Dark alleys open off here and there from the main thoroughfare, and narrow side streets, steep as flights of steps.
Low sheds and open stalls cling, limpet-like, to every available nook and corner.

An endless procession of trucks, wagons, water-carts, and fiacres rumbles perpetually by.

Here people live at their windows and in the doorways--the women talking from balcony to balcony, the men smoking, reading, playing at dominoes.

Here too are more cafes and cabarets, open-air stalls for the sale of fried fish, and cheap restaurants for workmen and students, where, for a sum equivalent to sevenpence half-penny English, the Quartier Latin regales itself upon meats and drinks of dark and enigmatical origin.

Close at hand is the Place and College of the Sorbonne--silent in the midst of noisy life, solitary in the heart of the most crowded quarter of Paris.