It lies in
the quarter where the Frenchman, in his prime, set up his translated
pride and glory; where, also, the arrogant don had swaggered, and
dreamed of gold and grants and ladies' gloves. Every flagstone has
its grooves worn by footsteps going royally to the wooing and the
fighting. Every house has a princely heartbreak; each doorway its
untold tale of gallant promise and slow decay.
By night the Rue Chartres is now but a murky fissure, from which the
groping wayfarer sees, flung against the sky, the tangled filigree of
Moorish iron balconies. The old houses of monsieur stand yet,
indomitable against the century, but their essence is gone. The
street is one of ghosts to whosoever can see them.
A faint heartbeat of the street's ancient glory still survives in a
corner occupied by the Cafe Carabine d'Or. Once men gathered there to
plot against kings, and to warn presidents. They do so yet, but they
are not the same kind of men. A brass button will scatter these;
those would have set their faces against an army. Above the door
hangs the sign board, upon which has been depicted a vast animal of
unfamiliar species. In the act of firing upon this monster is
represented an unobtrusive human levelling an obtrusive gun, once the
colour of bright gold.
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