mple
of prostitution. A woman might come and go, taking away her prey
whithersoever seemed good to her. So great was the crowd attracted
thither at night by the women, that it was impossible to move except at
a slow pace, as in a procession or at a masked ball. Nobody objected
to the slowness; it facilitated examination. The women dressed in a way
that is never seen nowadays. The bodices cut extremely low both back and
front; the fantastical head-dresses, designed to attract notice; here
a cap from the Pays de Caux, and there a Spanish mantilla; the hair
crimped and curled like a poodle's, or smoothed down in bandeaux over
the forehead; the close-fitting white stockings and limbs, revealed it
would not be easy to say how, but always at the right moment--all this
poetry of vice has fled. The license of question and reply, the public
cynicism in keeping with the haunt, is now unknown even at masquerades
or the famous public balls. It was an appalling, gay scene. The dazzling
white flesh of the women's necks and shoulders stood out in magnificent
contrast against the men's almost invariably sombre costumes. The murmur
of voices, the hum of the crowd, could be heard even in the middle of
the garden as a sort of droning bass, interspersed with _fioriture_ of
shrill laughter or clamor of some rare dispute. You saw gentlemen
and celebrities cheek by jowl with gallows-birds. There was something
indescribably piquant about the anomalous assemblage; the most
insensible of men felt its charm, so much so, that, until the very last
moment, Paris came hither to walk up and down on the wooden planks laid
over the cellars where men were at work on the new buildings; and
when the squalid wooden erections were finally taken down, great and
unanimous regret was felt.

Ladvocat the bookseller had opened a shop but a few days since in the
angle formed by the central passage which crossed the galleries; and
immediately opposite another bookseller, now forgotten, Dauriat, a bold
and youthful pioneer, who opened up the paths in which his rival was
to shine. Dauriat's shop stood in the row which gave upon the garden;
Ladvocat's, on the opposite side, looked out upon the court. Dauriat's
establishment was divided into two parts; his shop was simply a great
trade warehouse, and the second room was his private office.

Lucien, on this first visit to the Wooden Galleries, was bewildered by a
sight which no novice can resist. He soon lost the guide