opposite to an enormously high wall, the stones of which were black and
worm-eaten with age. This wall, which extended nearly the whole length of
that solitary street, served to support a terrace shaded by trees of some
hundred years old, which thus grew about forty feet above the causeway.
Through their thick branches appeared the stone front, peaked roof and
tall brick chimneys of an antique house, the entrance of which was
situated in the Rue Saint-Francois, not far from the Rue Saint Gervais
corner. Nothing could be more gloomy than the exterior of this abode. On
the entrance-side also was a very high wall, pierced with two or three
loop-holes, strongly grated. A carriage gateway in massive oak, barred
with iron, and studded with large nail-heads, whose primitive color
disappeared beneath a thick layer of mud, dust, and rust, fitted close
into the arch of a deep recess, forming the swell of a bay window above.
In one of these massive gates was a smaller door, which served for
ingress and egress to Samuel the Jew, the guardian of this dreary abode.
On passing the threshold, you came to a passage, formed in the building
which faced in the street. In this building was the lodging of Samuel,
with its windows opening upon the rather spacious inner court yard,
through the railing of which you perceived the garden. In the middle of
this garden stood a two-storied stone house, so strangely built, that you
had to mount a flight of steps, or rather a double-flight of at least
twenty steps, to reach the door, which had been walled up a hundred and
fifty years before. The window-blinds of this habitation had been
replaced by large thick plates of lead, hermetically soldered and kept in
by frames of iron clamped in the stone. Moreover, completely to intercept
air and light, and thus to guard against decay within and without, the
roof had been covered with thick sheets of lead, as well as the vents of
the tall chimneys, which had previously been bricked up. The same
precautions had been taken with respect to a small square belvedere,
situated on the top of the house; this glass cage was covered with a sort