Cygne and the Petite-Truanderie. At the bottom of this sort of cul-de-sac, at the angle of the cutting on the right, there was to be seen a house which was not so tall as the rest, and which formed a sort of cape in the street. It is in this house, of two stories only, that an illustrious wine-shop had been merrily installed three hundred years before. This tavern created a joyous noise in the very spot which old Theophilus described in the following couplet:—
Là branle le squelette horrible D’un pauvre amant qui se pendit.
The situation was good, and tavern-keepers succeeded each other there, from father to son.
In the time of Mathurin Régnier, this cabaret was called the Pot-aux-Roses, and as the rebus was then in fashion, it had for its signboard, a post ( poteau ) painted rose-color. In the last century, the worthy Natoire, one of the fantastic masters nowadays despised by the stiff school, having got drunk many times in this wine-shop at the very table where Régnier had drunk his fill, had painted, by way of gratitude, a bunch of Corinth grapes on the pink post. The keeper of the cabaret, in his joy, had changed his device and had caused to be placed in gilt letters beneath the bunch these words: “ Au Raisin de Corinthe .” Hence the name of Corinthe. Nothing is more natural to drunken men than ellipses. The ellipsis is the zigzag of the phrase. Corinthe gradually dethroned the Pot-aux-Roses. The last proprietor of the dynasty, Father Hucheloup, no longer acquainted even with the tradition, had the post painted blue.
A room on the ground floor, where the bar was situated, one on the first floor containing a billiard-table, a wooden spiral staircase piercing the ceiling, wine on the tables, smoke on the walls, candles in broad daylight—this was the style of this cabaret. A staircase with a trapdoor in