head.

The judge, who could not suppose that the delay could be serious,
feeling himself a little feverish, kept his room, and did not go to
see the Marquis d'Espard. This day lost was, to this affair, what on
the Day of Dupes the cup of soup had been, taken by Marie de Medici,
which, by delaying her meeting with Louis XIII., enabled Richelieu to
arrive at Saint-Germain before her, and recapture his royal slave.

Before accompanying the lawyer and his registering clerk to the
Marquis d'Espard's house, it may be as well to glance at the home and
the private affairs of this father of sons whom his wife's petition
represented to be a madman.

Here and there in the old parts of Paris a few buildings may still be
seen in which the archaeologist can discern an intention of decorating
the city, and that love of property, which leads the owner to give a
durable character to the structure. The house in which M. d'Espard was
then living, in the Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Genevieve, was one of
these old mansions, built in stone, and not devoid of a certain
richness of style; but time had blackened the stone, and revolutions
in the town had damaged it both outside and inside. The dignitaries
who formerly dwelt in the neighborhood of the University having
disappeared with the great ecclesiastical foundations, this house had
become the home of industries and of inhabitants whom it was never
destined to shelter. During the last century a printing establishment
had worn down the polished floors, soiled the carved wood, blackened
the walls, and altered the principal internal arrangements. Formerly
the residence of a Cardinal, this fine house was now divided among
plebeian tenants. The character of the architecture showed that it had