The lamp preventing her seeing, Gervaise raised herself on tiptoe, still
holding the handkerchief to her lips. She looked to the right, towards
the Boulevard Rochechouart, where groups of butchers, in aprons smeared
with blood, were hanging about in front of the slaughter-houses; and the
fresh breeze wafted occasionally a stench of slaughtered beasts. Looking
to the left, she scanned a long avenue that ended nearly in front of
her, where the white mass of the Lariboisiere Hospital was then in
course of construction. Slowly, from one end of the horizon to the
other, she followed the octroi wall, behind which she sometimes heard,
during night time, the shrieks of persons being murdered; and she
searchingly looked into the remote angles, the dark corners, black with
humidity and filth, fearing to discern there Lantier's body, stabbed to
death.

She looked at the endless gray wall that surrounded the city with its
belt of desolation. When she raised her eyes higher, she became aware of
a bright burst of sunlight. The dull hum of the city's awakening already
filled the air. Craning her neck to look at the Poissonniere gate, she
remained for a time watching the constant stream of men, horses, and
carts which flooded down from the heights of Montmartre and La Chapelle,
pouring between the two squat octroi lodges. It was like a herd of
plodding cattle, an endless throng widened by sudden stoppages into
eddies that spilled off the sidewalks into the street, a steady
procession of laborers on their way back to work with tools slung over
their back and a loaf of bread under their arm. This human inundation
kept pouring down into Paris to be constantly swallowed up. Gervaise
leaned further out at the risk of falling when she thought she
recognized Lantier among the throng. She pressed the handkerchief
tighter against her mouth, as though to push back the pain within her.