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Updated: June 1, 2025
"Let us try back, I noted a sort of alley-way which we passed just before reaching the café." "You think the hashish den is in some adjoining building?" "I don't know where it is, Petrie, but I know the way to it!" Into a narrow, gloomy court we plunged, hemmed in by high walls, and followed it for ten yards or more. An even narrower and less inviting turning revealed itself on the left.
As regards the themes of these "novelettes" (from which the present collection is chiefly made up), it was remarked at the time of their first appearance that they hinted at a more serious purpose than their style seemed to imply. Who can read, for instance, "Pharaoh" (which in the original is entitled "A Hall Mood") without detecting the revolutionary note which trembles quite audibly through the calm and unimpassioned language? There is, by-the-way, a little touch of melodrama in this tale which is very unusual with Kielland. "Romance and Reality," too, is glaringly at variance with the conventional romanticism in its satirical contributing of the pre-matrimonial and the post-matrimonial view of love and marriage. The same persistent tendency to present the wrong side as well as the right side and not, as literary good-manners are supposed to prescribe, ignore the former is obvious in the charming tale "At the Fair," where a little spice of wholesome truth spoils the thoughtlessly festive mood; and the squalor, the want, the envy, hate, and greed which prudence and a regard for business compel the performers to disguise to the public, become the more cruelly visible to the visitors of the little alley-way at the rear of the tents. In "A Good Conscience" the satirical note has a still more serious ring; but the same admirable self-restraint which, next to the power of thought and expression, is the happiest gift an author's fairy godmother can bestow upon him, saves Kielland from saying too much from enforcing his lesson by marginal comments,
Well, Hawley came, and Hope met him; they went out of the alley-way together arm in arm, talking pleasantly, and turned this way toward the hotel. The doctor and I both saw and heard them. I was delayed not to exceed two minutes, speaking a final word to Fairbain, and when I reached the street they had disappeared.
They dawdled a bit, through a littered street of open markets where they examined the contents of barrows flowers, cheap lace, stockings, furs, trays of battered coins and bits of china, brass and copper vessels now and then peering into a provocative alley-way, held by the spell of the exotic.
"I understand," I ventured at last, "that in those days this house also had a door opening on the alley-way. Where did it lead do you mind my asking? into a room or into a hallway? I am so interested in old houses." They did not resent this overt act of curiosity; I had expected Miss Thankful to, but she didn't.
As I trundle through the crooked, ill-paved alley-way that, out of respect to the historical association referred to, may be called its business thoroughfare, with forethought of the near approach of noon I obtain some pears, and hand an ekmek-jee a coin for some bread; he passes over a tough flat cake, abundantly sufficient for my purpose, together with the change.
Thus, in less than two minutes from the instant of their encounter, they stood outside Troyon's back door, facing a cramped, malodorous alley-way a dark and noisome souvenir of that wild mediaeval Paris whose effacement is an enduring monument to the fame of the good Baron Haussmann.
An alley-way opened before him, leading to what appeared to be another residence street. He was about to test the truth of this surmise when he heard a step behind him, and turning, encountered the heavy figure of the coachman advancing towards him, with a key in his hand. Zadok was of an easy turn, but he had been sorely tried that day, and his limit had been reached. "You snooper!" he bawled.
During the time you had been gone, he had realized his sinking condition, and, afraid of the nurse he saw advancing down the street, summoned all his strength and rushed with his treasure across the alley-way and put it in the first hiding-place his poor old eyes fell on. He may have been going to give it to you; but you had company, you remember, in here, and he may have heard voices.
Limping along, he followed the narrow alley-way, and in a little while came out upon a street some distance from the one in which Mother Peter lived. There were very few people abroad, and no one noticed or spoke to him as he went creeping along, every step sending a pain from the hurt ankle to his heart.
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