Le ventre de Paris

About “Le ventre de Paris”

In the middle of the great silence and the desert of the avenue, the market carts climbed toward Paris, their wheels bouncing with a rhythmic clatter that echoed against the facades of the houses, which were still asleep on both sides of the road behind the blurred lines of the elms. A cart of cabbages and a cart of peas had joined the eight carts of turnips and carrots coming down from Nanterre at the Neuilly bridge. The horses moved on their own, their heads low, with a steady and lazy gait that the climb slowed further. This scene is from a 1873 novel by Émile Zola.