It is Bachaumont, I think, who in his “Nouvelles à la Main” tells an anecdote of some nobleman of the “ancien régime” whose hobby it was to be driven about Paris at night time under the guidance of the police—in a sombre-looking chariot by a deaf and dumb coachman, chosen because he could hear and say nothing—and amuse himself with exploring the mysteries of the city. Having a whim for a similar experience to that of the “grand seigneur” of the era of Louis Quinze—a desire to penetrate the haunts of misery and crime that lurked behind the magnificent boulevards, which were the admiration of all visitors to the French capital—it occurred to me that this might possibly be indulged with the assistance of the police, and without enlisting the services of a deaf and dumb coachman. I therefore called at the prefecture with an influential letter of introduction, asking that I might be favoured by the guidance and protection of a police agent on my contemplated expedition.

I entered the prefecture on the side of the Quai des Orfèvres by the Rue de Jérusalem and past the Rue de Nazareth—names that appear to have suggested to the Paris thieves the slang term of “Judea,” which they applied to the prefecture. A sentinel and a sergent-de-ville on duty at one end of the short, narrow street, and a sentinel pacing slowly up and down at the other, carefully scanned every one who entered.