We left the gayer streets and soon were walking through the maze of narrow avenues and lanes long since destroyed to make way for the wide boulevards of the Second Empire. We went along aimlessly, as it seemed to me, until presently Pierce stopped, exclaiming, "Yes, it is here," and turned from the Rue de l'Université into the short impasse at its further end. Here he paused.
"Well," I said, "where next?"
"My dear M——," he said, "I can't stand you alone any longer. I 'm going to take you to call on M. Des Illes."
Now, M. Des Illes was an acquaintance of a minute (to be accurate, of five minutes), and was nothing to me on earth but a quaint remembrance. I said I would go anywhere, call on devil or angel, do as he liked. As I made clear to him the amiability of my indifferent mood, he paused at the doorway of No. 37.
"Is this the place?"
"Yes, 37 bis." Upon this he rang, and the door opening in the usual mysterious Paris fashion, a concierge put out her head at the side of the passage, which seemed long and narrow.
"Is M. Des Illes at home?"
"Oui; tout en face, tout au fond; Porte à gauche."
"That 's droll," I said as we walked on. The passage was dimly lighted by a lantern hung on the wall. We went on quite three hundred feet, and came out into a courtyard some thirty feet by twice that length. The walls were high around it, but before us was a small hotel with a rather elaborate front, not easily made out by the feeble glimmer of a lantern over the door and another on the wall. The main entrance was a little to the left of the middle of the house, which seemed to be but one story high, and over this a Mansard roof.
"Interesting, is n't it?" said Pierce.