The Commission in Lunacy | Page 6

but a good fellow," said
Rastignac to himself as the cab drove off.

"Rastignac has given me the most difficult negotiation in the world,"
said Bianchon to himself, remembering, as he rose next morning, the
delicate commission intrusted to him. "However, I have never asked the
smallest service from my uncle in Court, and have paid more than a
thousand visits gratis for him. And, after all, we are not apt to mince
matters between ourselves. He will say Yes or No, and there an end."
After this little soliloquy the famous physician bent his steps, at seven
in the morning, towards the Rue du Fouarre, where dwelt Monsieur
Jean-Jules Popinot, judge of the Lower Court of the Department of the
Seine. The Rue du Fouarre--an old word meaning straw--was in the
thirteenth century the most important street in Paris. There stood the
Schools of the University, where the voices of Abelard and of Gerson
were heard in the world of learning. It is now one of the dirtiest streets
of the Twelfth Arrondissement, the poorest quarter of Paris, that in
which two-thirds of the population lack firing in winter, which leaves
most brats at the gate of the Foundling Hospital, which sends most
beggars to the poorhouse, most rag-pickers to the street corners, most
decrepit old folks to bask against the walls on which the sun shines,
most delinquents to the police courts.
Half-way down this street, which is always damp, and where the gutter
carries to the Seine the blackened waters from some dye-works, there is
an old house, restored no doubt under Francis I., and built of bricks

held together by a few courses of masonry. That it is substantial seems
proved by the shape of its front wall, not uncommonly seen in some
parts of Paris. It bellies, so to speak, in a manner caused by the
protuberance of its first floor, crushed under the weight of the second
and third, but upheld by the strong wall of the ground floor. At first
sight it would seem as though the piers between the windows, though
strengthened by the stone mullions, must give way, but the observer
presently perceives that, as in the tower at Bologna, the old bricks and
old time-eaten stones of this house persistently preserve their centre of
gravity.
At every season of the year the solid piers of the ground floor have the
yellow tone and the imperceptible sweating surface that moisture gives
to stone. The passer-by feels chilled as he walks close to this wall,
where worn corner-stones ineffectually shelter him from the wheels of
vehicles. As is always the case in houses built before carriages were in
use, the vault of the doorway forms a very low archway not unlike the
barbican of a prison. To the right of this entrance there are three
windows, protected outside by iron gratings of so close a pattern, that
the curious cannot possibly see the use made of the dark, damp rooms
within, and the panes too are dirty and dusty; to the left are two similar
windows, one of which is sometimes open, exposing to view the porter,
his wife, and his children; swarming, working, cooking, eating, and
screaming, in a floored and wainscoted room where everything is
dropping to pieces, and into which you descend two steps--a depth
which seems to suggest the gradual elevation of the soil of Paris.
If on a rainy day some foot-passenger takes refuge under the long vault,
with projecting lime-washed beams, which leads from the door to the
staircase, he will hardly fail to pause and look at the picture presented
by the interior of this house. To the left is a square garden-plot,
allowing of not more than four long steps in each direction, a garden of
black soil, with trellises bereft of vines, and where, in default of
vegetation under the shade of two trees, papers collect, old rags,
potsherds, bits of mortar fallen from the roof; a barren ground, where
time has shed on the walls, and on the trunks and branches of the trees,
a powdery deposit like cold soot. The two parts of the house, set at a
right angle, derive light from this garden- court shut in by two
adjoining houses built on wooden piers, decrepit and ready to fall,

where on each floor some grotesque evidence is to be seen of the craft
pursued by some lodger within. Here long poles are hung with
immense skeins of dyed worsted put out to dry; there, on ropes, dance
clean-washed shirts; higher up, on a shelf, volumes display their freshly
marbled edges; women sing, husbands whistle, children shout; the
carpenter saws his planks, a copper-turner makes the metal screech; all
kinds of industries combine to produce a noise which the number of