There were two parallel lanes covered by canvas and planks, with a few glass panes to let the daylight in. Here one walked quite simply on the packed earth, which downpours sometimes transformed into mud. Yet people came from all over to crowd into this place, which was nothing short of mag­nificent, and stroll between the rows of shops that would seem like mere booths compared to those that have come after them

This passage is the locus classicus for the presentation of the arcades; for notonly do the divagations on the flaneur and the weather develop out of it, but,also, what there is to be said about the construction of the arcades, in an eco­nomic and architectural vein, would have a place

Rue-galerie.—“The street-gallery . . . is the most important feature of a Phalan­stery and . . . cannot be conceived of in civilization. . . . Street-galleries . . . are heated in winter and ventilated in summer. .

Rainshowers annoy me, so I gave one the slip in an arcade. There are a great many of these glass-covered walkways, which often cross through the blocks of buildings and make several branchings, thus affording welcome shortcuts. Here and there they are constructed with great elegance, and in bad weather or after dark, when they are lit up bright as day, they offer promenades—and very popu­lar they are—past rows of glittering shops

Evidently people smoked in the arcades at a time when it was not yet customary to smoke in the street. “I must say a word here about life in the arcades, favored haunt of strollers and smokers, theater of operations for every kind of small business

“The coulisse3 guaranteed the ongoing life of the Stock Exchange. Here there was never closing time; there was almost never night.

The regime of specialties furnishes also—this said in passing—the historical-matrialist key to the flourishing (if not the inception) of genre painting in the Fortiesof the previous century

People associated the “genius of the Jacobins with the genius of the industrials,”but they also attributed to Louis Philippe the saying: “God be praised, and myshops too.

“The Passage du Caire is highly reminiscent, on a smaller scale, of the Passage du Saumon, which in the past existed on the Rue Montmartre, on the site of the present-day Rue Bachaumont.” Paul Leautaud, “Vieux Paris,” Mercure deFrance (October 15,1927), p.

“There, in the guise of a female glover, shone a beauty that was approachable but that, in the matter of youth, attached importance only to its own; she required her favorites to supply her with the finery from which she hoped to make a fortune. . . . This young and beautiful woman under glass was called ‘the Absolute’