word or two about the business premises may be said here. The
printing-house had been established since the reign of Louis XIV. in the
angle made by the Rue de Beaulieu and the Place du Murier; it had been
devoted to its present purposes for a long time past. The ground floor
consisted of a single huge room lighted on the side next the street by
an old-fashioned casement, and by a large sash window that gave upon the
yard at the back. A passage at the side led to the private office;
but in the provinces the processes of typography excite such a lively
interest, that customers usually preferred to enter by way of the glass
door in the street front, though they at once descended three steps, for
the floor of the workshop lay below the level of the street. The gaping
newcomer always failed to note the perils of the passage through the
shop; and while staring at the sheets of paper strung in groves across
the ceiling, ran against the rows of cases, or knocked his hat against
the tie-bars that secured the presses in position. Or the customer's
eyes would follow the agile movements of a compositor, picking out type
from the hundred and fifty-two compartments of his case, reading his
copy, verifying the words in the composing-stick, and leading the lines,
till a ream of damp paper weighted with heavy slabs, and set down in the
middle of the gangway, tripped up the bemused spectator, or he caught
his hip against the angle of a bench, to the huge delight of boys,
"bears," and "monkeys." No wight had ever been known to reach the
further end without accident. A couple of glass-windowed cages had been
built out into the yard at the back; the foreman sat in state in the
one, the master printer in the other. Out in the yard the walls were
agreeably decorated by trellised vines, a tempting bit of color,
considering the owner's reputation. On the one side of the space stood
the kitchen, on the other the woodshed, and in a ramshackle penthouse
against the hall at the back, the paper was trimmed and damped down.
Here, too, the forms, or, in ordinary language, the masses of set-up
type, were washed. Inky streams issuing thence blended with the ooze
from the kitchen sink, and found their way into the kennel in the street
outside; till peasants coming into the town of a market day believed
that the Devil was taking a wash inside the establishment.

As to the house above the printing office, it consisted of three rooms
on the first floor and