The place where we had engaged lodgings was Hotel d’Orient, in the Rue Daunou.  The situation was convenient, very near the Place Vendome and the Rue de la Paix.  But the house was undergoing renovations which made it as unpresentable as a moulting fowl.  Scrubbing, painting of blinds, and other perturbing processes did all they could to make it uncomfortable.  The courtyard was always sloppy, and the whole condition of things reminded me forcibly of the state of Mr. Briggs’s household while the mason was carrying out the complex operations which began with the application of “a little compo.” (I hope all my readers remember Mr. Briggs, whose adventures as told by the pencil of John Leech are not unworthy of comparison with those of Mr. Pickwick as related by Dickens.) Barring these unfortunate conditions, the hotel was commendable, and when in order would be a desirable place of temporary residence.

It was the dead season of Paris, and everything had the air of suspended animation.  The solitude of the Place Vendome was something oppressive; I felt, as I trod its lonely sidewalk, as if I were wandering through Tadmor in the Desert.  We were indeed as remote, as unfriended,—­I will not say as melancholy or as slow,—­as Goldsmith by the side of the lazy Scheldt or the wandering Po.  Not a soul did either of us know in that great city.  Our most intimate relations were with the people of the hotel and with the drivers of the fiacres.  These last were a singular looking race of beings.  Many of them had a dull red complexion, almost brick color, which must have some general cause.  I questioned whether the red wine could have something to do with it.  They wore glazed hats, and drove shabby vehicles for the most part; their horses would not compare with those of the London hansom drivers, and they themselves were not generally inviting in aspect, though we met with no incivility from any of them.  One, I remember, was very voluble, and over-explained everything, so that we became afraid to ask him a question.  They were fellow-creatures with whom one did not naturally enter into active sympathy, and the principal point of interest about the fiacre and its arrangements was whether the horse was fondest of trotting or of walking.  In one of our drives we made it a point to call upon our Minister, Mr. McLane, but he was out of town.  We did not bring a single letter, but set off exactly as if we were on a picnic.

While A——­ and her attendant went about making their purchases, I devoted myself to the sacred and pleasing task of reviving old memories.  One of the first places I visited was the house I lived in as a student, which in my English friend’s French was designated as “Noomero sankont sank Roo Monshure ler Pranse.”  I had been told that the whole region thereabout had been transformed by the creation of a new boulevard.  I did not find it so.  There was the house, the lower part turned into a shop, but there were the windows out of which I used to look along the Rue Vaugirard,—­au troisieme the first year, au second the second year.  Why should I go mousing about the place?  What would the shopkeeper know about M. Bertrand, my landlord of half a century ago; or his first wife, to whose funeral I went; or his second, to whose bridal I was bidden?