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.
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