grasped the strap with her
delicate pink fingers.

As to the escutcheon itself, it was sable, that is to say, black, and
in the middle of it appeared, with the vague whiteness of silver,
a fleshless, deformed thing, which, like the rest, at length became
distinct. It was a death's head. The nose was lacking, the orbits of the
eyes were hollow and deep, the cavity of the ear could be seen on the
right side, all the seams of the cranium could be traced, and there only
remained two teeth in the jaws.

But this black escutcheon, this livid death's head, designed with such
minuteness of detail that it seemed to stand out from the tapestry, was
less lugubrious than the two personages who held up the hideous blazon
and who seemed to be whispering to each other in the shadow.

At the bottom of the panel in a corner was the date: 1503.

V. THE EASTER DAISY. May 29, 1841.

A few days ago I was passing along the Rue de Chartres.* A palisade of
boards, which linked two islands of high six-story houses, attracted
my attention. It threw upon the pavement a shadow which the sunshine,
penetrating between the badly joined boards, striped with beautiful
parallel streaks of gold, such as one sees on the fine black satins of
the Renaissance. I strolled over to it and peered through the cracks.

* The little Rue de Chartres was situated on the site now occupied by
the Pavilion de Rohan. It extended from the open ground of the Carrousel
to the Place du Palais-Royal. The old Vaudeville Theatre was situated in
it.

This palisade encloses the site on which was built the Vaudeville
Theatre, that was destroyed by fire two years ago, in June, 1839.

It was two o'clock in the afternoon, the sun shone hotly, the street was
deserted.

A sort of house door, painted grey, still ornamented with rococo carving
and which a hundred years ago probably was the entrance to the boudoir
of some little mistress, had been adjusted to the palisade. There was
only a latch to raise, and I entered the enclosure.

Nothing could be sadder or more desolate. A chalky soil. Here and
there blocks of stone that the masons had begun to work upon, but had
abandoned, and which were at once white as the stones of sepulchres and
mouldy as the stones of ruins. No one in the enclosure. On the walls of
the neighbouring houses traces of flame and smoke still visible.

However, since the catastrophe two successive springtides had softened
the ground, and in a c