Look you, romance seeker, rather into the places of Montépin and Eugène Sue. The moon is down. The sound of dance is stilled in the city. So go we into the Rue Croissant, with its shaveless thuggeries and marauding cabs. It is dark, very. And very quiet. And the sniff of unknown things is to be had in the air. Dens of drink with their furtive thieves ... the enigma of the shadows of the church of Saint Eustache ... slinking feet to the rear of you ... at length, the Rue Pirouette and the sign of the angel Gabriel on the lantern before the house. Here is good company to be found! Well do I remember the _bon-camaraderie_ of Henri Lavérte, that most successful of Parisian burglars, of the good Jean Darteau, that most artistic of all Parisian second story virtuosi, of pretty Mado Veralment, who was not convicted for the murder of her erstwhile lover Abernal, nor, at a later date, for that of her erstwhile lover Crepeat, both of whom, so it had been rudely whispered by her enemies, had rashly believed to desert her for another charmer. Witty and altogether excellent folk. Indeed, I might go further from the truth than to say that in no woman have ever I found a deeper, a more authentic appreciation of the poetry of Verlaine than in this Mademoiselle Mado.
So, too, up the stone steps and into the Caveau of the Rue des Innocents ... and here--likewise a jolly party. Inquire of most persons about Le Caveau and you will be apprised that it is a "vile hole," "a place of the lowest order." It _is_ dirty, so much I will grant; and it _is_ of a Brobdingnagian smell. Also, is it frequented almost entirely by murderers, garroters, and thieves. But to say it is a "vile hole" or "a place of the lowest order" is to say what is not true. It is immeasurably superior to the tinselled inn of the Rue Royale. And its habitués constitute an infinitely more respectable lodge. If the left wall of the cavern contains its "roll of honour"--the names of all the erstwhile noted gentlemen patrons of the establishment who have, because of some slight carelessness or oversight, ended their days in the company of the public executioner--I still cannot appreciate that the list is any the less civilised than the head waiter's "roll of honour" at the celebrated tavern in the Avenue de l'Opéra. Nor do the numerous scribbled inscriptions on the other walls, such saucy epigrams as "To hell with the prefect of police," "The police are damned low flea-full dogs" and the like impress me less favourably than the scribbled inscriptions on notes of assignation placed covertly by subsidised waiters into the serviettes of the Callot-adorned Thaïses in the spectacularized haunts of the Bois. The piano in Le Caveau may be diabetic, senescent, and its operator half blind and all knuckles (as he is), but the music it gives forth is full of the romance of Sheppard and Turpin, of stage coach days and dark and nervous highways, of life when life was in the world and all the world was young.