Some women were purchasing Nice roses and violets; and Pierre looked at them as if he were interested in all that soft, delicate, perfumed luxury.

But suddenly he felt a horror of it and went off, starting along the Boulevards.
He walked straight before him without knowing why or whither.

The falling darkness surprised him as if it were an unexpected phenomenon.

Raising his eyes to the sky he felt astonished at seeing its azure gently pale between the slender black streaks of the chimney funnels.

And the huge golden letters by which names or trades were advertised on every balcony also seemed to him singular in the last gleams of the daylight.