ness of the
walls of the old house, and filled with a peace all the more profound,
with a silence all the more gloomy, because a public place, the most
populous and most noisy in Paris swarms and shrieks around it.

This little cell had been celebrated in Paris for nearly three
centuries, ever since Madame Rolande de la Tour-Roland, in mourning for
her father who died in the Crusades, had caused it to be hollowed out
in the wall of her own house, in order to immure herself there forever,
keeping of all her palace only this lodging whose door was walled up,
and whose window stood open, winter and summer, giving all the rest to
the poor and to God. The afflicted damsel had, in fact, waited twenty
years for death in this premature tomb, praying night and day for
the soul of her father, sleeping in ashes, without even a stone for a
pillow, clothed in a black sack, and subsisting on the bread and water
which the compassion of the passers-by led them to deposit on the ledge
of her window, thus receiving charity after having bestowed it. At her
death, at the moment when she was passing to the other sepulchre, she
had bequeathed this one in perpetuity to afflicted women, mothers,
widows, or maidens, who should wish to pray much for others or for
themselves, and who should desire to inter themselves alive in a great
grief or a great penance. The poor of her day had made her a fine
funeral, with tears and benedictions; but, to their great regret, the
pious maid had not been canonized, for lack of influence. Those among
them who were a little inclined to impiety, had hoped that the matter
might be accomplished in Paradise more easily than at Rome, and had
frankly besought God, instead of the pope, in behalf of the deceased.
The majority had contented themselves with holding the memory of Rolande
sacred, and converting her rags into relics. The city, on its side, had
founded in honor of the damoiselle, a public breviary, which had been
fastened near the window of the cell, in order that passers-by might
halt there from time to time, were it only to pray; that prayer might
remind them of alms, and that the poor recluses, heiresses of Madame
Rolande's vault, might not die outright of hunger and forgetfulness.

Moreover, this sort of tomb was not so very rare a thing in the cities
of the Middle Ages. One often encountered in the most frequented street,
in the most crowded and noisy market, in the very middle, under the feet
of the ho