-hills
of thieves, of wenches, and stolen or bastard children, the merry tower
was still recognizable by the noise which it made, by the scarlet light
which, flashing simultaneously from the air-holes, the windows, the
fissures in the cracked walls, escaped, so to speak, from its every
pore.

The cellar then, was the dram-shop. The descent to it was through a
low door and by a staircase as steep as a classic Alexandrine. Over the
door, by way of a sign there hung a marvellous daub, representing new
sons and dead chickens,* with this, pun below: _Aux sonneurs pour les
trepasses_,--The wringers for the dead.

* _Sols neufs: poulets tues_.

One evening when the curfew was sounding from all the belfries in Paris,
the sergeants of the watch might have observed, had it been granted to
them to enter the formidable Court of Miracles, that more tumult than
usual was in progress in the vagabonds' tavern, that more drinking was
being done, and louder swearing. Outside in the Place, there, were many
groups conversing in low tones, as when some great plan is being framed,
and here and there a knave crouching down engaged in sharpening a
villanous iron blade on a paving-stone.

Meanwhile, in the tavern itself, wine and gaming offered such a powerful
diversion to the ideas which occupied the vagabonds' lair that evening,
that it would have been difficult to divine from the remarks of the
drinkers, what was the matter in hand. They merely wore a gayer air than
was their wont, and some weapon could be seen glittering between the
legs of each of them,--a sickle, an axe, a big two-edged sword or the
hook of an old hackbut.

The room, circular in form, was very spacious; but the tables were
so thickly set and the drinkers so numerous, that all that the tavern
contained, men, women, benches, beer-jugs, all that were drinking, all
that were sleeping, all that were playing, the well, the lame, seemed
piled up pell-mell, with as much order and harmony as a heap of oyster
shells. There were a few tallow dips lighted on the tables; but the real
luminary of this tavern, that which played the part in this dram-shop of
the chandelier of an opera house, was the fire. This cellar was so damp
that the fire was never allowed to go out, even in midsummer; an immense
chimney with a sculptured mantel, all bristling with heavy iron andirons
and cooking utensils, with one of those huge fires of mixed wood and
peat which at night, in village st