court after court, in all which reigned desolate silence.
I thought the archways and the courts and the desolate silence
would never end. At last the coachman stopped, and asked for the
tenth time where the lady lived. It is excessively difficult to
find people in Paris; we thought the names of Madame de Genlis and
the Arsenal would have been sufficient; but the whole of this
congregation of courts and gateways and houses is called the
Arsenal; and hundreds and hundreds of people inhabit it who are
probably perfect strangers to Madame de Genlis. At the doors where
our coachman inquired, some answered that they knew nothing of her;
some that she lived in the Faubourg St. Germain; others believed
that she might be at Passy; others had heard that she had
apartments given to her by the Government somewhere in the Arsenal,
but could not tell where. While the coachman thus begged his way,
we, anxiously looking out at him from the middle of the great
square where we were left, listened for the answers that were
given, and which often from the distance escaped our ears. At last
a door pretty near to us opened, and our coachman's head and hat
were illuminated by the candle held by the person who opened the
door; and as the two figures parted from each other, we could
distinctly see the expression of the countenances and their lips
move. The result of this parley was successful; we were directed to
the house where Madame de Genlis lived, and thought all
difficulties ended. No such thing; her apartments were still to be
sought for. We saw before us a large, crooked, ruinous stone
staircase, lighted by a single bit of candle hanging in a vile tin
lantern, in an angle of the bare wall at the turn of the
staircase--only just light enough to see that the walls were bare
and old, and the stairs immoderately dirty. There were no signs of
the place being inhabited except this lamp, which could not have
been lighted without hands. I stood still in melancholy
astonishment, while my father groped his way into a kind of
porter's lodge or den at the foot of the stairs, where he found a
man who was porter to various people who inhabited this house. You
know the Parisian houses are inhabited by hordes of different
people, and the stairs are in fact streets, and dirty streets