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Updated: June 19, 2025


With every window-shutter closed, the conflagration of the electric lamps turned the place into a perfect brazier, reeking with human effluvia. And there came a spell of rapture, fresh laughter and bravos, all the delight of an overflowing orgy. When Pierre again found himself on the footwalk, he remained for a moment bewildered, blinking, astonished to be in broad daylight once more.

Here and there a flicker of gas lighted an uncertain space of muddy footwalk and gutter; the long rows of houses, except an occasional lager-bier shop, were closed; now and then she met a band of millhands skulking to or from their work.

The footwalk was narrow, as indeed was the whole street, and filthy to travel upon; and we had to elbow our way among rough men and slatternly women, and to guard our heads from the contact of fish-trays; very ugly, grimy, and misty, moreover, is Billingsgate Market, and though we heard none of the foul language of which it is supposed to be the fountain-head, yet it has its own peculiarities of behavior.

Every minute, when a push obliged Claude to leave the footwalk, he found himself in danger of being knocked down by trucks or vans. Still the street amused him, with its straggling houses out of line, their flat frontages chequered with signboards up to the very eaves, and pierced with small windows, whence came the hum of every kind of handiwork that can be carried on at home.

And almost immediately, on the Piazza dei Cinquecento, in front of the railway station, he climbed into one of the small open cabs ranged alongside the footwalk, and placed the valise near him after giving the driver this address: "Via Giulia, Palazzo Boccanera."* * Boccanera mansion, Julia Street.

Passing the fugitives and their pursuers, he rushed up to the fellows who were rifling the man on the footwalk, and, with the heavy stick which he always carried during his nocturnal perambulations, laid them both prostrate beside their victim.

And on the beds of straw were lines of tin cans, full of the blood that had trickled from the pigs. Thereupon Florent was attacked by a sort of rage. The insipid odour of the meat, the pungent smell of the tripe exasperated him. He made his way out of the covered road, preferring to return once more to the footwalk of the Rue de Pont Neuf. He was enduring perfect agony.

"Why how is this?" he demanded in astonishment, as he beheld Claude on the footwalk, whip in one hand, and with the other holding his horse by the bridle. Claude stood silent. "How is this?" reiterated the advocate: "Out with it, man. Is your father wild? does he threaten to disinherit you?"

Watch him long enough to see what we have described, and you will allow that circumstances which often produce remarkable men from Nature's ordinary handiwork have produced one such here. Next, leaving him to sidle along the footwalk, cast your eyes in the opposite direction, where a portly female considerably in the wane of life, with a prayer-book in her hand, is proceeding to yonder church.

Watch him long enough to see what we have described, and you will allow that circumstances which often produce remarkable men from nature's ordinary handiwork have produced one such here. Next, leaving him to sidle along the footwalk, cast your eyes in the opposite direction, where a portly female, considerably in the wane of life, with a prayer-book in her hand, is proceeding to yonder church.

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