consent as custom, to medical students,
shop-men, attorneys, physicians, priests, lodging-house keepers,
market-men, sub-officials, shop-women, second-class milliners, and
grisettes.

Indeed a delicate lady--and such only, I was sure, could have left the
foot-print in the court, and be the owner of the shoe I had
seen--could hardly pass through the Rue de Seine without drawing the
eyes of all the lodgers on the street. Dried up hag faces would have
met the apparition with a leer; the porters would have turned to
stare, and she would have had very suspicious followers.

I loitered about the outer court of the hotel, under pretence of
waiting for the abbe, in hope of seeing something which would throw
light upon the mysterious occupant of the chamber. But the comers and
goers were all of the most unobtrusive and ordinary cast. I ventured
to question the concierge concerning his lodgers. They were all _bons
gens_.

"Were there any ladies?"

The little shoemaker lifted his hammer a moment while he eyed me--"But
one, monsieur; the wife of the old tobacconist at the corner."

I asked about the windows in the little court, beside which I
passed--did they belong to his hotel?

He did not think it.

I prevailed on him to step with me a moment into the corridor, and
pointed out to him the window which had drawn so much of my attention.
I asked if he knew the hotel to which it belonged?

He did not. It might be the next, or the next after, or down the
little alley branching out of the Rue de Seine. I asked him of the
character of the neighborhood.

It was a good neighborhood, he said--a very reputable neighborhood. He
believed the lodgers of the quarter to be all _honnetes gens_.

I took occasion to loiter about the courts of the adjoining houses,
frequently passing the opposite side of the way, with my eye all the
time upon the entrance gates. The lodgers seemed to be even inferior
to those who passed in at the court where the abbe resided.

One individual alone had attracted my attention. He was a tall, pale
man, in the decline of life, dressed in a sort of half-uniform; he
walked with a stooping gait, and seemed to me (perhaps it was a mere
fancy) as much weighed down by care as years. Several times I had seen
him going in or coming out of the court that opened two doors above
the abbe's. He was unlike most inhabitants of the neighborhood in both
dress and air.

I ventured to step up to the brisk little concierg