The Bath Keepers, or, Paris in Those Days (Complete)

I RUE COUTURE-SAINTE-CATHERINE It was two o'clock on a cold, damp morning; the fine snow, which melted as soon as it touched the ground, made the streets slippery and dirty, and Rue Culture-Sainte-Catherine,—then called Couture-Sainte-Catherine,—although it was one of the broadest streets in Paris, was as black and gloomy as any blind alley in the Cité to-day. But these things took place in the year one thousand six hundred and thirty-four; and I need not tell you that in those days no such devices for street lighting as lanterns, gas, or electric lights were known. The man who should have discovered the last-named invention, which, in truth, savors strongly of the magical, would surely have been subjected to the ordinary and extraordinary torture for a recompense. Those were the good old times! Everything new aroused suspicion; people believed much more readily in sorcerers, the devil, and magic, than in the results of study and learning and the reasoning of the human intellect