'Quand vous arriverez au troisieme, monsieur, montez, montez toujours! Vous trouverez un petit escalier tournant, en bois.

Ca vous conduira a l'atelier.' Thus advised by the wife of the concierge, Fenwick crossed the courtyard of an old house in the Rue du Bac, looked up a moment at the sober and distinguished charm of its architecture, at the corniced, many-paned windows, so solidly framed and plentifully lined in white, upon the stone walls, and the high roof, with its lucarne windows just touched with classical decoration; each line and tint contributing to a seemly, restrained whole, as of something much worn by time, yet merely enhanced thereby, something deliberately built, moreover, to stand the years, and abide the judgement of posterity.

The house in Saint-Simon's day had belonged to one of those newly ennobled dukes, his contemporaries and would-be brethren, whose monstrous claims to rank with himself and the other real magnificences among the _ducs et pairs de France_ drove him to distraction.

It was now let out to a multitude of families, who began downstairs in affluence and ended in the genteel or artistic penury of the garrets.

The first floor was occupied by a deputy and ex-minister, one of the leaders of the Centre Gauche--in the garrets it was possible for a _rapin_ to find a bedroom at sixteen francs a month.