At other times, on clear nights and fine dawns, they would climb on to the roofs, ascending thither by the steep staircases of the turrets at the angles of the pavilions.  Up above they found fields of leads, endless promenades and squares, a stretch of undulating country which belonged to them.  They rambled round the square roofs of the pavilions, followed the course of the long roofs of the covered ways, climbed and descended the slopes, and lost themselves in endless perambulations of discovery.  And when they grew tired of the lower levels they ascended still higher, venturing up the iron ladders, on which Cadine’s skirts flapped like flags.  Then they ran along the second tier of roofs beneath the open heavens.  There was nothing save the stars above them.  All sorts of sounds rose up from the echoing markets, a clattering and rumbling, a vague roar as of a distant tempest heard at nighttime.  At that height the morning breeze swept away the evil smells, the foul breath of the awaking markets.  They would kiss one another on the edge of the gutterings like sparrows frisking on the house-tops.  The rising fires of the sun illumined their faces with a ruddy glow.  Cadine laughed with pleasure at being so high up in the air, and her neck shone with iridescent tints like a dove’s; while Marjolin bent down to look at the street still wrapped in gloom, with his hands clutching hold of the leads like the feet of a wood-pigeon.  When they descended to earth again, joyful from their excursion in the fresh air, they would remark to one another that they were coming back from the country.

It was in the tripe market that they had made the acquaintance of Claude Lantier.  They went there every day, impelled thereto by an animal taste for blood, the cruel instinct of urchins who find amusement in the sight of severed heads.  A ruddy stream flowed along the gutters round the pavilion; they dipped the tips of their shoes in it, and dammed it up with leaves, so as to form large pools of blood.  They took a strong interest in the arrival of the loads of offal in carts which always smelt offensively, despite all the drenchings of water they got; they watched the unloading of the bundles of sheep’s trotters, which were piled up on the ground like filthy paving-stones, of the huge stiffened tongues, bleeding at their torn roots, and of the massive bell-shaped bullocks’ hearts.  But the spectacle which, above all others, made them quiver with delight was that of the big dripping hampers, full of sheep’s heads, with greasy horns and black muzzles, and strips of woolly skin dangling from bleeding flesh.  The sight of these conjured up in their minds the idea of some guillotine casting into the baskets the heads of countless victims.