his flattery and kind care, for he hoped to win Crevel back through
her, and make him forego his resentment.

Any one seeing this domestic scene would have found it hard to believe
that the father was at his wits' end, the mother in despair, the son
anxious beyond words as to his father's future fate, and the daughter
on the point of robbing her cousin of her lover.



At seven o'clock the Baron, seeing his brother, his son, the Baroness,
and Hortense all engaged at whist, went off to applaud his mistress at
the Opera, taking with him Lisbeth Fischer, who lived in the Rue du
Doyenne, and who always made an excuse of the solitude of that
deserted quarter to take herself off as soon as dinner was over.
Parisians will all admit that the old maid's prudence was but
rational.

The existence of the maze of houses under the wing of the old Louvre
is one of those protests against obvious good sense which Frenchmen
love, that Europe may reassure itself as to the quantum of brains they
are known to have, and not be too much alarmed. Perhaps without
knowing it, this reveals some profound political idea.

It will surely not be a work of supererogation to describe this part
of Paris as it is even now, when we could hardly expect its survival;
and our grandsons, who will no doubt see the Louvre finished, may
refuse to believe that such a relic of barbarism should have survived
for six-and-thirty years in the heart of Paris and in the face of the
palace where three dynasties of kings have received, during those