Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 24, 2025
In his dreamy nature there was a curious self-sufficiency, which only violent shocks disturbed, and he went on with his routine of duty, which had become for him as set as the pavements he trod on his way to and from it. It was not exactly true, as the painter had said, that this routine did not bring him into touch with life.
It banished, during his drive, all peace, and while the coupé threaded its way along the Faubourg Saint-Honoré toward the Arc-de-Triomphe, the minister who, but two hours before, had been plunged in state affairs, settled himself down in a corner of the carriage, his legs swaddled in a robe and his feet resting on a foot-warmer, looking at, but without observing the cold figures that walked rapidly past him, the houses lighted up by the sun's rays, and the dry pavements, and he thought of those strange eyes and those black butterflies, which seemed to him to flutter over that fair hair like swallows over a field of ripe wheat.
No! you never would believe what a revolutionary appearance these inoffensive mutton-bones took on under the seditious hands of the habitues of the Cafe de Seville. These miniature pavements simulated upon the marble table the subjugation of the most complicated of barricades, with all sorts of bastions, redans, and counterscarps.
The mean and sordid aspect of Fowler Street emphasized and seemed to typify my despair, the pungent coal smoke stifled my lungs even as it stifled my spirit. Ugly factories, which were little more than sweatshops, wore an empty, menacing, "Sunday" look, and the faint November sunlight glistened on dirty pavements where children were making a semblance of play.
Acquaintances and elegant young men in uniforms insisted on rushing up and bowing and exchanging a few words, either with Josephine, or Jim, or Julia, or Lilly. They were coldly received. The party veered out into the night. The women hugged their wraps about them, and set off sharply, feeling some repugnance for the wet pavements and the crowd.
"Here the two thickly studded rows of brilliant lights were seen on either side of the street, with a narrow, dark space between, and this dark space was bounded, as it were, on both sides by a bright fringe like frosted silver." Presently he discovered that this rich effect was caused by the bright illumination of the shop lights on the pavements.
A group of children, those little bare-footed savages who have always roamed the pavements of Paris under the eternal name of gamins, and who, when we were also children ourselves, threw stones at all of us in the afternoon, when we came out of school, because our trousers were not torn a swarm of these young scamps rushed towards the square where Gringoire lay, with shouts and laughter which seemed to pay but little heed to the sleep of the neighbors.
Broek, with its quiet, spotless streets, its frozen rivulets, its yellow brick pavements and bright wooden houses, was nearby. It was a village where neatness and show were in full blossom, but the inhabitants seemed to be either asleep or dead. Not a footprint marred the sanded paths where pebbles and seashells lay in fanciful designs.
He began to sense the fact that he was in the center of a human whirlpool, in the center of beauty and ugliness, love and bitterness, misery and joy. The whole neighborhood began to palpitate for him; the stone walls seemed bloody with struggling souls; the pavements stamped with the steps of a battle. "What can I do," he kept thinking, "with these people?"
And that money goeth throughout all the country and throughout all his provinces, for there and beyond them they make no money neither of gold nor of silver; and therefore he may dispend enough, and outrageously. And of gold and silver that men bear in his country he maketh cylours, pillars and pavements in his palace, and other diverse things what him liketh.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking