glowing as a Rubens, with a ruddy down on his skin which attracted the
sunlight; and she, slight and sly, with a comical phiz under her tangle
of black curly hair.

Whilst talking Claude quickened his steps, and soon brought his
companion back to Saint Eustache again. Florent, whose legs were once
more giving way, dropped upon a bench near the omnibus office. The
morning air was freshening. At the far end of the Rue Rambuteau rosy
gleams were streaking the milky sky, which higher up was slashed by
broad grey rifts. Such was the sweet balsamic scent of this dawn, that
Florent for a moment fancied himself in the open country, on the brow of
a hill. But behind the bench Claude pointed out to him the many aromatic
herbs and bulbs on sale. All along the footway skirting the tripe
market there were, so to say, fields of thyme and lavender, garlic and
shallots; and round the young plane-trees on the pavement the vendors
had twined long branches of laurel, forming trophies of greenery. The
strong scent of the laurel leaves prevailed over every other odour.

At present the luminous dial of Saint Eustache was paling as a
night-light does when surprised by the dawn. The gas jets in the wine
shops in the neighbouring streets went out one by one, like stars
extinguished by the brightness. And Florent gazed at the vast markets
now gradually emerging from the gloom, from the dreamland in which
he had beheld them, stretching out their ranges of open palaces.
Greenish-grey in hue, they looked more solid now, and even more colossal
with their prodigious masting of columns upholding an endless expanse
of roofs. They rose up in geometrically shaped masses; and when all the
inner lights had been extinguished and the square uniform buildings were
steeped in the rising dawn, they seemed typical of some gigantic modern
machine, some engine, some caldron for the supply of a whole people,