ve liked to have had something
to eat. Then, on raising her eyes she beheld the name of the Rue
Marcadet, and she suddenly had the idea of going to see Goujet at
his forge. He had no end of times told her to look in any day she was
curious to see how iron was wrought. Besides in the presence of other
workmen she would ask for Etienne, and make believe that she had merely
called for the youngster.

The factory was somewhere on this end of the Rue Marcadet, but she
didn't know exactly where and street numbers were often lacking on those
ramshackle buildings separated by vacant lots. She wouldn't have lived
on this street for all the gold in the world. It was a wide street, but
dirty, black with soot from factories, with holes in the pavement and
deep ruts filled with stagnant water. On both sides were rows of
sheds, workshops with beams and brickwork exposed so that they seemed
unfinished, a messy collection of masonry. Beside them were dubious
lodging houses and even more dubious taverns. All she could recall was
that the bolt factory was next to a yard full of scrap iron and rags,
a sort of open sewer spread over the ground, storing merchandise worth
hundreds of thousands of francs, according to Goujet.

The street was filled with a noisy racket. Exhaust pipes on roofs
puffed out violent jets of steam; an automatic sawmill added a rhythmic
screeching; a button factory shook the ground with the rumbling of its
machines. She was looking up toward the Montmartre height, hesitant,
uncertain whether to continue, when a gust of wind blew down a mass of
sooty smoke that covered the entire street. She closed her eyes and held
her breath. At that moment she heard the sound of hammers in cadence.
Without realizing it, she had arrived directly in front of the bolt
factory which she now recognized by the vacant lot beside it full of
piles of scrap iron and old rags.

She still hesitated, not knowing where to enter. A broken fence opened
a passage which seemed to lead through the heaps of rubbish from some
buildings recently pulled down. Two planks had been thrown across a
large puddle of muddy water that barred the way. She ended by venturing
along them, turned to the left and found herself lost in the depths of
a strange forest of old carts, standing on end with their shafts in the
air, and of hovels in ruins, the wood-work of which was still standing.
Toward the back, stabbing through the half-light of sundown, a flame
gleamed