On the recent occasion to which I have referred these difficulties had been overcome, and I had made my way into the interior of one of the dens I have described in the company of a lady friend who is a confirmed and irreclaimable lace-hunter, and who in pursuit of her game would have confronted worse obstacles than any that we had to encounter.  For, in truth, the exterior appearance and the entrance-chambers are the worst part of the Ghetto dwellings.  One is curiously reminded of the old mediaeval stories of Jewish dwellings, where the utmost squalor and poverty of exterior was a mere blind for an interior gorgeous with every manifestation of wealth and luxury.  I will not say that much of the latter is to be found in the dwellings of the Ghetto, but a degree of comfortable decency and indications of the possession of capital may be met with which the exterior appearances would not have led one to anticipate.  Well, we had reached the third floor of one of these sinister-looking abodes, conducted by a fat old Jewess with a pair of huge black eyes, a large smooth face as yellow as a guinea, and a vast development of bust clad in dirty white wrappers of some sort.  A door on the landing-place jealously locked with two huge keys admitted us into a suite of three good-sized rooms crammed from floor to ceiling with a collection of articles more heterogeneous than can easily be conceived—­far more so than can be described.

Those who have ever accompanied a lady lace-hunter when she has struck a promising trail know that the business in hand is likely to be a somewhat long one.  My companion on the present occasion very soon convinced the Jewess that she knew quite as much about the matter as she, the dealer, did.  But I presume that some of the old yellow stores produced were “the real thing;” for my friend and the old Jewess soon became immersed in an eager and, as it seemed to me interminable, discussion as to qualities, condition and values.  Meantime, I had to amuse myself as best I might by looking at the multifarious objects.  I must content myself with mentioning one article, the appearance of which in such a place struck me as strange and not a little significant.  It was simply an old parasol, very much faded and a little tattered, but not such a parasol as your fair hands ever carried, my dear madam, nor such as the once equally fair hands of any generation of your ancestors ever carried.  The article in question was more like the shelter which we see represented in Chinese paintings as carried over the heads of persons of high rank among the Celestials.  It was very large, not much curved into the shape of a dome when expanded, very clumsily and coarsely put together, but of gorgeous magnificence of material.  It was made of a very thick and rich damask silk, additionally ornamented by embroidery in gold and silver thread, and the handle and points of the supports were richly gilt.  In a word, I perceived at once, not being a novice in