At The Foot Of The Stairs We Came On Two Gendarmes Who Sat Side By Side On A Wooden Bench, Having Apparently Nothing Else To Do Except To Caress Their Goatees And Finger Their Swords.

Whether the gendarmes were stationed here to keep the Apaches from preying on the marketmen or the marketmen from

Preying on the Apaches I know not; but having subsequently purchased some fresh fruit in that selfsame market I should say now that if anybody about the premises needed police protection it was the Apaches. My money would be on the marketmen every time.

Beyond the couchant gendarmes we traversed a low, winding passage cut out of stone and so came at length to what seemingly had originally been a winevault, hollowed out far down beneath the foundations of the building. The ceiling was so low that a tall man must stoop to avoid knocking his head off. The place was full of smells that had crawled in a couple of hundred years before and had died without benefit of clergy, and had remained there ever since. For its chief item of furniture the cavern had a wicked old piano, with its lid missing, so that its yellowed teeth showed in a perpetual snarl. I judged some of its most important vital organs were missing too - after I heard it played. On the walls were inscribed such words as naughty little boys write on schoolhouse fences in this country, and more examples of this pleasing brand of literature were carved on the whittled oak benches and the rickety wooden stools.

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