When the shops are open there is at any rate life enough of one kind or other.

In most parts the shops have no window-fronts.

Glass, indeed, there is little of anywhere, and the very name of plate-glass is unknown.

The dark, gloomy shops varying in size between a coach-house and a wine-vault, have their wide shutter-doors flung open to the streets.

A feeble lamp hung at the back of every shop you pass, before a painted Madonna shrine, makes the darkness of their interiors visible.