blame of your insensibility upon the writer, and accuse him of
exaggeration, of writing romances. Ah! once for all, this drama is
neither a fiction nor a romance! _All is true_,--so true, that every
one can discern the elements of the tragedy in his own house, perhaps
in his own heart.

The lodging-house is Mme. Vauquer's own property. It is still standing
in the lower end of the Rue Nueve-Sainte-Genevieve, just where the
road slopes so sharply down to the Rue de l'Arbalete, that wheeled
traffic seldom passes that way, because it is so stony and steep. This
position is sufficient to account for the silence prevalent in the
streets shut in between the dome of the Pantheon and the dome of the
Val-de-Grace, two conspicuous public buildings which give a yellowish
tone to the landscape and darken the whole district that lies beneath
the shadow of their leaden-hued cupolas.

In that district the pavements are clean and dry, there is neither mud
nor water in the gutters, grass grows in the chinks of the walls. The
most heedless passer-by feels the depressing influences of a place
where the sound of wheels creates a sensation; there is a grim look
about the houses, a suggestion of a jail about those high garden
walls. A Parisian straying into a suburb apparently composed of
lodging-houses and public institutions would see poverty and dullness,
old age lying down to die, and joyous youth condemned to drudgery. It
is the ugliest quarter of Paris, and, it may be added, the least
known. But, before all things, the Rue Nueve-Sainte-Genevieve is like
a bronze frame for a picture for which the mind cannot be too well
prepared by the contemplation of sad hues and sober images. Even so,
step by step the daylight decreases, and the cicerone's droning voice
grows hollower as the traveler descends into the Catacombs. The