hem rose the appearance
of trees, indicating gardens at the back. Antiquity brooded above this
region, business was banished thence. Rich men had once possessed this
quarter, and once grandeur had made her seat here. That church, whose
dark, half-ruinous turrets overlooked the square, was the venerable and
formerly opulent shrine of the Magi. But wealth and greatness had long
since stretched their gilded pinions and fled hence, leaving these
their ancient nests, perhaps to house Penury for a time, or perhaps to
stand cold and empty, mouldering untenanted in the course of winters.

As I crossed this deserted "place," on whose pavement drops almost as
large as a five-franc piece were now slowly darkening, I saw, in its
whole expanse, no symptom or evidence of life, except what was given in
the figure of an infirm old priest, who went past, bending and propped
on a staff--the type of eld and decay.

He had issued from the very house to which I was directed; and when I
paused before the door just closed after him, and rang the bell, he
turned to look at me. Nor did he soon avert his gaze; perhaps he
thought me, with my basket of summer fruit, and my lack of the dignity
age confers, an incongruous figure in such a scene. I know, had a young
ruddy-faced bonne opened the door to admit me, I should have thought
such a one little in harmony with her dwelling; but, when I found
myself confronted by a very old woman, wearing a very antique peasant
costume, a cap alike hideous and costly, with long flaps of native
lace, a petticoat and jacket of cloth, and sabots more like little
boats than shoes, it seemed all right, and soothingly in character.

The expression of her face was not quite so soothing as the cut of her
costume; anything more cantankerous I have seldom seen; she would
scarcely reply to my inquiry after Madame Walravens; I believe she
would have snatched the basket of fruit from my hand, had not the old
priest, hobbling up, checked her, and himself lent an ear to the
message with which I was charged.

His apparent deafness rendered it a little difficult to make him fully
understand that I must see Madame Walravens, and consign the fruit into
her own hands. At last, however, he comprehended the fact that such
were my orders, and that duty enjoined their literal fulfilment.
Addressing the aged bonne, not in French, but in the aboriginal tongue
of Labassecour, he persuaded her, at last, to let me cross the
inhospitabl