1520 by the Marechal de Soulanges, which was not unworthy of a great
capital. An unfailing jet of water, coming from a spring higher up the
hill, was shed by four Cupids in white marble, bearing shells in their
arms and baskets of grapes upon their heads.

Literary travellers who may pass this way (should any such follow
Emile Blondet) might imagine the spot to have inspired Moliere and the
Spanish drama, which held its footing so long on French boards,
showing that comedy is native to warm countries where so much of life
is passed in the public streets. The square of Soulanges is all the
more a reminder of that classic stage because the two principal
streets, opening just on a line with the fountain, afford the exit and
entrances so necessary for the dramatic masters and valets whose
business it is either to meet or to avoid each other. At the corner of
one of these streets, called the rue de la Fontaine, shone the
notarial escutcheon of Maitre Lupin. The houses of Messieurs Sarcus,
Guerbet the collector, Brunet, Gourdon, clerk of the court, and that
of his brother the doctor, also that of old Monsieur Gendrin-Vatebled,
the keeper of the forests and streams,--all these houses, kept with
extreme neatness by their owners, who held firmly to the flattering
surname of their native town, stand in the neighborhood of the square
and form the aristocratic quarter of Soulanges.

The house of Madame Soudry--for the powerful individuality of
Mademoiselle Laguerre's former waiting-maid took the lead of her
husband in the community--was modern, having been built by a rich
wine-merchant, born in Soulanges, who, after making his money in
Paris, returned there in 1793 to buy wheat for his native town. He was
slain as an "accapareur," a monopolist, by the populace, instigated by
a mason, the uncle of Godain, with whom he had had some quarrel about