the taste of each reader.

In the first place, the Thuillier house did not belong to either
Monsieur or Madame Thuillier, but to Mademoiselle Thuillier, the
sister of Monsieur Thuillier.

This house, bought during the first six months which followed the
revolution of July by Mademoiselle Marie-Jeanne-Brigitte Thuillier,
a spinster of full age, stands about the middle of the rue
Saint-Dominique d'Enfer, to the right as you enter by the rue d'Enfer,
so that the main building occupied by Monsieur Thuillier faces south.

The progressive movement which is carrying the Parisian population to
the heights along the right bank of the Seine had long injured the
sale of property in what is called the "Latin quarter," when reasons,
which will be given when we come to treat of the character and habits
of Monsieur Thuillier, determined his sister to the purchase of real
estate. She obtained this property for the small sum of forty-six
thousand francs; certain extras amounted to six thousand more; in all,
the price paid was fifty-two thousand francs. A description of the
property given in the style of an advertisement, and the results
obtained by Monsieur Thuillier's exertions, will explain by what means
so many fortunes increased enormously after July, 1830, while so many
others sank.

Toward the street the house presents a facade of rough stone covered
with plaster, cracked by weather and lined by the mason's instrument
into a semblance of blocks of cut stone. This frontage is so common
in Paris and so ugly that the city ought to offer premiums to
house-owners who would build their facades of cut-stone blocks.