A few days ago I was passing along the Rue de Chartres.* A palisade of
boards, which linked two islands of high six-story houses, attracted
my attention. It threw upon the pavement a shadow which the sunshine,
penetrating between the badly joined boards, striped with beautiful
parallel streaks of gold, such as one sees on the fine black satins of
the Renaissance. I strolled over to it and peered through the cracks.
* The little Rue de Chartres was situated on the site now occupied by
the Pavilion de Rohan. It extended from the open ground of the Carrousel
to the Place du Palais-Royal. The old Vaudeville Theatre was situated in
it.
This palisade encloses the site on which was built the Vaudeville
Theatre, that was destroyed by fire two years ago, in June, 1839.
It was two o’clock in the afternoon, the sun shone hotly, the street was
deserted.
A sort of house door, painted grey, still ornamented with rococo carving
and which a hundred years ago probably was the entrance to the boudoir
of some little mistress, had been adjusted to the palisade. There was
only a latch to raise, and I entered the enclosure.
Nothing could be sadder or more desolate. A chalky soil. Here and
there blocks of stone that the masons had begun to work upon, but had
abandoned, and which were at once white as the stones of sepulchres and
mouldy as the stones of ruins. No one in the enclosure. On the walls of
the neighbouring houses traces of flame and smoke still visible.
However, since the catastrophe two successive springtides had softened
the ground, and in a corner of the trapezium, behind an enormous stone
that was becoming tinted with the green of moss, and beneath which were
haunts of woodlice, millepeds, and other insects, a little patch of
grass had grown in the shadow.