The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Second Home, by Honore de Balzac

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Title: A Second Home

Author: Honore de Balzac

Translator: Clara Bell

Release Date: July, 1999 [Etext #1810]
Posting Date: March 2, 2010

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A SECOND HOME ***

Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny

A SECOND HOME

By Honore De Balzac

Translated by Clara Bell

DEDICATION

To Madame la Comtesse Louise de Turheim as a token of
remembrance and affectionate respect.

A SECOND HOME

The Rue du Tourniquet-Saint-Jean, formerly one of the darkest and most
tortuous of the streets about the Hotel de Ville, zigzagged round the
little gardens of the Paris Prefecture, and ended at the Rue Martroi,
exactly at the angle of an old wall now pulled down. Here stood the
turnstile to which the street owed its name; it was not removed
till 1823, when the Municipality built a ballroom on the garden plot
adjoining the Hotel de Ville, for the fete given in honor of the Duc
d'Angouleme on his return from Spain.

The widest part of the Rue du Tourniquet was the end opening into the
Rue de la Tixeranderie, and even there it was less than six feet across.
Hence in rainy weather the gutter water was soon deep at the foot of the
old houses, sweeping down with it the dust and refuse deposited at
the corner-stones by the residents. As the dust-carts could not pass
through, the inhabitants trusted to storms to wash their always
miry alley; for how could it be clean? When the summer sun shed its
perpendicular rays on Paris like a sheet of gold, but as piercing as the
point of a sword, it lighted up the blackness of this street for a
few minutes without drying the permanent damp that rose from the
ground-floor to the first story of these dark and silent tenements.

The residents, who lighted their lamps at five o'clock in the month
of June, in winter never put them out. To this day the enterprising
wayfarer who should approach the Marais along the quays, past the end
of the Rue du Chaume, the Rues de l'Homme Arme, des Billettes, and des
Deux-Portes