We now conduct the reader to the Rue Brise-Miche, the residence of Dagobert’s wife.
CHAPTER XXVII. DAGOBERT’S WIFE.
The following scenes occur in Paris, on the morrow of the day when the shipwrecked travellers were received in Cardoville House.
Nothing can be more gloomy than the aspect of the Rue Brise-Miche, one end of which leads into the Rue Saint-Merry, and the other into the little square of the Cloister, near the church. At this end, the street, or rather alley—for it is not more than eight feet wide—is shut in between immense black, muddy dilapidated walls, the excessive height of which excludes both air and light; hardly, during the longest days of the year, is the sun able to throw into it a few straggling beams; whilst, during the cold damps of winter, a chilling fog, which seems to penetrate everything, hangs constantly above the miry pavement of this species of oblong well.
It was about eight o’clock in the evening; by the faint, reddish light of the street lamp, hardly visible through the haze, two men, stopping at the angle of one of those enormous walls, exchanged a few words together.
“So,” said one, “you understand all about it. You are to watch in the street, till you see them enter No. 5.”
“All right!” answered the other.
“And when you see ‘em enter so as to make quite sure of the game, go up to Frances Baudoin’s room—”
“Under the cloak of asking where the little humpbacked workwoman lives—the sister of that gay girl, the Queen of the Bacchanals.”