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, which they place at the corner of their
counter, and the passer-by can then distinguish what the depths of these
holes sheltering night in the daytime, contain. On this blackish line
of shop fronts, the windows of a cardboard-box maker are flaming: two
schist-lamps pierce the shadow with a couple of yellow flames. And, on
the other side of the arcade a candle, stuck in the middle of an argand
lamp glass, casts glistening stars into the box of imitation jewelry.
The dealer is dozing in her cupboard, with her hands hidden under her
shawl.
A few years back, opposite this dealer, stood a shop whose bottle-green
woodwork excreted damp by all its cracks. On the signboard, made of a
long narrow plank, figured, in black letters the word: MERCERY. And on
one of the panes of glass in the door was written, in red, the name of
a woman: _Therese Raquin_.
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