indistinctly. The shop fronts, formed of small panes of glass,
streak the goods with a peculiar greenish reflex. Beyond, behind
the display in the windows, the dim interiors resemble a number of
lugubrious cavities animated by fantastic forms.

To the right, along the whole length of the arcade, extends a wall
against which the shopkeepers opposite have stuck some small cupboards.
Objects without a name, goods forgotten for twenty years, are spread
out there on thin shelves painted a horrible brown colour. A dealer in
imitation jewelry, has set up shop in one of these cupboards, and there
sells fifteen sous rings, delicately set out on a cushion of blue velvet
at the bottom of a mahogany box.

Above the glazed cupboards, ascends the roughly plastered black wall,
looking as if covered with leprosy, and all seamed with defacements.

The Arcade of the Pont Neuf is not a place for a stroll. You take it to
make a short cut, to gain a few minutes. It is traversed by busy
people whose sole aim is to go quick and straight before them. You see
apprentices there in their working-aprons, work-girls taking home their
work, persons of both sexes with parcels under their arms. There are
also old men who drag themselves forward in the sad gloaming that falls
from the glazed roof, and bands of small children who come to the arcade
on leaving school, to make a noise by stamping their feet on the tiles
as they run along. Throughout the day a sharp hurried ring of footsteps,
resounds on the stone with irritating irregularity. Nobody speaks,
nobody stays there, all hurry about their business with bent heads,
stepping out rapidly, without taking a single glance at the shops. The
tradesmen observe with an air of alarm, the passers-by who by a miracle
stop before their windows.

The arcade is lit at night by three gas burners, enclosed in heavy
square lanterns. These jets of gas, hanging from the glazed roof whereon
they cast spots of fawn-coloured light, shed around them circles of pale
glimmer that seem at moments to disappear. The arcade now assumes the
aspect of a regular cut-throat alley. Great shadows stretch along the
tiles, damp puffs of air enter from the street. Anyone might take the
place for a subterranean gallery indistinctly lit-up by three funeral
lamps. The tradespeople for all light are contented with the faint rays
which the gas burners throw upon their windows. Inside their shops, they
merely have a lamp with a shade, w