I

Dedication

To Mademoiselle Marie de Montheau

Half-way down the Rue Saint-Denis, almost at the corner of the Rue du

Petit-Lion, there stood formerly one of those delightful houses which

enable historians to reconstruct old Paris by analogy. The threatening

walls of this tumbledown abode seemed to have been decorated with

hieroglyphics. For what other name could the passer-by give to the Xs

and Vs which the horizontal or diagonal timbers traced on the front,

outlined by little parallel cracks in the plaster? It was evident that

every beam quivered in its mortices at the passing of the lightest

vehicle. This venerable structure was crowned by a triangular roof of

which no example will, ere long, be seen in Paris. This covering,

warped by the extremes of the Paris climate, projected three feet over

the roadway, as much to protect the threshold from the rainfall as to

shelter the wall of a loft and its sill-less dormer-window. This upper

story was built of planks, overlapping each other like slates, in

order, no doubt, not to overweight the frail house.

One rainy morning in the month of March, a young man, carefully

wrapped in his cloak, stood under the awning of a shop opposite this

old house, which he was studying with the enthusiasm of an antiquary.

In point of fact, this relic of the civic life of the sixteenth

century offered more than one problem to the consideration of an

observer. Each story presented some singularity; on the first floor

four tall, narrow windows, close together, were filled as to the lower

panes with boards, so as to produce the doubtful light by which a

clever salesman can ascribe to his goods the color his customers

inquire for. The young man seemed very scornful of this part of the

house; his eyes had not yet rested on it. The windows of the second

floor, where the Venetian blinds were drawn up, revealing little dingy

muslin curtains behind the large Bohemian glass panes, did not

interest him either. His attention was attracted to the third floor,

to the modest sash-frames of wood, so clumsily wrought that they might

have found a place in the Museum of Arts and Crafts to illustrate the

early efforts of French carpentry. These windows were glazed with

small squares of glass so green that, but for his good eyes, the young

man could not have seen the blue-checked cotton curtains which

screened the mysteries of the room from profane eyes. Now and then the

watcher, weary of his fruitless contemplation, or of the silence in

which the house was buried, like the whole neighborhood, dropped his

eyes towards the lower regions. An involuntary smile parted his lips

each time he looked at the shop, where, in fact, there were some

laughable details.

A formidable wooden beam, resting on four pillars, which appeared to

have bent under the weight of the decrepit house, had been encrusted

with as many coats of different paint as there are of rouge on an old

duchess' cheek. In the middle of this broad and fantastically carved

joist there was an old painting representing a cat playing rackets.

This picture was what moved the young man to mirth. But it must be

said that the wittiest of modern painters could not invent so comical

a caricature. The animal held in one of its forepaws a racket as big

as itself, and stood on its hind legs to aim at hitting an enormous

ball, returned by a man in a fine embroidered coat. Drawing, color,

and accessories, all were treated in such a way as to suggest that the

artist had meant to make game of the shop-owner and of the passing

observer. Time, while impairing this artless painting, had made it yet

more grotesque by introducing some uncertain features which must have

puzzled the conscientious idler. For instance, the cat's tail had been

eaten into in such a way that it might now have been taken for the

figure of a spectator--so long, and thick, and furry were the tails of

our forefathers' cats. To the right of the picture, on an azure field

which ill-disguised the decay of the wood, might be read the name

"Guillaume," and to the left, "Successor to Master Chevrel." Sun and

rain had worn away most of the gilding parsimoniously applied to the

letters of this superscription, in which the Us and Vs had changed

places in obedience to the laws of old-world orthography.

To quench the pride of those who believe that the world is growing

cleverer day by day, and that modern humbug surpasses everything, it

may be observed that these signs, of which the origin seems so

whimsical to many Paris merchants, are the dead pictures of once

living pictures by which our roguish ancestors contrived to tempt

customers into their houses. Thus the Spinning Sow, the Green Monkey,

and others, were animals in cages whose skills astonished the passer-

by, and whose accomplishments prove the patience of the fifteenth-

century artisan. Such curiosities did more to enrich their fortunate

owners than the signs of "Providence," "Good-faith," Grace of God,"

and "Decapitation of John the Baptist," which may still be seen in the

Rue Saint-Denis.

However, our stranger was certainly not standing there to admire the

cat, which a minute's attention sufficed to stamp on his memory. The

young man himself had his peculiarities. His cloak, folded after the

manner of an antique drapery, showed a smart pair of shoes, all the

more remarkable in the midst of the Paris mud, because he wore white

silk stockings, on which the splashes betrayed his impatience. He had

just come, no doubt, from a wedding or a ball; for at this early hour

he had in his hand a pair of white gloves, and his black hair, now out

of curl, and flowing over his shoulders, showed that it had been

dressed /a la Caracalla/, a fashion introduced as much by David's

school of painting as by the mania for Greek and Roman styles which

characterized the early years of this century.