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The fountain with its polygonal basins, its saucepan urns, its lion-headed spouts, its niches with prelates in them, is no masterpiece. Neither is the city hall, whose administrative style is a cinder in the eye. But on this square, as in the neighbouring streets, Servandoni, Garancière, and Ferrou, one respires an atmosphere compounded of benign silence and mild humidity.
From a distance resounded, deadened, however, by good shutters, the songs of the tipplers, enjoying themselves in the cabarets scattered along the plain. Arrived at the end of the lane, d'Artagnan turned to the left. The house in which Aramis dwelt was situated between the Rue Cassette and the Rue Servandoni.
And he thought of a certain Abbé Gévresin, with whom he had formerly some acquaintance; he had often met him at a bookseller's in the Rue Servandoni, old Tocane, who had rare books on liturgy and the lives of the saints. Learning that Durtal was looking for works on Blessed Lidwine, the priest was at once interested in him, and on leaving the shop they had a long conversation.
Yet Servandoni and Oppenord and their ilk were the real major prophets, the ... zekiels of building. Their work is the work of seers looking beyond the eighteenth century to the day of transportation by steam. For Saint Sulpice is not a church, it's a railway station! "And the interior of the edifice is not more religious nor artistic than the exterior.
D'Artagnan had just passed the Rue Cassette, and already perceived the door of his friend's house, shaded by a mass of sycamores and clematis which formed a vast arch opposite the front of it, when he perceived something like a shadow issuing from the Rue Servandoni.
To sum up, he was venerable in spite of all this. He had something of the eighteenth century about him; frivolous and great. In 1814 and during the early years of the Restoration, M. Gillenormand, who was still young, he was only seventy-four, lived in the Faubourg Saint Germain, Rue Servandoni, near Saint-Sulpice.
He was glad to observe that for some time M. Violette had interested himself more in him, and had resisted his baneful habit somewhat. The young man offered no resistance. The next day at noon he presented himself at the Rue Servandoni, accompanied by his father. The "dealer in pious goods" received them with great good-humor. He had just come from high mass and was about to sit down at the table.
Instead of waiting for the final benediction and then going to take his usual walk, he left his church warden's stall and returned unexpectedly to the Rue Servandoni, where he surprised Berenice in a loving interview with her military friend. The old man's rage was pitiful to behold.
M. Violette knew all this; nevertheless it was important that Amedee should not be forgotten by his old relative, and sometimes, though rarely, he would leave his office a little earlier than usual, call for his son as he left the Batifol boarding-school, and take him to the Rue Servandoni.
One by one a Flemish girl, an Alsatian, three Nivernaise, two from Picardy; even a young girl from Beauce, hired on account of her certificate as "the best-behaved girl in the village" they were unsparingly devoured by the minotaur of the Rue Servandoni. All were turned out of doors, with a conscientious blow in the face, by the justly irritated spouse.
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