For many years after I had left school, on my repeated
visits to Paris, the old stone house bore on its gray front the large
"Institution de jeunes Demoiselles," which betokened the unchanged tenor
of its existence. But the rising tide of improvement has at length swept
it away, and modern Paris has rolled over it, and its place remembers it
no more. It was a fine old house, roomy, airy, bright, sunny, cheerful,
with large apartments and a capital play-ground, formed by that
old-fashioned device, a quincunx of linden trees, under whose shade we
carried on very Amazonian exercises, fighting having become one of our
favorite recreations.
This house was said to have belonged to Robespierre at one time, and a
very large and deep well in one corner of the play-ground was invested
with a horrid interest in our imaginations by tales of _noyades_ on a
small scale supposed to have been perpetrated in its depths by his
orders. This charm of terror was, I think, rather a gratuitous addition
to the attractions of this uncommonly fine well; but undoubtedly it
added much to the fascination of one of our favorite amusements, which
was throwing into it the heaviest stones we could lift, and rushing to
the farthest end of the play-ground, which we sometimes reached before
the resounding _bumps_ from side to side ended in a sullen splash into
the water at the bottom.
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