Half an hour later, he came out into the growing light of the dawn, and looked vacantly up and down the short stretch of the rue Veron as if uncertain what direction he desired to take. It was not yet five o'clock, but already the quartier was astir. As Papa Labesse hesitated in the doorway, a band of laborers passed the corner, laughing, on their way to their work in the Rochechouart section of the Métropolitain. The little assistant was taking down the shutters of the laundry across the way, and on every side was the sound of opening doors and windows, and voices suddenly raised in greeting or comment upon the weather. Madame Rollin lumbered by, carrying a bundle of clothes on her way to the public lavoir. "Hé! bonjour, Papa Labesse!" she cried in passing. "A fine morning--what?" Papa Labesse turned suddenly, clamped the padlock on his door, and was presently shuffling along the avenue de Clichy. As he went, the city awoke around him to full activity, but he noted his surroundings even less than he had been wont to do of late, on his climbs to the Butte. The return of Marcelle had quickened him, but for a moment only. Now he was again, as it were, a mere automaton, going forward without volition, or purpose, or perception, on, on, on, whither and why he knew not. After a time he was conscious of a great weariness. The noisy clamor of the crowds on the avenue, marketing and bargaining in the new sunlight, seemed unaccountably to have given place to quiet; and looking about him, Papa Labesse learned from a little signboard that he was passing through the porte de Clichy. The octroi officials looked curiously at the shuffling, stooping figure as he went by, and one of them laughed. "As full as an egg, the grandfather!" he said. Turning to the left, Papa Labesse toiled up upon the slope of the fortifications, stumbled on for a little, and, finally, as his exhaustion gained upon him, flung himself, face down, upon the grass. He had passed the need of sleep long since, but he lay quite motionless for a long time, with his chin on his hands. Directly before him, seen more clearly from the elevation upon which he lay, was the dingy suburb of Clichy, and, to the left, its still dingier neighbor, Levallois-Perret, studded, both of them, with gaunt sheds of blackened wood, and ghastly factories and storehouses of cheap brick, their endless windows, in close-set rows, giving them the appearance of rusted waffle-irons, and their tall chimneys slabbering slow coils of smoke. In the immediate foreground, a man with a scythe was lazily cutting the long grass on the outward slope of the fortifications. Presently Papa Labesse began to talk to himself. His eyes were very bright, and as he spoke they jumped nimbly from shed to shed, from factory to factory, of the dispiriting scene before him.