Vaudeville Theatre, that was destroyed by fire two years
ago, in June, 1839.

It was two o'clock in the afternoon, the sun shone hotly,
the street was deserted.

A sort of house door, painted grey, still ornamented with
rococo carving and which a hundred years ago probably
was the entrance to the boudoir of some little mistress, had
been adjusted to the palisade. There was only a latch to
raise, and I entered the enclosure.

Nothing could be sadder or more desolate. A chalky
soil. Here and there blocks of stone that the masons had
begun to work upon, but had abandoned, and which were
at once white as the stones of sepulchres and mouldy as
the stones of ruins. No one in the enclosure. On the walls
of the neighbouring houses traces of flame and smoke still
visible.

However, since the catastrophe two successive springtides
had softened the ground, and in a corner of the
trapezium, behind an enormous stone that was becoming
tinted with the green of moss, and beneath which were
haunts of woodlice, millepeds, and other insects, a little
patch of grass had grown in the shadow.

I sat on the stone and bent over the grass.

Oh! my goodness! there was the prettiest little Easter