I therefore resolved to make another attempt to find him at home; and my headache being somewhat better, I took my way to his apartments in the Faubourg St.Germain.
I love that quartier--if ever I went to Paris again I should reside there.

It is quite a different world from the streets usually known to, and tenanted by the English--there, indeed, you are among the French, the fossilized remains of the old regime--the very houses have an air of desolate, yet venerable grandeur--you never pass by the white and modern mansion of a nouveau riche; all, even to the ruggedness of the pave, breathes a haughty disdain of innovation--you cross one of the numerous bridges, and you enter into another time--you are inhaling the atmosphere of a past century; no flaunting boutique, French in its trumpery, English in its prices, stares you in the face; no stiff coats and unnatural gaits are seen anglicising up the melancholy streets.

Vast hotels, with their gloomy frontals, and magnificent contempt of comfort; shops, such as shops might have been in the aristocratic days of Louis Quatorze, ere British vulgarities made them insolent and dear; public edifices, still redolent of the superb charities of le grand monarque--carriages with their huge bodies and ample decorations; horses, with their Norman dimensions and undocked honours; men, on whose more high though not less courteous demeanour, the revolution seems to have wrought no democratic plebeianism--all strike on the mind with a vague and nameless impression of antiquity; a something solemn even in gaiety, and faded in pomp, appear to linger over all you behold; there are the Great French people unadulterated by change, unsullied with the commerce of the vagrant and various tribes that throng their mighty mart of enjoyments.
The strangers who fill the quartiers on this side the Seine pass not there; between them and the Faubourg there is a gulf; the very skies seem different--your own feelings, thoughts--nature itself--alter, when you have passed that Styx which divides the wanderers from the habitants; your spirits are not so much damped, as tinged, refined, ennobled by a certain inexpressible awe--you are girt with the stateliness of Eld, and you tread the gloomy streets with the dignity of a man, who is recalling the splendours of an ancient court where he once did homage.
I arrived at Thornton's chambers in the Rue St.Dominique.

"Monsieur, est-il chez lui ?" said I to the ancient porteress, who was reading one of Crebillon's novels.
"Oui, Monsieur, au quatrieme," was the answer.

I turned to the dark and unclean staircase, and, after incredible exertion and fatigue, arrived, at last, at the elevated abode of Mr.Thornton.
"Entrez," cried a voice, in answer to my rap.