ciate with his two models
from a sort of hopeless love for his abortive picture. When he met them
prowling about in the afternoon, he often scoured the neighbourhood
with them, strolling around with his hands in his pockets, and deeply
interested in the life of the streets.

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