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.