It was her last promenade--from the blood-stained courtyards, where animals were slaughtered, down to the pale hospital wards, where death stiffened the patients stretched between the sheets.

It was between these two establishments that she had passed her life.
"Sir, just listen." But suddenly she perceived her shadow on the ground.

When she approached a gas-lamp it gradually became less vague, till it stood out at last in full force--an enormous shadow it was, positively grotesque, so portly had she become.

Her stomach, breast and hips, all equally flabby jostled together as it were.

She walked with such a limp that the shadow bobbed almost topsy-turvy at every step she took; it looked like a real Punch! Then as she left the street lamp behind her, the Punch grew taller, becoming in fact gigantic, filling the whole Boulevard, bobbing to and fro in such style that it seemed fated to smash its nose against the trees or the houses.