They all three trudged along together, dragging their heels over the footways and monopolising their whole breadth so as to force others to step down into the road. With their noses in the air they sniffed in the odours of Paris, and could have recognised every corner blindfold by the spirituous emanations of the wine shops, the hot puffs that came from the bakehouses and confectioners’, and the musty odours wafted from the fruiterers’. They would make the circuit of the whole district. They delighted in passing through the rotunda of the corn market, that huge massive stone cage where sacks of flour were piled up on every side, and where their footsteps echoed in the silence of the resonant roof. They were fond, too, of the little narrow streets in the neighbourhood, which had become as deserted, as black, and as mournful as though they formed part of an abandoned city. These were the Rue Babille, the Rue Sauval, the Rue des Deux Ecus, and the Rue de Viarmes, this last pallid from its proximity to the millers’ stores, and at four o’clock lively by reason of the corn exchange held there. It was generally at this point that they started on their round. They made their way slowly along the Rue Vauvilliers, glancing as they went at the windows of the low eating-houses, and thus reaching the miserably narrow Rue des Prouvaires, where Claude blinked his eyes as he saw one of the covered ways of the market, at the far end of which, framed round by this huge iron nave, appeared a side entrance of St. Eustache with its rose and its tiers of arched windows. And then, with an air of defiance, he would remark that all the middle ages and the Renaissance put together were less mighty than the central markets. Afterwards, as they paced the broad new streets, the Rue du Pont Neuf and the Rue des Halles, he explained modern life with its wide footways, its lofty houses, and its luxurious shops, to the two urchins. He predicted, too, the advent of new and truly original art, whose approach he could divine, and despair filled him that its revelation should seemingly be beyond his own powers.
Cadine and Marjolin, however, preferred the provincial quietness of the Rue des Bourdonnais, where one can play at marbles without fear of being run over. The girl perked her head affectedly as she passed the wholesale glove and hosiery stores, at each door of which bareheaded assistants, with their pens stuck in their ears, stood watching her with a weary gaze. And she and her lover had yet a stronger preference for such bits of olden Paris as still existed: the Rue de la Poterie and the Rue de la Lingerie, with their butter and egg and cheese dealers; the Rue de la Ferronerie and the Rue de l’Aiguillerie (the beautiful streets of far-away times), with their dark narrow shops; and especially the Rue Courtalon, a dank, dirty by-way running from the Place Sainte Opportune to the Rue Saint Denis, and intersected by foul-smelling alleys where they had romped in their younger days. In the Rue Saint Denis they entered into the land of dainties; and they smiled upon the dried apples, the “Spanishwood,” the prunes, and the sugar-candy in the windows of the grocers and druggists. Their ramblings always set them dreaming of a feast of good things, and inspired them with a desire to glut themselves on the contents of the windows. To them the district seemed like some huge table, always laid with an everlasting dessert into which they longed to plunge their fingers.