in question, but his life (since he lacked that precious conciliator, which places itself so effectually between the bandit and the honest man — a purse). In short, on examining the orgy more closely, and with more coolness, he fell from the witches’ sabbath to the dram-shop.

The Cour des Miracles was, in fact, merely a dram-shop; but a brigand’s dram-shop, reddened quite as much with blood as with wine.

The spectacle which presented itself to his eyes, when his ragged escort finally deposited him at the end of his trip, was not fitted to bear him back to poetry, even to the poetry of hell.

It was more than ever the prosaic and brutal reality of the tavern. Were we not in the fifteenth century, we would say that Gringoire had descended from Michael Angelo to Callot.