Shouts and calls, the noise of falling wood, or of iron chains slipping to the ground, the heavy thud of loads of vegetables discharged from the waggons, and the grating of wheels as the carts were backed against the footways, filled the yet sonorous awakening, whose near approach could be felt and heard in the throbbing gloom.  Glancing over the pile of cabbages behind him.  Florent caught sight of a man wrapped like a parcel in his cloak, and snoring away with his head upon some baskets of plums.  Nearer to him, on his left, he could distinguish a lad, some ten years old, slumbering between two heaps of endive, with an angelic smile on his face.  And as yet there seemed to be nothing on that pavement that was really awake except the lanterns waving from invisible arms, and flitting and skipping over the sleep of the vegetables and human beings spread out there in heaps pending the dawn.  However, what surprised Florent was the sight of some huge pavilions on either side of the street, pavilions with lofty roofs that seemed to expand and soar out of sight amidst a swarm of gleams.  In his weakened state of mind he fancied he beheld a series of enormous, symmetrically built palaces, light and airy as crystal, whose fronts sparkled with countless streaks of light filtering through endless Venetian shutters.  Gleaming between the slender pillar shafts these narrow golden bars seemed like ladders of light mounting to the gloomy line of the lower roofs, and then soaring aloft till they reached the jumble of higher ones, thus describing the open framework of immense square halls, where in the yellow flare of the gas lights a multitude of vague, grey, slumbering things was gathered together.

At last Florent turned his head to look about him, distressed at not knowing where he was, and filled with vague uneasiness by the sight of that huge and seemingly fragile vision.  And now, as he raised his eyes, he caught sight of the luminous dial and the grey massive pile of Saint Eustache’s Church.  At this he was much astonished.  He was close to Saint Eustache, yet all was novel to him.

However, Madame Francois had come back again, and was engaged in a heated discussion with a man who carried a sack over his shoulder and offered to buy her carrots for a sou a bunch.

“Really, now, you are unreasonable, Lacaille!” said she.  “You know quite well that you will sell them again to the Parisians at four and five sous the bunch.  Don’t tell me that you won’t!  You may have them for two sous the bunch, if you like.”

Then, as the man went off, she continued:  “Upon my word, I believe some people think that things grow of their own accord!  Let him go and find carrots at a sou the bunch elsewhere, tipsy scoundrel that he is!  He’ll come back again presently, you’ll see.”