When George Duroy found himself in the street he hesitated as to what he
should do. He wanted to run, to dream, to walk about thinking of the
future as he breathed the soft night air, but the thought of the series
of articles asked for by Daddy Walter haunted him, and he decided to go
home at once and set to work.
He walked along quickly, reached the outer boulevards, and followed
their line as far as the Rue Boursault, where he dwelt. The house, six
stories high, was inhabited by a score of small households,
trades-people or workmen, and he experienced a sickening sensation of
disgust, a longing to leave the place and live like well-to-do people in
a clean dwelling, as he ascended the stairs, lighting himself with wax
matches on his way up the dirty steps, littered with bits of paper,
cigarette ends, and scraps of kitchen refuse. A stagnant stench of
cooking, cesspools and humanity, a close smell of dirt and old walls,
which no rush of air could have driven out of the building, filled it
from top to bottom.
The young fellow's room, on the fifth floor, looked into a kind of
abyss, the huge cutting of the Western Railway just above the outlet by
the tunnel of the Batignolles station. Duroy opened his window and
leaned against the rusty iron cross-bar.
Below him, at the bottom of the dark hole, three motionless red lights
resembled the eyes of huge wild animals, and further on a glimpse could
be caught of others, and others again still further. Every moment
whistles, prolonged or brief, pierced the silence of the night, some
near at hand, others scarcely discernible, coming from a distance from
the direction of Asnieres. Their modulations were akin to those of the
human voice. One of them came nearer and nearer, with its plaintive
appeal growing louder and louder every moment, and soon a big yellow
light appeared advancing with a loud noise, and Duroy watched the
string of railway carriages swallowed up by the tunnel.