You look up
and see a mere strip of blue sky, but trailing plants reaching far
downward from window-sills, one above the other, light up the gloom
with many a patch of vivid green. You venture down some dim passage
and come suddenly upon a little court where an old Gothic portal with
quaint sculptures, or a Renaissance doorway with armorial bearings
carved over the lintel, bears testimony to the grandeur and wealth of
those who once lived in the now grimy, dilapidated, poverty-stricken
mansion. Pretentious dwellings of bygone days have long since been
abandoned to the humble.

Here is a typical house in the Rue Abel, which is scarcely wide enough
for two to walk abreast. The oak door is elaborately carved with heads
and leaves, flowers and line ornament, all in strong relief. One
grimacing puckered head has a movable tongue that once lifted a latch
on being touched. Near the ground the oak has been half devoured by
the damp. This door would have been sold long ago to antiquaries or
speculators if the house since the Revolution had not become the
property of several persons all equally suspicious of one another, and
with the Cadurcian bump of obstinacy equally developed. They had no
respect for the carving, and they were eager to 'touch' the money; but
their interests in the house not being the same, they could never come
to an understanding over the door; consequently, in spite of very
tempting offers, the piece of massive oak continues to hang upon its
rusty hinges. So much the better for the student of antiquities, for,
without denying that museums are eminently useful, it is certain that
they deprive objects of a great deal of their interest and their power
of suggesting ideas by detaching them from their surroundings.
Moreover, it is not at all sure that these things, when they have been
bought up and carried away, will ever be put in a place where anybody
can see them who may have the wish to do so. And then, when a thing
has been put into a museum, it becomes such labour and painfulness to
look for it; and most of us are so lazy by nature. I will make a frank
confession. For my own part, I should scarcely look at this old door
if it were in the Cluny or any other museum; but here, in ancient
Figeac, I see it where it was many lustres ago, and the pleasure of
finding it in the midst of the sordidness and squalor that follow upon
the decay of grandeur and the evaporation of human hopes makes me feel
much that I sho