," we get curious suggestions from some forgotten name cut in the stone of a street corner, from a chance-saved sign, a neglected tourelle, or a bit of battered carving. And where the modern despoiler has wreaked himself at his worst—as with the Paris of Marot, Rabelais, Palissy—we may rub the magic ring of the archæologist, which brings instant reconstruction. So that we shall seem to be walking in a vast gallery, where, in the words of Cicero, at each step we tread on a memory. "For, indeed," as it is well put by John Ruskin, "the greatest glory of a building is not in its stones, or in its gold. Its glory is in its age, and in that deep sense of voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious sympathy, nay, even of approval or condemnation, which we feel in walls that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity."

These stone and brick vestiges of the people of old Paris are to be sought in its byways, narrow and winding; or hidden behind those broad boulevards, that have newly opened up its distant quarters, on the north or on the south. Sometimes these monuments have been brought into full view across the grassed or gravelled spaces of recent creation, so showing their complete and unmarred glory for the first time in all the ages. Thus we may now look on Notre-Dame and the Sainte-Chapelle, in dreamy surrender to their bedimmed beauty, that persuades us that Paris can hold nothing in reserve more reverend in comely old age. Yet, almost within touch of these two, stands a gray tower, another sturdy survivor of the centuries. Between the northern side of Notre-Dame and the river-bank, a happy chance has spared some few of the streets, though fewer of the structures, of this earliest Paris of Île de la Cité. This region recalls to us, by its street-names in part, and partly by its buildings, its former connection with the cathedral. In Rue des Chantres it lodged its choristers, and Rue du Cloître-Notre-Dame records the site of the clerical settlement, beloved by Boileau, wherein dwelt its higher officials. Rue Chanoinesse has its significance, too, and we will stop before the wide frontage of differing ages, whose two entrances, Nos. 18 and 20, open into the large courts of two mansions, now thrown into one. This interior court was a garden until of late years, and while grass and flowers are gone forever, it keeps its ancient well in the centre and its stone steps that mounted to the salons. Those salons, and the large court, and the smaller courts beyond—all these courts now roofed over with glass—are piled high with every known shape of household furniture and utensil in metal; notably with the iron garden-chairs and tables, dear to the French. For this vast enclosure is the storage dépôt of a famous house-furnishing firm, and is one more instance of the many in Paris of a grand old mansion and its dependencies given over to trade.

By the courtesy of those in charge, we may pass within the spacious stone entrance arch of No. 18, and pick our way through the ordered confusion, past the admirable inner façade of the main fabric, with its stately steps and portal and its windows above, topped by tiny hoods, to a distant corner; where, in the gloom, we make out the