It is the caparison of abandon, the veil of oblivion.

Who, then, can despise it--aside from certain persons whose lamentable lot must often have wrung a tear from you?
"Imagine living in one of these Paris _passages_.

Think of a consumptive spitting blood and suffocating in a room one flight up, behind the 'ass-back' gables of, say the passage des Panoramas, for instance.

When the window is open the dust comes in impregnated with snuff and saturated with clammy exudations.

The invalid, choking, begs for air, and in order that he may breathe the window is _closed_.
"Well, the dust that you complain of is rather milder than that.