when the site of the Trocadero was a remote and undiscovered country, and
the word "exposition" unknown in the Academic dictionary, and the Gallic
Augustus destined to rebuild the city yet an exile,--a young law-student
boarded, in common with other students, in a big dreary-looking house at
the corner of the Rue Grande-Mademoiselle, abutting on the Place Lauzun,
and within some ten minutes walk of the Luxembourg. It was a very dingy
quarter, though noble gentlemen and lovely ladies had once occupied the
great ghastly mansions, and disported themselves in the gruesome gardens.
But the young students were in nowise oppressed by the ghastliness of
their abode. They sang their Beranger, and they pledged each other in
cheap Bordeaux, and clinked their glasses noisily in their boisterous
good-fellowship, and ate the messes compounded for them in a darksome
cupboard, known as the kitchen, by old Nanon the cook, purblind,
stone-deaf, and all but imbecile, and popularly supposed to be the
venerable mother of Madame Magnotte. The youngsters grumbled to each
other about the messes when they were unusually mysterious; and it must
be owned that there were _vol-au-vents_ and _fricandeaux_ consumed in
that establishment which were awful and wonderful in their nature; but
they ventured on no complaint to the mistress of the mansion. She was a
grim and terrible personage. Her terms were low, and she treated her
boarders _de haute en bas_. If they were not content with her viands,
they might go and find more agreeable viands elsewhere.

Madame Magnotte was altogether mysterious and inscrutable. Some people
said that she was a countess, and that the wealth and lands of her family
had been confiscated by the committee of public unsafety in '93. Others
declared that she had been a popular actress in a small theatre in the
days of Napoleon. She was tall and thin--nay, of an exceptional
leanness--and her complexion was of a more agreeable yellow than the
butter that appeared on her hospitable board; but she had flashing black