Excerpt from The Works of Honoré De Balzac, Vol. 8: Eugénie Grandet, Great Man of the Provinces in Paris Next to a tottering house with roughly plastered walls, where an artisan enshrines his tool's, rises the mansion of a country gentleman, on the stone arch of which above the door vestiges of armorial bearings may still be seen, battered by the many revolutions that have shaken France since 1789. In this hilly street the ground-floors of the merchants are neither shops nor warehouses; lovers of the Middle Ages will here find the ouvrouére of our forefathers in all its naive simplicity. These low rooms, which have no shop-frontage, no show-windows, in fact no glass at all, are deep and dark and without interior or exte rior decoration. Their doors Open in two parts, each roughly iron-bound; the upper half is fastened back within the room, the lower half, fitted with a spring bell, swings continually to and fro. Air and light reach the damp den within, either through the upper half of the door, or through an open space between the ceiling and a low front wall, breast-high, which is closed by solid shutters that are taken down every morning, put up every evening, and held in place by heavy iron bars