ozy little room
in which three persons could sit down comfortably, for my domicil. As I
did not often have more than two visitors, my room was quite sufficient;
and as I spent a large proportion of my evenings at other places than my
lodgings, the space was three quarters of the time more than I needed.

"One of my intimates, a young Prussian by the name of Adolph Von Berg,
had a habit of visiting mediums, clairvoyants, and, not to put too fine
a point upon it, fortune-tellers. Though I had been in company with
clairvoyants in many instances, I had never, before my return to Paris
in the late summer of 1860, entered any one of those places in which
professional fortune-tellers carried on their business. It was early in
September, I think, that at the earnest solicitation of Von Berg, who
had been reading and smoking with me at my lodgings, I went with him,
late in the evening, to a small two-story house in the Rue La Reynie
Ogniard, a little street down the Rue Saint Denis toward the quays of
the Seine, and running from Saint Denis across to the Rue Saint Martin.
The house seemed to me to be one of the oldest in Paris, although built
of wood; and the wrinkled and crazy appearance of the front was
eminently suggestive of the face of an old woman on which time had long
been plowing furrows to plant disease. The interior of the house, when
we entered it by the dingy and narrow hall-way, that night, well
corresponded with the exterior. A tallow candle in a tin sconce was
burning on the wall, half hiding and half revealing the grime on the
plastering, the cobwebs in the corners, and the rickety stairs by which
it might be supposed that the occupants ascended to the second story.

"My companion tinkled a small bell that lay upon a little uncovered
table in the hall (the outer door having been entirely unfastened, to
all appearance), and a slattern girl came out from an inner room. On
recognizing my companion, who had visited the house before, she led the
way, without a word, to the same room she had herself just quitted.
There was nothing remarkable in this. A shabby table, and two or three
still more shabby chairs, occupied the room, and a dark wax-taper stood
on the table, while at the side opposite the single window a curtain of
some dark stuff shut in almost one entire side of the apartment. We took
seats on the rickety chairs, and waited in silence, Adolph informing me
that the etiquette (strange name for such a place) o