is now its
cellar. A portico, reached by a few steps, leads to the entrance of the
tower, in which a spiral stairway winds up round a central shaft carved
with a grape-vine. This style, which recalls the stairways of Louis XII.
at the chateau of Blois, dates from the fourteenth century. Struck by
these and other evidences of antiquity, Godefroid could not help saying,
with a smile, to the priest: "This tower is not of yesterday."

"It sustained, they say, an assault of the Normans, and probably formed
part of the first palace of the kings of Paris; but, according to actual
tradition, it was certainly the dwelling of the famous Canon Fulbert,
the uncle of Heloise."

As he ended these words, the priest opened the door of the apartment
which appeared now to be the ground-floor of the house, but was in
reality towards both the front and back courtyard (for there was a small
interior court) on the first floor.

In the antechamber a maid-servant, wearing a cambric cap with fluted
frills for its sole decoration, was knitting by the light of a little
lamp. She stuck her needles into her hair, held her work in her hand,
and rose to open the door of a salon which looked out on the inner
court. The dress of the woman was somewhat like that of the Sisters of
Mercy.

"Madame, I bring you a tenant," said the priest, ushering Godefroid into
the salon, where the latter saw three persons sitting in armchairs near
Madame de la Chanterie.

These three persons rose; the mistress of the house rose; then, when the
priest had drawn up another armchair for Godefroid, and when the future
tenant had seated himself in obedience to a gesture of Madame de
la Chanterie, accompanied by the old-fashioned words, "Be seated,
monsieur," the man of the boulevards fancied himself at some enormous
distance from Paris,--in lower Brittany or the wilds of Canada.

Silence has perhaps its own degrees. Godefroid, already penetrated with
the silence of the rues Massillon and Chanoinesse, where two carriages
do not pass in a month, and grasped by the silence of the courtyard and
the tower, may have felt that he had reached the very heart of silence
in this still salon, guarded by so many old streets, old courts, old
walls.

This part of the Ile, which is called "the Cloister," has preserved the
character of all cloisters; it is damp, cold, and monastically silent
even at the noisiest hours of the day. It will be remarked, also, that
this portion of the Ci