Excerpt from Eugenie Grandet In this street the ground floor apartments de voted to business purposes are neither shops nor warehouses; those who are interested in the Middle Ages will find there the ou'vroueres of our ancestors in all their artless simplicity. These low-studded rooms, which have neither front windows nor show cases, nor glass doors, are deep and dark, and en tirely devoid of ornament without or within. The door is in two parts, roughly bound with iron; the upper part opens in and folds back, the lower, fur nished with a bell worked by a spring, is constantly opening and closing. Light and air reach this damp, cavernous place either through the upper part of the door, or through the space between the ceil ing and the little wall waist high in which are set solid shutters, removed in the morning, replaced at night and held in place by bars of iron, bolted in. These walls are used to display the wares of the oc cupant. No charlatanism here. According to the nature of the business, the specimens consist of two or three tubs of salt and codfish, a few packages of sailcloth, cordage, strips of brass hanging from the beams of the ceiling, iron hoops along the walls, or a few pieces of cloth on shelves. You enter. A neat, spruce young girl, with red arms and a white neckerchief, lays aside her knitting and calls her father or her mother, who comes forward and attends to your wants phlegmatically, pleasantly, morosely. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.