The sun had risen higher in the sky, and the pavements were still warm from the previous day; the gay town smelled like the close, fetid atmosphere of the bedroom, which streamed through the open windows and hung heavily in the still air. The sunbeams heated the dust which rose in clouds from the carpets beaten against the doorsteps; showy advertisements flashed from privies and news-stalls, and a suffocating smell of ammonia penetrated through the half-open doors; cigar ends, tobacco, manure, orange skins, celery stalks, pieces of paper from forgotten refuse heaps were carried away by the rushing stream which gushed from the main and swept everything towards the gratings of the gutter.
The old man cried his wares, but carts and omnibuses drowned his voice, and no one bought. Tired, forsaken by every one, he sat down on a seat under the plane trees. But the sunbeams found him out, and scorched him in spite of the dusty leaves. How dismal the sun appeared to the worn-out traveller, who longed for an overcast sky and a downpour to relieve the unbearable heat, which robbed his nerves of their strength and shrivelled up his muscles.
Yet the torture of the excessive heat did not make him insensible to the torture of hunger and the dread of the morrow. He rose, seized the shafts of his barrow, and toiled up the steep incline which leads to the Arc de Triomphe, shouting incessantly—
"Quatre liards la botte!"
At the last street corner a little dressmaker bought two bunches.
He dragged himself through the Champs Elysées, and met the wealthy man, seated in his carriage behind his English coachman, on his way to the Bois de Boulogne, there to brood over the problem of life. The palaces and large restaurants bought nothing; the fierce rays of the sun dried up the water-cress, and the long green leaves of his cauliflowers hung limp, so that he was obliged to sprinkle them with water at the fountain near the Rond-Point.
It was noon when he passed the Place de la Concorde and arrived at the Quays. Before the restaurants men were sitting and lunching; some of them had already arrived at the coffee. They looked well-fed, but bored, as if they were fulfilling a melancholy and painful duty by keeping alive. But to the old man they were happy mortals who had staved off death for a few hours, while he felt his soul shrinking like a dried apple.
The barrow rattled past the Pont-Neuf, and every stone against which the wheels pushed shook the muscles and nerves of his tired arms. He had not broken his fast since the early morning; his voice sounded thin like the voice of a consumptive, so that his cries were more like cries for help now, with little preliminary sighs caused by want of breath.
His feet were burning and his hands trembled; he felt as if the marrow in his spine were melting with the heat, and the thin blood hammered in his temples as he turned towards the city, seeking the shade of the Quai de l'Horloge. He halted for a moment before a wine-shop in the Place de Parvis, half inclined to spend his few pennies on a glass of wine. But he pulled himself together and trudged on, past Notre-Dame, towards the Morgue.
He could not drag himself away from this mysterious little house, where so many problems of life have been solved, and he entered. How cool and beautiful it was inside, where the dead lay on marble slabs, the hoar-frost on their hair and beards sparkling as on a beautiful, bright winter day. Some of them looked distressed, because the rush of the water into their lungs, or the stab of the knife into the heart, had given them pain; one of them smiled as if he were glad that all was over; one lay there with an expression of indifference on his face, as if nothing mattered; the problem was solved, at any rate: he had lived until he died. No more clothes required, no more food, no shelter! No sorrow, no cares. All held in their grasp the greatest boon life has to bestow: a calm which neither want, failure of crops, sickness, death, war or famine, American wheat or the hard laws which regulate wages, could disturb. Sleep without dreams, how gentle a sleep! And without an awakening, how splendid!