At the time about which I write, there was probably no city in Europe of which the street-scenery was so interesting as that of Paris. I have already described the Quartier Latin, joyous, fantastic, out-at-elbows; a world in itself and by itself; unlike anything else in Paris or elsewhere. But there were other districts in the great city--now swept away and forgotten--as characteristic in their way as the Quartier Latin. There was the He de Saint Louis, for instance--a Campo Santo of decayed nobility--lonely, silent, fallen upon evil days, and haunted here and there by ghosts of departed Marquises and Abbés of the vieille école. There was the debateable land to the rear of the Invalides and the Champ de Mars. There was the Faubourg St. Germain, fast falling into the sere and yellow leaf, and going the way of the Ile de Saint Louis. There was the neighborhood of the Boulevart d'Aulnay, and the Rue de la Roquette, ghastly with the trades of death; a whole Quartier of monumental sculptors, makers of iron crosses, weavers of funereal chaplets, and wholesale coffin-factors. And beside and apart from all this, there were (as in all great cities) districts of evil report and obscure topography--lost islets of crime, round which flowed and circled the daily tide of Paris life; flowed and circled, yet never penetrated. A dark arch here and there--the mouth of a foul alley--a riverside vista of gloom and squalor, marked the entrance to these Alsatias. Such an Alsatia was the Rue Pierre Lescot, the Rue Sans Nom, and many more than I can now remember--streets into which no sane man would venture after nightfall without the escort of the police.
Into the border land of such a neighborhood--a certain congeries of obscure and labyrinthine streets to the rear of the old Halles--I accompanied Franz Müller one wintry afternoon, about an hour before sunset, and perhaps some ten days after our evening in the Rue du Faubourg St. Denis. We were bound on an expedition of discovery, and the object of our journey was to find the habitat of Guichet the model.
"I am determined to get to the bottom of this Lenoir business," said Müller, doggedly; "and if the police won't help me, I must help myself."
"You have no case for the police," I replied.
"So says the chef de bureau; but I am of the opposite opinion. However, I shall make my case out clearly enough before long. This Guichet can help me, if he will. He knows Lenoir, and he knows something against him; that is clear. You saw how cautious he was the other day. The difficulty will be to make him speak."
"I doubt if you will succeed."
"I don't, mon cher. But we shall see. Then, again, I have another line of evidence open to me. You remember that orange-colored rosette in the fellow's button-hole?"
"Certainly I do."
"Well, now, I happen, by the merest chance, to know what that rosette means. It is the ribbon of the third order of the Golden Palm of Mozambique--a Portuguese decoration. They give it to diplomatic officials, eminent civilians, distinguished foreigners, and the like. I know a fellow who has it, and who belongs to the Portuguese Legation here. Eh bien! I went to him the other day, and asked him about our said friend--how he came by it, who he is, where he comes from, and so forth. My Portuguese repeats the name--elevates his eyebrows--in short, has never heard of such a person. Then he pulls down a big book from a shelf in the secretary's room--turns to a page headed 'Golden Palm of Mozambique'--runs his finger along the list of names--shakes his head, and informs me that no Lenoir is, or ever has been, received into the order. What do you say to that, now?"
"It is just what I should have expected; but still it is not a ease for the police. It concerns the Portuguese minister; and the Portuguese minister is by no means likely to take any trouble about the matter. But why waste all this time and care? If I were you, I would let the thing drop. It is not worth the cost."