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He left the abashed fisherman, went on, and entered the outskirts of the city, where began the rows of citizens' houses built of Nile-bricks and wood. He saw the merchant and money-changer Eleazar taking down his window-shutters while his assistant sprinkled water on the ground before the shop. Amram greeted him, "A fine morning, cousin Eleazar." "I cannot say," answered the tradesman sulkily.
The window-shutters were not yet closed, and the fire- and candle-light within radiated forth upon the thick bushes of box and laurestinus growing in clumps outside, and upon the bare boughs of several codlin-trees hanging about in various distorted shapes, the result of early training as espaliers combined with careless climbing into their boughs in later years.
She kept her hands tightly clasped and tried to pray, but she could hardly control her thoughts of her brother and of all she wanted to say to the presbyter. They presently entered a lofty room where the window-shutters were closed, and where a number of lamps, already lighted, were hanging over the cushioned divans on which sat rows of busy scribes of all ages.
Everybody looked round to see where the voice came from. It was dusk. Two window-shutters at the farthest end of the building were seen to move slowly inwards. De Grey, and in the same instant Archer, went forward; and, as the shutters opened, there appeared through the hole the dark face and shrivelled hands of a very old gipsy. She did not speak; but she looked first at one and then at another.
The room was so silent though there were more than twenty people in it that nothing could be heard but the patter of the rain against the window-shutters, accompanied by the occasional hiss of a stray drop that fell down the chimney into the fire, and the steady puffing of the man in the corner, who had now resumed his pipe of long clay. The stillness was unexpectedly broken.
The following are the only facts preserved about his civil condition. In 1793 a poor girl of Tillet, a village near Andelys, came by night and gave birth to a child in the garden of the curate of the church at Tillet, and after rapping on the window-shutters went away and drowned herself.
For, upon this, he immediately rejoined, that the streets would be much more effectually lighted, than by all the lamps I proposed to put up, were the inhabitants ordered to sit with their window-shutters open.
When they were done he felt less personal interest in them than in the architectural beauty of the store-front, whose window-shutters he had never helped to close without a little heart-leap of pleasure. But, standing thus, and looking in at the machinery, a man touched him on the shoulder. "Good-morning," said the man. He wore a pleasant air.
The madness of anxiety took possession of him. What did this mean? What had happened? Was no one left? Could it be that life had crumbled away behind him? What had happened to them all? Good heavens! Then he rushed like a tempest against the house. He struck the small door, the gate, the windows, the window-shutters, the walls, with fists and feet, furious with terror and agony of mind.
The doors and window-shutters are ready to drop from their hinges; old clothes are stuffed in the broken panes of glass, while legions of half-starved dogs prowl about the premises, and rush out and bark at every passer-by; for your beggarly house in a village is most apt to swarm with profligate and ill-conditioned dogs.
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