There is no back passage by which any one could have descended while the party proceeded up stairs.

After a thorough investigation of every portion of the house, without farther discovery, the party made its way into a small paved yard in the rear of the building, where lay the corpse of the old lady, with her throat so entirely cut that, upon an attempt to raise her, the head fell off.{i} The body, as well as the head, was{j} fearfully mutilated — the former so much so as scarcely to retain any semblance of humanity.

We had been talking of horses, if I remember aright, just before leaving the Rue C———. This was the last subject we discussed. As we crossed into this street, a fruiterer, with a large basket upon his head, brushing quickly past us, thrust you upon a pile of paving-stones collected at a spot where the causeway is undergoing repair. You stepped upon one of the loose fragments, slipped, slightly strained your ankle, appeared vexed or sulky, muttered a few words, turned to look{m} at the pile, and then proceeded in silence. I was not particularly attentive to what you did; but observation has become with me, of late, a species of necessity. “You kept your eyes upon the ground — glancing, with a petulant expression, at the holes and ruts in the pavement, (so that I saw you were still thinking of the stones,) until we reached the little alley called Lamartine,(18) which has been paved, by way of [page 536:] experiment, with the overlapping and riveted blocks.(19) Here your countenance brightened up, and, perceiving your lips move, I could not doubt that you murmured{n} the{oo} word ‘stereotomy,’ a term very affectedly applied to this species of pavement.{oo} I knew that you could not {pp}say to yourself ‘stereotomy’ without{pp}, being brought to think of atomies, and thus of the theories of Epicurus;(20) and since{q} when we discussed this subject not very long ago, I mentioned to you how singularly, yet with how little notice, the vague guesses of that noble Greek had met with confirmation in the late nebular cosmogony, I felt that you could not avoid casting your eyes upward{r} to the great nebula{s} in Orion,(21) and I certainly expected that you would do so. You did look up; and I was now{t} assured that I had correctly followed your steps. But in that bitter tirade upon Chantilly, which appeared in yesterday's ‘Musée,’ the satirist, making some disgraceful allusions to the cobbler's change of name upon assuming the buskin, quoted a{u} Latin line{v} about which{w} we have often conversed.