It remains, however,—in the book, at any rate,—a wonderful characterization, with its pictures of the blue Mediterranean at Toulon, the gay life of the Parisian boulevards, its miniature portrait of the great Vidocq, and the sinister account of the prison of Bicêtre, which, since the abandonment of the Place de la Grève, had become the last resort of those condemned to death.
The tale is a short one, but it vibrates between the rues and the boulevards, from the Hôtel de Venise in the Rue des Vieux-Augustins (now the Rue Herold), where Gabriel, upon coming to Paris, first had his lodgings, to the purlieus of the fashionable world,—the old Italian Opera in the Rue Pelletier,—and No. 11 Rue Taitbout, where afterward Gabriel had ensconced himself in a luxurious apartment.
NÔTRE DAME DE PARIS
CHAPTER XI.
LA CITÉ
It is difficult to write of La Cité; it is indeed, impossible to write of it with fulness, unless one were to devote a large volume—or many large volumes—to it alone.
To the tourists it is mostly recalled as being the berceau of Nôtre Dame or the morgue. The latter, fortunately, is an entirely modern institution, and, though it existed in Dumas’ own time, did not when the scenes of the D’Artagnan or Valois romances were laid.