h was certainly not a bad customer. On the first floor
were two rooms, let to lodgers at a rent, one year with another, of
forty sous _Parisis_ each, an exorbitant sum, that was however justified
by the luxury Tirechair had lavished on their adornment. Flanders
tapestry hung on the walls, and a large bed with a top valance of green
serge, like a peasant's bed, was amply furnished with mattresses, and
covered with good sheets of fine linen. Each room had a stove called
a _chauffe-doux_; the floor, carefully polished by Dame Tirechair's
apprentices, shone like the woodwork of a shrine. Instead of stools, the
lodgers had deep chairs of carved walnut, the spoils probably of some
raided castle. Two chests with pewter mouldings, and tables on
twisted legs, completed the fittings, worthy of the most fastidious
knights-banneret whom business might bring to Paris.

The windows of those two rooms looked out on the river. From one you
could only see the shores of the Seine, and the three barren islands, of
which two were subsequently joined together to form the Ile Saint-Louis;
the third was the Ile de Louviers. From the other could be seen, down a
vista of the Port-Saint-Landry, the buildings on the Greve, the Bridge
of Notre-Dame, with its houses, and the tall towers of the Louvre, but
lately built by Philippe-Auguste to overlook the then poor and squalid
town of Paris, which suggests so many imaginary marvels to the fancy of
modern romancers.

The ground floor of Tirechair's house consisted of a large hall, where
his wife's business was carried on, through which the lodgers were
obliged to pass on their way to their own rooms up a stairway like a
mill-ladder. Behind this were a kitchen and a bedroom, with a view over
the Seine. A tiny garden, reclaimed from the waters, displayed at the
foot of this modest dwelling its beds of cabbages and onions, and a few
rose-bushes, sheltered by palings, forming a sort of hedge. A little
structure of lath and mud served as a kennel for a big dog, the
indispensable guardian of so lonely a dwelling. Beyond this kennel was a
little plot, where the hens cackled whose eggs were sold to the Canons.
Here and there on this patch of earth, muddy or dry according to the
whimsical Parisian weather, a few trees grew, constantly lashed by the
wind, and teased and broken by the passer-by--willows, reeds, and tall
grasses.

The Eyot, the Seine, the landing-place, the house, were all overshadowed
on the