A while agone, quite stricken down and
overwhelmed by a sudden loss and cruel grief, I
went, to hide my head and try to forget my
belongings, abroad. I could never manage to be
an orthodox hermit, to dwell in a cave or on a
rock, to perch on the summit of a column like
Simon Stylites, to abide in a desert like Hieronymus
with lions to howl round me, or to dress
myself "full fig," as it were, for solitude and
contemplation, like the High Dutch hermit
Zimmermann, or the pensive place-hunter,
Young, of the Night Thoughts. So, the while
agone, temporarily foregoing and abhorring
society, I moodily shunted myself from the gayest
portion of the Paris Boulevards and set up a
savage oratory on a fourth floor of the Rue
Marsollier, which, as all Paris-hardened men
know, forms one side of the Place Veutadour,
the centre of whose area is occupied by the Paris
Italian Opera-house. There are few dismaler
edifices to look at in the daytime than the
outside of a French theatre, with its waste of dirty
windows in the Bureau de Location, its playbills
shielded by penitentiary-looking wirework, its
gloomy artists' entrance, and its barriers for the
queue in front—post and hurdle compromises
between the pens of old Smithfield and the
barriers that are set up in the Old Bailey on a
Hanging Monday. If there can be a dismaler-
looking place than the exterior of the Italiens,it is
assuredly its locality, the silent Place Ventadour.
The grass grows, literally, between its rugged
paving-stones, and there is a story, in which I place
implicit faith, of a gentleman once losing in the
Place Ventadour a pocket-book containing three
bills of exchange, a passport, and four notes of
the Bank of France for a thousand francs each,
and, wandering hither in a kind of desultory
despair a week afterwards, finding his pocket-book
intact lying beside the very borne where he had
an impression of having lost it.

I dwelt alone, in this silent place for months,
my intercourse with the concierge limited to the
usual morning and evening greetings, and to wistful
looks into her lodge to see if there were any
letters for me in the rack above my number and
my key; my conversation generally confined to
sparse chit-chat with the blue-bibbed waiter,
who came to kneel before my fire-dogs and
blow at the opinionated logs which never would
burn properly, and who told me fifty times over
about that brother of his in the Voltigeurs who
was a bad subject and had been flanqué là-bas, to
Africa, and was having un fichu temps, somewhat
of a bad time of it, down there, peste! I lived here
in monotony, contented through semi-torpidity
of mind. I had forgotten what it was to dine
in the Palais Royal, to go to the Opera, or to
play billiards. My wants were few, and, indeed,
I should have been at a loss to satisfy them had
they been numerous. I was miserably poor, and
what little money came to me I drew from a
cloudy man in a skull-cap and a grey flannel
dressing-gown, who dwelt in an iron cage high
up at the extremity of a foul court-yard in the
Rue St. Lazare, where he was continually shaking
sand from a pepper-box over scrawling
entries in marble-covered copy-books, and who
called himself a banker. When there were no
drafts payable at sight, I dined, as I walked, on
chesnuts, two sous loaves, and hard-boiled eggs:
occasionally negotiating loans on realisable
property at the office of another cloudy individual
in a skull-cap and dressing-gown, who lived in
another iron cage still higher up in a blind alley
off the Rue de la Lune. I had no luxuries, no
amusements, save looking in the shops, buying
ten centimes' worth or so of cheap literature, and
trying to colour a pipe, which never would colour,
with caporal. I had no relaxation, save the following:
Of all my friends, wild and tame—and I had
a zoological garden as well as a poultry-yard full
of them within half an hour's walk—I had chosen
to be known but to two ladies, hermits like myself,
though of another fashion, who rented two stalls
at the Italian Theatre, and went there every
night of the subscription. The proceedings
were as regular as clockwork. At ten minutes
to eleven, every Opera-night, I began to cool
my heels in the moon and gas lit Place Ventadour,
looking at the files of carriages drawn up;
often at one carriage by a side entrance, the
priceless horses solemnly champing and stamping,
an eagle and crown on the panels. This
was Caesar's chariot; Caesar and Calphurnia
were in their box, within. I used to inspect
the carriage so attentively, that a police agent
warned me off one night, thinking, perhaps, that
the Ides of March were come, but not gone, and
that I might be an envious Casca anxious to
make rents in Imperial mantles. A few minutes
before eleven, two municipal guards in blue, and
boots, and brazen long-tailed helmets, clattered
across from the peristyle, where they had been
talking smoke-dried nothings to the cocked-hatted
and cowled police-agents, the one licensed
programme-seller, and the one licensed carriage-door
opener; went into a stable next door to my lodging;
led forth two big horses; hoisted themselves
into the saddles, and began to career and back
and wheel about the square to repulse a crowd
that was not there—all in a spectral, mournful
manner. I used to think of Don Giovanni, and
call them the Commendatori, so stony did they
look in the drab-green moonlight; and had I
been in funds, I would have asked them home
to sup off maccaroni. Four minutes before
eleven, if the police-agents did not harass
me, I would creep up to the peristyle, and
through the glazed portals stare at the French
footmen and "ghrohoms" (or grooms) drawn
up in double lines waiting for their noble
owners. Now and then one would see a black
servitor grinning at the unwonted solemnity of
the scene, and, occasionally, there would be
visible a genuine English Jeames in real plush,
real powder, and real calves, surveying the entire
spectacle with a superb sneer, and doubtless
asking himself "Do they call these furrin
'umbugs servants?" At eleven precisely, my time
was at maturity. Down the great staircase came
the fat senators, the chattering diplomates, the
general officers in mufti, and looking remarkably
uneasy in civilian costume, the wondrously