each door--of fine stone worn by the tread of centuries--a low wall
about three feet high began; in this wall was a groove or slot,
repeated above in the beam by which the wall of each facade was
supported. From time immemorial the heavy shutters had been rolled
along these grooves, held there by enormous iron bars, while the doors
were closed and secured in the same manner; so that these merchants
and artificers could bar themselves into their houses as into a
fortress.

Examining the interior, which, during the first twenty years of this
century, was encumbered with old iron and brass, tires of wheels,
springs, bells, anything in short which the destruction of buildings
afforded of old metals, persons interested in the relics of the old
town noticed signs of the flue of a forge, shown by a long trail of
soot,--a minor detail which confirmed the conjecture of archaeologists
as to the original use to which the building was put. On the first
floor (above the ground-floor) was one room and the kitchen; on the
floor above that were two bedrooms. The garret was used to put away
articles more choice and delicate than those that lay pell-mell about
the shop.

This house, hired in the first instance, was subsequently bought by a
man named Sauviat, a hawker or peddler who, from 1786 to 1793,
travelled the country over a radius of a hundred and fifty miles
around Auvergne, exchanging crockery of a common kind, plates, dishes,
glasses,--in short, the necessary articles of the poorest households,
--for old iron, brass, and lead, or any metal under any shape it might
lurk in. The Auvergnat would give, for instance, a brown earthenware
saucepan worth two sous for a pound of lead, two pounds of iron, a
broken spade or hoe or a cracked kettle; and being invariably the