much to regret the destruction of the old town, as to preserve in
words, and by the history of those who lived there, the memory of a
place now turned to dust, and to excuse the following description,
which may be precious to a future age now treading on the heels of our
own.

The walls of this house were of wood covered with slate. The spaces
between the uprights had been filled in, as we may still see in some
provincial towns, with brick, so placed, by reversing their thickness,
as to make a pattern called "Hungarian point." The window-casings and
lintels, also in wood, were richly carved, and so was the corner
pillar where it rose above the shrine of the Madonna, and all the
other pillars in front of the house. Each window, and each main beam
which separated the different storeys, was covered with arabesques of
fantastic personages and animals wreathed with conventional foliage.
On the street side, as on the river side, the house was capped with a
roof looking as if two cards were set up one against the other,--thus
presenting a gable to the street and a gable to the water. This roof,
like the roof of a Swiss chalet, overhung the building so far that on
the second floor there was an outside gallery with a balustrade, on
which the owners of the house could walk under cover and survey the
street, also the river basin between the bridges and the two lines of
houses.

These houses on the river bank were very valuable. In those days a
system of drains and fountains was still to be invented; nothing of
the kind as yet existed except the circuit sewer, constructed by
Aubriot, provost of Paris under Charles the Wise, who also built the
Bastille, the pont Saint-Michel and other bridges, and was the first
man of genius who ever thought of the sanitary improvement of Paris.