For several years the old cemetery remained an object of terror.  Although it adjoined the main thoroughfare and was open to all comers, it was left quite deserted, a prey to fresh vegetable growth.  The local authorities, who had doubtless counted on selling it and seeing houses built upon it, were evidently unable to find a purchaser.  The recollection of the heaps of bones and the cart persistently jolting through the streets may have made people recoil from the spot; or perhaps the indifference that was shown was due to the indolence, the repugnance to pulling down and setting up again, which is characteristic of country people.  At all events the authorities still retained possession of the ground, and at last forgot their desire to dispose of it.  They did not even erect a fence round it, but left it open to all comers.  Then, as time rolled on, people gradually grew accustomed to this barren spot; they would sit on the grass at the edges, walk about, or gather in groups.  When the grass had been worn away and the trodden soil had become grey and hard, the old cemetery resembled a badly-levelled public square.  As if the more effectually to efface the memory of all objectionable associations, the inhabitants slowly changed the very appellation of the place, retaining but the name of the saint, which was likewise applied to the blind alley dipping down at one corner of the field.  Thus there was the Aire Saint-Mittre and the Impasse Saint-Mittre.

All this dates, however, from some considerable time back.  For more than thirty years now the Aire Saint-Mittre has presented a different appearance.  One day the townspeople, far too inert and indifferent to derive any advantage from it, let it, for a trifling consideration, to some suburban wheelwrights, who turned it into a wood-yard.  At the present day it is still littered with huge pieces of timber thirty or forty feet long, lying here and there in piles, and looking like lofty overturned columns.  These piles of timber, disposed at intervals from one end of the yard to the other, are a continual source of delight to the local urchins.  In some places the ground is covered with fallen wood, forming a kind of uneven flooring over which it is impossible to walk, unless one balance one’s self with marvellous dexterity.  Troops of children amuse themselves with this exercise all day long.  You will see them jumping over the big beams, walking in Indian file along the narrow ends, or else crawling astride them; various games which generally terminate in blows and bellowings.  Sometimes, too, a dozen of them will sit, closely packed one against the other, on the thin end of a pole raised a few feet from the ground, and will see-saw there for hours together.  The Aire Saint-Mittre thus serves as a recreation ground, where for more than a quarter of a century all the little suburban ragamuffins have been in the habit of wearing out the seats of their breeches.