In the Rue Blanche there are
_portes-cocheres_, but in Rue Lepic there are narrow doors,
partially grated, open on narrow passages at the end of which,
squeezed between the wall and the stairs, are small rooms where
_concierges_ sit, eternally _en camisole_, amid vegetables
and sewing. The wooden blinds are flung back on the faded yellow
walls, revealing a portion of white bed-curtain and a heavy
middle-aged woman, _en camisole_, passing between the cooking
stove, in which a rabbit in a tin pail lies steeping, and the men
sitting at their trades in the windows. The smell of leather follows
me for several steps; a few doors farther a girl sits trimming a
bonnet, her mother beside her. The girl looks up, pale with the
exhausting heat. At the corner of the next street there is the
_marchand de vins_, and opposite the dirty little _charbonnier_,
and standing about a little hole which he calls his _boutique_
a group of women in discoloured _peignoirs_ and heavy carpet
slippers. They have baskets on their arms. Everywhere traces of
meagre and humble life, but nowhere do I see the demented wretch
common in our London streets--the man with bare feet, the furtive
and frightened creature, gnawing a crust and drawing a black,
tattered shirt about his consumptive chest.
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