town. Close beside it one descried the quadrilateral
enclosure of the fair of Saint-Germain, where the market is situated
to-day; then the abbot's pillory, a pretty little round tower, well
capped with a leaden cone; the brickyard was further on, and the Rue du
Four, which led to the common bakehouse, and the mill on its hillock,
and the lazar house, a tiny house, isolated and half seen.

But that which attracted the eye most of all, and fixed it for a long
time on that point, was the abbey itself. It is certain that this
monastery, which had a grand air, both as a church and as a seignory;
that abbatial palace, where the bishops of Paris counted themselves
happy if they could pass the night; that refectory, upon which the
architect had bestowed the air, the beauty, and the rose window of a
cathedral; that elegant chapel of the Virgin; that monumental dormitory;
those vast gardens; that portcullis; that drawbridge; that envelope
of battlements which notched to the eye the verdure of the surrounding
meadows; those courtyards, where gleamed men at arms, intermingled with
golden copes;--the whole grouped and clustered about three lofty spires,
with round arches, well planted upon a Gothic apse, made a magnificent
figure against the horizon.

When, at length, after having contemplated the University for a long
time, you turned towards the right bank, towards the Town, the character
of the spectacle was abruptly altered. The Town, in fact much larger
than the University, was also less of a unit. At the first glance, one
saw that it was divided into many masses, singularly distinct. First, to
the eastward, in that part of the town which still takes its name from
the marsh where Camulogenes entangled Caesar, was a pile of palaces. The
block extended to the very water's edge. Four almost contiguous Hotels,
Jouy, Sens, Barbeau, the house of the Queen, mirrored their slate peaks,
broken with slender turrets, in the Seine.

These four edifices filled the space from the Rue des Nonaindieres, to
the abbey of the Celestins, whose spire gracefully relieved their line
of gables and battlements. A few miserable, greenish hovels, hanging
over the water in front of these sumptuous Hotels, did not prevent
one from seeing the fine angles of their facades, their large, square
windows with stone mullions, their pointed porches overloaded with
statues, the vivid outlines of their walls, always clear cut, and all
those charming accidents of