t to offer premiums to house-owners
who would build their facades of cut-stone blocks. Seven windows lighted
the gray front of this house which was raised three storeys, ending in
a mansard roof covered with slate. The porte-cochere, heavy and solid,
showed by its workmanship and style that the front building on the
street had been erected in the days of the Empire, to utilize a part
of the courtyard of the vast old mansion, built at an epoch when the
quarter d'Enfer enjoyed a certain vogue.

On one side was the porter's lodge; on the other the staircase of the
front building. Two wings, built against the adjoining houses, had
formerly served as stables, coach-house, kitchen and offices to the rear
dwelling; but since 1830, they had been converted into warerooms. The
one on the right was let to a certain M. Metivier, jr., wholesale dealer
in paper; that on the left to a bookseller named Barbet. The offices
of each were above the warerooms; the bookseller occupying the first
storey, and the paper-dealer the second storey of the house on the
street. Metivier, jr., who was more of a commission merchant in paper
than a regular dealer, and Barbet, much more of a money lender and
discounter than a bookseller, kept these vast warerooms for the purpose
of storing,--one, his stacks of paper, bought of needy manufacturers,
the other, editions of books given as security for loans.

The shark of bookselling and the pike of paper-dealing lived on the best
of terms, and their mutual operations, exempt from the turmoil of retail
business, brought so few carriages into that tranquil courtyard that the
concierge was obliged to pull up the grass between the paving stones.
Messrs. Barbet and Metivier paid a few rare visits to their landlords,
and the punctuality with which they paid their rent classed them as
good tenants; in fact, they were looked upon as very honest men by the
Thuillier circle.

As for the third floor on the street, it was made into two apartments;
one of which was occupied by M. Dutocq, clerk of the justice of peace,
a retired government employee, and a frequenter of the Thuillier
salon; the other by the hero of this Scene, about whom we must
content ourselves at the present moment by fixing the amount of his
rent,--namely, seven hundred francs a year,--and the location he had
chosen in the heart of this well-filled building, exactly three years
before the curtain rises on the present domestic drama.

The clerk, a