ich, when
evening came, thus stirred up its furnace.

Tired out and distracted, Pierre raised his eyes as he reached the Place
de l'Opera. Where was he then? The heart of the great city seemed to beat
on this spot, in that vast expanse where met so many thoroughfares, as if
from every point the blood of distant districts flowed thither along
triumphal avenues. Right away to the horizon stretched the great gaps of
the Avenue de l'Opera, the Rue du Quatre-Septembre, and the Rue de la
Paix, still showing clearly in a final glimpse of daylight, but already
starred with swarming sparks. The torrent of the Boulevard traffic poured
across the Place, where clashed, too, all that from the neighbouring
streets, with a constant turning and eddying which made the spot the most
dangerous of whirlpools. In vain did the police seek to impose some
little prudence, the stream of pedestrians still overflowed, wheels
became entangled and horses reared amidst all the uproar of the human
tide, which was as loud, as incessant, as the tempest voice of an ocean.
Then there was the detached mass of the opera-house, slowly steeped in
gloom, and rising huge and mysterious like a symbol, its lyre-bearing
figure of Apollo, right aloft, showing a last reflection of daylight
amidst the livid sky. And all the windows of the house-fronts began to
shine, gaiety sprang from those thousands of lamps which coruscated one
by one, a universal longing for ease and free gratification of each
desire spread with the increasing darkness; whilst, at long intervals,
the large globes of the electric lights shone as brightly as the moons of
the city's cloudless nights.

But why was he, Pierre, there, he asked himself, irritated and wondering.
Since Laveuve was dead he had but to go home, bury himself in his nook,
and close up door and windows, like one who was henceforth useless, who
had neither belief nor hope, and awaited naught save annihilation. It was
a long journey from the Place de l'Opera to his little house at Neuilly.
Still, however great his weariness, he would not take a cab, but retraced
his steps, turning towards the Madeleine again, and plunging into the
scramble of the pavements, amidst the deafening uproar from the roadway,
with a bitter desire to aggravate his wound and saturate himself with
revolt and anger. Was it not yonder at the corner of that street, at the
end of that Boulevard, that he would find the expected abyss into which
that rotten wo