now where,--at the Clichon House, I
think; others still at many spots where traces of them are found in
traditions, in default of memorials. The University had also its own. On
Mount Sainte-Genevieve a sort of Job of the Middle Ages, for the space
of thirty years, chanted the seven penitential psalms on a dunghill at
the bottom of a cistern, beginning anew when he had finished, singing
loudest at night, _magna voce per umbras_, and to-day, the
antiquary fancies that he hears his voice as he enters the Rue du
Puits-qui-parle--the street of the "Speaking Well."

To confine ourselves to the cell in the Tour-Roland, we must say that
it had never lacked recluses. After the death of Madame Roland, it
had stood vacant for a year or two, though rarely. Many women had come
thither to mourn, until their death, for relatives, lovers, faults.
Parisian malice, which thrusts its finger into everything, even into
things which concern it the least, affirmed that it had beheld but few
widows there.

In accordance with the fashion of the epoch, a Latin inscription on the
wall indicated to the learned passer-by the pious purpose of this cell.
The custom was retained until the middle of the sixteenth century of
explaining an edifice by a brief device inscribed above the door.
Thus, one still reads in France, above the wicket of the prison in the
seignorial mansion of Tourville, _Sileto et spera_; in Ireland, beneath
the armorial bearings which surmount the grand door to Fortescue Castle,
_Forte scutum, salus ducum_; in England, over the principal entrance
to the hospitable mansion of the Earls Cowper: _Tuum est_. At that time
every edifice was a thought.

As there was no door to the walled cell of the Tour-Roland, these two
words had been carved in large Roman capitals over the window,--

TU, ORA.

And this caused the people, whose good sense does not perceive so much
refinement in things, and likes to translate _Ludovico Magno_ by "Porte
Saint-Denis," to give to this dark, gloomy, damp cavity, the name of
"The Rat-Hole." An explanation less sublime, perhaps, than the other;
but, on the other hand, more picturesque.

CHAPTER III. HISTORY OF A LEAVENED CAKE OF MAIZE.

At the epoch of this history, the cell in the Tour-Roland was occupied.
If the reader desires to know by whom, he has only to lend an ear to the
conversation of three worthy gossips, who, at the moment when we have
directed his attention to the Rat-Hole,