Sorbonne, walked the lean and slippered metaphysician,--oblivious for
the moment that his sublime thoughts and tattered wardrobe were famous
throughout Europe,--meditating on the theme of his next lecture; at the
same time, in the well-worn chambers overhead, some clayey-visaged
chemist in ragged robe-de-chambre, and with a soiled green flap over his
left eye, was hard at work stooping over retorts and crucibles,
discovering new antipathies in acids, again risking strange explosions
similar to that whereby he had already lost the use of one optic; while
in the lofty lodging-houses of the neighboring streets, indigent young
students from all parts of France, were ironing their shabby cocked
hats, or inking the whity seams of their small-clothes, prior to a
promenade with their pink-ribboned little grisettes in the Garden of the
Luxembourg.

Long ago the haunt of rank, the Latin Quarter still retains many old
buildings whose imposing architecture singularly contrasts with the
unassuming habits of their present occupants. In some parts its general
air is dreary and dim; monastic and theurgic. In those lonely narrow
ways--long-drawn prospectives of desertion--lined with huge piles of
silent, vaulted, old iron-grated buildings of dark gray stone, one
almost expects to encounter Paracelsus or Friar Bacon turning the next
corner, with some awful vial of Black-Art elixir in his hand.

But all the lodging-houses are not so grim. Not to speak of many of
comparatively modern erection, the others of the better class, however
stern in exterior, evince a feminine gayety of taste, more or less, in
their furnishings within. The embellishing, or softening, or screening
hand of woman is to be seen all over the interiors of this metropolis..
Like Augustus Caesar with respect to Rome, the Frenchwoman leaves her
obvious mark on Paris. Like the hand in nature, you know it can be none