Gallery" to distinguish it from the Wooden Galleries, that Chevet laid
the foundations of his fortunes.

Here, in the Palais, you trod the natural soil of Paris, augmented by
importations brought in upon the boots of foot passengers; here, at all
seasons, you stumbled among hills and hollows of dried mud swept daily
by the shopman's besom, and only after some practice could you walk at
your ease. The treacherous mud-heaps, the window-panes incrusted with
deposits of dust and rain, the mean-looking hovels covered with ragged
placards, the grimy unfinished walls, the general air of a compromise
between a gypsy camp, the booths of a country fair, and the temporary
structures that we in Paris build round about public monuments that
remain unbuilt; the grotesque aspect of the mart as a whole was in
keeping with the seething traffic of various kinds carried on within
it; for here in this shameless, unblushing haunt, amid wild mirth and a
babel of talk, an immense amount of business was transacted between the
Revolution of 1789 and the Revolution of 1830.

For twenty years the Bourse stood just opposite, on the ground floor of
the Palais. Public opinion was manufactured, and reputations made and
ruined here, just as political and financial jobs were arranged. People
made appointments to meet in the Galleries before or after 'Change;
on showery days the Palais Royal was often crowded with weather-bound
capitalists and men of business. The structure which had grown up, no
one knew how, about this point was strangely resonant, laughter was
multiplied; if two men quarreled, the whole place rang from one end to
the other with the dispute. In the daytime milliners and booksellers
enjoyed a monopoly of the place; towards nightfall it was filled with
women of the town. Here dwelt poetry, politics, and prose, new books and
classics, the glories of ancient and modern literature side by side with
political intrigue and the tricks of the bookseller's trade. Here
all the very latest and newest literature were sold to a public which
resolutely decline to buy elsewhere. Sometimes several thousand copies
of such and such a pamphlet by Paul-Louis Courier would be sold in a
single evening; and people crowded thither to buy _Les aventures de la
fille d'un Roi_--that first shot fired by the Orleanists at The Charter
promulgated by Louis XVIII.

When Lucien made his first appearance in the Wooden Galleries, some few
of the shops boasted proper