and sombre; like the gates of hell, as portrayed by
the English bard, it "stood open night and day." If you entered this
door and advanced, you would immediately find yourself ascending a
narrow, gloomy and winding flight of stairs. Having with difficulty
groped your way to the top, without having broken your neck, by having
first reached the point from which you started, to wit, the bottom; or
your shins, by stumbling against the steps--having, I say, accomplished
the ascent to the first landing, your further passage is effectually
stopped by a massive door, which resists all your efforts to open it;
and, as you are contemplating the dangerous descent which you now think
you are immediately and inevitably forced to make, an ivory bell-handle
against the wall, beside the door, arrests your attention, with the
words around it, which, with difficulty, you decipher by the dim light,
"Editor's Room--No Admittance," followed by the encouraging, but
somewhat contradictory word, "Ring," which, doubtless, means this: "If
you are a particular friend of the editor, or have particular business
with him as a journalist, ring the bell, and perhaps you may be
admitted." Supposing either of these positions yours, you "ring the
bell," and immediately you are startled by the tinkling of a small bell
in the darkness close beside you, and the ponderous door, firm as a
barricade till then, is now opened by unseen hands--by the same hand,
indeed, and by the same action of that hand which caused the bell to
tinkle.

You enter the door, and find yourself in a corridor or passage, long and
dark, for everything in this building is dark, and gaslight is the only
light eighteen hours in the twenty-four; you find yourself in a
corridor, I say, running the entire depth of the building, and bringing
you back again toward the Rue Lepelletier, which you left on entering
the cul de sac, to seek the low entrance below. As you traverse the
endless gallery, your attention is arrested by a deep hum, as of many
voices at a distance, with which the entire structure seems pervaded,
accompanied by a heavier sound, which rises and falls with measured
stroke. This mysterious hum might have been heard when you first
approached or entered the building; but the silence and solitude of the
corridor have caused you to notice it now for the first time, and to
wonder at its cause.

Now had you the power of those magicians, necromancers, clairvoyants and
demi-devils,