CHAPTER II.
AN INTERIOR.
If we do not calculate too much on the memory of our readers, they certainly know the Rue St. Claude, which joins at one end the boulevard, and at the other the Rue St. Louis; this was an important street in the first part of our story, when it was inhabited by Joseph Balsamo, his sibyl, Lorenza, and his master, Althotas. It was still a respectable street, though badly lighted, and by no means clean, but little known or frequented.
There was, however, at the corner of the boulevard a large house, with an aristocratic air; but this house, which might, from the number of its windows, have illuminated the whole street, had it been lighted up, was the darkest and most somber-looking of any. The door was never seen to open; and the windows were thick with dust, which seemed never disturbed. Sometimes an idler, attracted by curiosity, approached the gates and peeped through; all he could see, however, were masses of weeds growing between the stones of the courtyard, and green moss spreading itself over everything. Occasionally an enormous rat, sole inmate of those deserted domains, ran across the yard, on his way to his usual habitation in the cellars, which seemed, however, to be an excess of modesty, when he had the choice of so many fine sitting-rooms, where he need never fear the intrusion of a cat.
At times, one or two of the neighbors, passing the house, might stop to take a survey, and one would say to the other:
“Well, what do you see?”
“Why,” he would reply, “I see the rat.”
“Oh! let me look at him. How fat he has grown!”
“That is not to be wondered at; he is never disturbed; and there must be some good pickings in the house. M. de Balsamo disappeared so suddenly, that he must have left something behind.”
“But you forget that the house was half burned down.”
And they would pursue their way.