The figure wore a lofty bridal coiffure picked out with sprigs of orange blossom, and smiled with a dollish smile.  Its eyes were pale blue; its eyebrows were very stiff and of exaggerated length; and its waxen cheeks and shoulders bore evident traces of the heat and smoke of the gas.  Cadine waited till the revolving figure again displayed its smiling face, and as its profile showed more distinctly and it slowly went round from left to right she felt perfectly happy.  Claude, however, was indignant, and, shaking Cadine, he asked her what she was doing in front of “that abomination, that corpse-like hussy picked up at the Morgue!” He flew into a temper with the “dummy’s” cadaverous face and shoulders, that disfigurement of the beautiful, and remarked that artists painted nothing but that unreal type of woman nowadays.  Cadine, however, remained unconvinced by his oratory, and considered the lady extremely beautiful.  Then, resisting the attempts of the artist to drag her away by the arm, and scratching her black mop in vexation, she pointed to an enormous ruddy tail, severed from the quarters of some vigorous mare, and told him she would have liked to have a crop of hair like that.

During the long rambles when Claude, Cadine, and Marjolin prowled about the neighbourhood of the markets, they saw the iron ribs of the giant building at the end of every street.  Wherever they turned they caught sudden glimpses of it; the horizon was always bounded by it; merely the aspect under which it was seen varied.  Claude was perpetually turning round, and particularly in the Rue Montmartre, after passing the church.  From that point the markets, seen obliquely in the distance, filled him with enthusiasm.  A huge arcade, a giant, gaping gateway, was open before him; then came the crowding pavilions with their lower and upper roofs, their countless Venetian shutters and endless blinds, a vision, as it were, of superposed houses and palaces; a Babylon of metal of Hindoo delicacy of workmanship, intersected by hanging terraces, aerial galleries, and flying bridges poised over space.  The trio always returned to this city round which they strolled, unable to stray more than a hundred yards away.  They came back to it during the hot afternoons when the Venetian shutters were closed and the blinds lowered.  In the covered ways all seemed to be asleep, the ashy greyness was streaked by yellow bars of sunlight falling through the high windows.  Only a subdued murmur broke the silence; the steps of a few hurrying passers-by resounded on the footways; whilst the badge-wearing porters sat in rows on the stone ledges at the corners of the pavilions, taking off their boots and nursing their aching feet.  The quietude was that of a colossus at rest, interrupted at times by some cock-crow rising from the cellars below.