It was not yet midnight. On the Boulevard below, Paris was thundering and prolonging the ardent day before making up its mind to go to bed. The rows of trees separated in a confused line the whiteness of the foot walk from the vague darkness of the roadway along which passed the rumble and the fleet lamps of the vehicles. On either edge of this dim strip of ground, the kiosks of the newspaper vendors shed their light here and there, like great Venetian lanterns, tall and strangely variegated, which had been set at regular intervals on the ground for some colossal illumination. But at this time of night their subdued brilliancy was lost in the glare of the neighbouring shop fronts. Not a shutter was up, the foot walks stretched away without a line of shadow under a stream of rays which lighted them with a golden dust, with the warm brilliant glare of full daylight. Maxime pointed out to Renée the Café Anglais, the windows of which were shining in front of them. The lofty branches of the trees somewhat prevented them, however, from seeing the houses and the footway across the Boulevard. They leaned forward and looked below them. There was a continual coming and going: promenaders passed by in groups, harlots in couples trailed their skirts which they raised from time to time with a languid gesture, casting wearied yet smiling glances around them. Under the window itself the tables of the Café Riche were spread out in the blaze of the gas-jets, the brilliancy of which penetrated half across the thoroughfare; and it was especially in the centre of this ardent focus that they saw the wan faces and pale smiles of the passers by. Around the little tables men and women were mingled together drinking. The girls were in showy dresses with their hair down their necks; they lounged about on their chairs and made loud remarks which the noise of the traffic prevented one from hearing. Renée especially noticed one woman who was dressed in a blue costume trimmed with white Maltese lace, and who sat alone at a table, leaning back with her hands on her stomach; she was waiting with a gloomy resigned look and leisurely sipping a glass of beer. Those who were walking, slowly disappeared among the crowd, and the young woman, who took an interest in their doings, let her eyes follow them, and gazed from one end of the Boulevard to the other, into the noisy confused depths of the thoroughfare full of the black swarm of promenaders and where the lights became mere sparks. And the endless procession, a strangely mingled crowd always the same, passed by with fatiguing regularity amid the bright colours and the dark depths, in the airy-like confusion of the thousand leaping flames which swept like waves out of the shops, lending colour to the transparencies of the windows and the kiosks, tracing fillets, letters and fiery designs over the house fronts, studding the darkness with stars and gliding along the roadway continually. Amid the deafening noise which rose on