fronts and handsome windows, but these in
every case looked upon the court or the garden. As for the centre row,
until the day when the whole strange colony perished under the hammer of
Fontaine the architect, every shop was open back and front like a booth
in a country fair, so that from within you could look out upon either
side through gaps among the goods displayed or through the glass doors.
As it was obviously impossible to kindle a fire, the tradesmen were fain
to use charcoal chafing-dishes, and formed a sort of brigade for the
prevention of fires among themselves; and, indeed, a little carelessness
might have set the whole quarter blazing in fifteen minutes, for the
plank-built republic, dried by the heat of the sun, and haunted by too
inflammable human material, was bedizened with muslin and paper and
gauze, and ventilated at times by a thorough draught.

The milliners' windows were full of impossible hats and bonnets,
displayed apparently for advertisement rather than for sale, each on a
separate iron spit with a knob at the top. The galleries were decked
out in all the colors of the rainbow. On what heads would those dusty
bonnets end their careers?--for a score of years the problem had puzzled
frequenters of the Palais. Saleswomen, usually plain-featured,
but vivacious, waylaid the feminine foot passenger with cunning
importunities, after the fashion of market-women, and using much the
same language; a shop-girl, who made free use of her eyes and tongue,
sat outside on a stool and harangued the public with "Buy a pretty
bonnet, madame?--Do let me sell you something!"--varying a rich and
picturesque vocabulary with inflections of the voice, with glances, and
remarks upon the passers-by. Booksellers and milliners lived on terms of
mutual understanding.

But it was in the passage known by the pompous title of the
"Glass Gallery" that the oddest trades were carried on. Here were
ventriloquists and charlatans of every sort, and sights of every
description, from the kind where there is nothing to see to panoramas
of the globe. One man who has since made seven or eight hundred thousand
francs by traveling from fair to fair began here by hanging out a
signboard, a revolving sun in a blackboard, and the inscription in
red letters: "Here Man may see what God can never see. Admittance, two
sous." The showman at the door never admitted one person alone, nor more
than two at a time. Once inside, you confronted a great