tten may hold
together," even if it be not gently handled.

The origin of the structure, as it stood then, was wrapt in mystery. It
was five or six stories high, and must have attained that altitude
before the first Revolution, because the owner, a Madame Legendre, who
bought it for assignats amounting in real value to about one pound
sterling, when the clergy's property was sold by the nation, was known
never to have spent a penny upon it either at the time of the purchase
or subsequently, until she was forced by a tenant more ingenious or more
desperate than the rest. That it could not have been part of the abbey
and adjacent monastery built by Childebert I., who was buried there in
558, was very certain. It is equally improbable that the Cardinal de
Bissy, who opened a street upon the site of the erstwhile abbey in the
year of Louis XIV.'s death, would have erected so high a pile for the
mere accommodation of the pensioners of the former monastery, at a time
when high piles were the exception. Besides, the Nos. 1 and 3, known to
have been occupied by those pensioners, all of whose rooms communicated
with one another, were not more than two stories high. In short, the
original intention of the builder of the house No. 9, yclept "La
Childebert," has never been explained. The only tenant in the Rue
Childebert who might have thrown a light on the subject had died before
the caravansary attained its fame. He was more than a hundred years old,
and had married five times. His fifth wife was only eighteen when she
became Madame Chanfort, and survived him for many, many years. She was a
very worthy soul, a downright providence to the generally impecunious
painters, whom she used to feed at prices which even then were
ridiculously low. Three eggs, albeit fried in grease instead of butter,
for the sum of three-half-pence, and a dinner, including wine, for
sixpence, could not have left much profit; but Madame Chanfort always
declared that she had enough to live upon, and that she supplied the
art-students with food at cost price because she would not be without
their company. At her death, in '57, two years before the "Childebert"
and the street of the same name disappeared, there was a sale of her
chattels, and over a hundred portraits and sketches of her, "in her
habit as she lived," came under the hammer. To show that the various
occupants of "La Childebert" could do more than make a noise and play
practical jokes, I may stat