ABSTRACT
Mr Elsinare's studio lies in a long, rambling, silent street not a hundred miles from the Boulevard Mont-Parnasse—a quarter of Paris which is cheap, airy, and free from the visitation of tourists. 1 The house presents to the thoroughfare a modest gable, a rickety carriage-gate, and a sort of cottage on the other side of it, which looks as if it was meant for the porter. The wicket stands open as we arrive, but there is no sign of life. We venture in, as we might venture after nightfall into a farm-steading, with a kind of beware-of-the-dog feeling at heart. The court is long and narrow like a bit of a country lane; the ground descends, the pavement is of the roughest; and ladies with high heels, on their way to Mr Elsinare's, stumble in the darkness over all manner of heights and hollows, and have to pilot their drapery through many dangers.
