The day now really begins. Water-pails are clanging and sabots are clicking on the stones. The wine people set up a rumble by cleaning their casks with chains and water. The anvils of the iron-workers are ringing, and there comes the tink-tink-tink of the little hammers in the embossed-picture factory. The lumbering garbage-cart arrives to bear away the ash-bins, the lead-horse shaking his head to ring the bell on his neck in announcement of the approach. Street-venders and hawkers of various comestibles, each with his or her quaint musical cry, come in numbers. "_J'ai des beaux choux-fleurs! O, comme ils sont beaux!_" The fruit- and potato-women come after, and then the chair-menders. These market-women are early risers. They are at the great Halles Centrales at four o'clock to bargain for their wares; and besides good lungs they have a marvellous shrewdness, born of long dealings with French housewives. Always near eight may be heard, "_Du mouron pour les petits oiseaux!_" and all the birds in the court, familiar with the cry, pipe up for their chickweed. "_Voilà le bon fromage à la crème pour trois sous!_" cries a keen-faced little woman, her three-wheeled cart loaded with cream cheeses; and she gives a soup-plate full of them, with cream poured generously over, and as she pockets the money says, "_Voilà! ce que c'est bon avec des confitures!_" Cream cheeses and prayer! On Sunday mornings during the spring and summer the goat's-milk vender, blowing a reed-pipe, invades the passage with his living milk-cans,--a flock of eight hairy goats that know the route as well as he, and they are always willing to be milked when a customer offers a bowl. The tripe-man with his wares and bell is the last of the food-sellers of the day. The window-glass repairer, "_Vitrier!_" passes at nine, and then the beggars and strolling musicians and singers put in an appearance. In the afternoon the old-clo' man comes hobbling under his load of cast-off clothes, crying, "_Marchand d'habits!_" of which you can catch only "'_Chand d'habits!_" and the barrel-buyer, "Marchand de tonneaux!" The most musical of them all is the porcelain-mender, who cries, "_Voici le raccommodeur de porcelaines, faïence, cristal, poseur de robinets!_" and then plays a fragment of a hunting-song. [Illustration: 0037]