This house, though dirty, mean, and out of repair, received many wealthy visitors, whose brilliant equipages waited for them in the neighbouring streets.

Often in the night great ladies crossed its threshold under assumed names and remained there for several days, during which La Constantin and Claude Perregaud, by an infamous use of their professional knowledge, restored their clients to an outward appearance of honour, and enabled them to maintain their reputation for virtue.

The first and second floors contained a dozen rooms in which these abominable mysteries were practised.

The large apartment, which served as waiting and consultation room, was oddly furnished, being crowded with objects of strange and unfamiliar form.

It resembled at once the operating-room of a surgeon, the laboratory of a chemist and alchemist, and the den of a sorcerer.