comparison holds good! Who shall say which is more ghastly, the sight
of the bleached skulls or of dried-up human hearts?



The front of the lodging-house is at right angles to the road, and
looks out upon a little garden, so that you see the side of the house
in section, as it were, from the Rue Nueve-Sainte-Genevieve. Beneath
the wall of the house front there lies a channel, a fathom wide, paved
with cobble-stones, and beside it runs a graveled walk bordered by
geraniums and oleanders and pomegranates set in great blue and white
glazed earthenware pots. Access into the graveled walk is afforded by
a door, above which the words MAISON VAUQUER may be read, and beneath,
in rather smaller letters, "_Lodgings for both sexes, etc._"

During the day a glimpse into the garden is easily obtained through a
wicket to which a bell is attached. On the opposite wall, at the
further end of the graveled walk, a green marble arch was painted once
upon a time by a local artist, and in this semblance of a shrine a
statue representing Cupid is installed; a Parisian Cupid, so blistered
and disfigured that he looks like a candidate for one of the adjacent
hospitals, and might suggest an allegory to lovers of symbolism. The
half-obliterated inscription on the pedestal beneath determines the
date of this work of art, for it bears witness to the widespread
enthusiasm felt for Voltaire on his return to Paris in 1777:


"Whoe'er thou art, thy master see;
He is, or was, or ought to be."