d'Angouleme on his return from Spain.

The widest part of the Rue du Tourniquet was the end opening into the
Rue de la Tixeranderie, and even there it was less than six feet
across. Hence in rainy weather the gutter water was soon deep at the
foot of the old houses, sweeping down with it the dust and refuse
deposited at the corner-stones by the residents. As the dust-carts
could not pass through, the inhabitants trusted to storms to wash
their always miry alley; for how could it be clean? When the summer
sun shed its perpendicular rays on Paris like a sheet of gold, but as
piercing as the point of a sword, it lighted up the blackness of this
street for a few minutes without drying the permanent damp that rose
from the ground-floor to the first story of these dark and silent
tenements.

The residents, who lighted their lamps at five o'clock in the month of
June, in winter never put them out. To this day the enterprising
wayfarer who should approach the Marais along the quays, past the end
of the Rue du Chaume, the Rues de l'Homme Arme, des Billettes, and des
Deux-Portes, all leading to the Rue du Tourniquet, might think he had
passed through cellars all the way.

Almost all the streets of old Paris, of which ancient chronicles laud
the magnificence, were like this damp and gloomy labyrinth, where the
antiquaries still find historical curiosities to admire. For instance,
on the house then forming the corner where the Rue du Tourniquet
joined the Rue de la Tixeranderie, the clamps might still be seen of
two strong iron rings fixed to the wall, the relics of the chains put
up every night by the watch to secure public safety.