midday
The pavement , as it peeped out here and there through a _ moraine _ of superimposed mud and offal , was seen to consist of small oblong stones , like petrified kidney potatoes . The houses , some leaning this way , some that , with projecting upper stories and overhanging gable-roofs , nodded together overhead , leaving but a narrow strip of sky down which the sunlight strove in vain to struggle . Long poles upon which were suspended old clothes hung out to air , and ragged linen to dry , stood out like tattered banners from the attic windows . Here , too , every ground-floor was a shop , open , unglazed , cavernous , where the dealer lay _ perdu _ in the gloom of midday , like a spider in the midst of his web , surrounded by piles of old bottles , old iron , old clothes , old furniture , or whatever else his stock in trade might consist of . Of such streets -- less like streets , indeed , than narrow , overhanging gorges and ravines of damp and mouldering stone -- of such streets , I say , intricate , winding , ill-lighted , unventilated , pervaded by an atmosphere compounded of the fumes of fried fish , tobacco , old leather , mildew and dirt , there were hundreds in the Quartier Latin of my time : -- streets to the last degree unattractive as places of human habitation , but rich , nevertheless , in historic associations , in picturesque detail , and in archaeological interest . Such a street , for instance , was the Rue du Fouarre -LRB- scarcely a feature of which has been modernized to this day -RRB- , where Dante , when a student of theology in Paris , attended the lectures of one Sigebert , a learned monk of Gemblours , who discoursed to his scholars in the open air , they sitting round him the while upon fresh straw strewn upon the pavement . Such a street was the Rue des Cordiers , close adjoining the Rue des Grès , where Rousseau lived and wrote ; and the Rue du Dragon , where might then be seen the house of Bernard Palissy ; and the Rue des Maçons , where Racine lived ; and the Rue des Marais , where Adrienne Lecouvreur -- poor , beautiful , generous , ill-fated Adrienne Lecouvreur !