s over.
Parisians will all admit that the old maid's prudence was but
rational.

The existence of the maze of houses under the wing of the old Louvre
is one of those protests against obvious good sense which Frenchmen
love, that Europe may reassure itself as to the quantum of brains they
are known to have, and not be too much alarmed. Perhaps without
knowing it, this reveals some profound political idea.

It will surely not be a work of supererogation to describe this part
of Paris as it is even now, when we could hardly expect its survival;
and our grandsons, who will no doubt see the Louvre finished, may
refuse to believe that such a relic of barbarism should have survived
for six-and-thirty years in the heart of Paris and in the face of the
palace where three dynasties of kings have received, during those
thirty-six years, the elite of France and of Europe.

Between the little gate leading to the Bridge of the Carrousel and the
Rue du Musee, every one having come to Paris, were it but for a few
days, must have seen a dozen of houses with a decayed frontage where
the dejected owners have attempted no repairs, the remains of an old
block of buildings of which the destruction was begun at the time when
Napoleon determined to complete the Louvre. This street, and the blind
alley known as the Impasse du Doyenne, are the only passages into this
gloomy and forsaken block, inhabited perhaps by ghosts, for there
never is anybody to be seen. The pavement is much below the footway of
the Rue du Musee, on a level with that of the Rue Froidmanteau. Thus,
half sunken by the raising of the soil, these houses are also wrapped
in the perpetual shadow cast by the lofty buildings of the Louvre,
darkened on that side by the northern blast. Darkness, silence, an icy
chill, and the cavernous depth of the soil combine to make these
houses a kind of crypt, tombs of the living. As we drive in a hackney
cab past this dead-alive spot, and chance to look down the little Rue
du Doyenne, a shudder freezes the soul, and we wonder who can lie
there, and what things may be done there at night, at an hour when the
alley is a cut-throat pit, and the vices of Paris run riot there under
the cloak of night. This question, frightful in itself, becomes
appalling when we note that these dwelling-houses are shut in on the
side towards the Rue de Richelieu by marshy ground, by a sea of
tumbled paving-stones between them and the Tuileries, by little
garden