巴黎，金鸡街，早上七点钟。街上响起一连串大吵大闹的声音，怒气冲冲，又沙又哑。蒙塞太太，我所住旅馆对面另一家小旅馆的老板娘，走出来站在人行道上向三楼的某个房客喊话。她的赤脚勉强塞在木鞋里，花白的头发披散着。
蒙塞太太：“贱货！贱货！别把臭虫按死到墙纸上，我跟你说过多少次？你以为你把整个旅馆都买下来了，呃？你就不能像别人一样扔到窗户外面？婊子，贱货！”
三楼的女人：“母牛！”
话音刚落，街两边的窗户都猛地打开，响起七嘴八舌的喊叫声，半条街上的人都加入了争吵。十分钟后，在听到一队骑兵骑马经过时，人们一下子全住了口，不再喊叫，而是看骑兵。
我勾勒出这幕情景，只是为了略表金鸡街的韵味，倒不是说那里除了吵架就没有别的——话虽如此，我们还是几乎每天早上都少不了听到上述那种吵闹，说来就来，至少会有一场。吵架声，街头小贩有气无力的叫卖声，在鹅卵石街道上抢橘子皮的小孩子的大呼小叫声，还有夜晚响亮的歌声和垃圾车的酸臭味，这些构成了这条街的氛围。
这条街很窄——状如一道峡谷，两边都是高大而丑陋的房子，奇形怪状地互相凑近，像是正要塌掉，却全被定住了。这些房子都是旅馆，房客住得满当当的，主要是波兰人、阿拉伯人和意大利人。旅馆楼底是小酒馆，可以花相当于一先令的钱买醉。星期六晚上，这一带的男性居民中有三分之一都会醉掉。男人会为了女人打架，住在最廉价旅馆里的阿拉伯苦力经常莫名其妙地结仇，拿椅子来解决，偶尔还用上左轮手枪。夜里警察只敢两个一起来。这是个闹哄哄的地方。然而在这一片喧嚣和污秽中，还住着平日品行端正的法国店主、面包师和洗衣妇等诸如此类的人，安分守己，埋头发着小财。这是一处很具代表性的巴黎贫民窟。
The Rue du Coq d’Or, Paris, seven in the morning. A succession of furious, choking yells from the street. Madame Monce, who kept the little hotel opposite mine, had come out on to the pavement to address a lodger on the third floor. Her bare feet were stuck into sabots and her grey hair was streaming down.
Madame monce: ‘Salope! Salope! How many times have I told you not to squash bugs on the wallpaper? Do you think you’ve bought the hotel, eh? Why can’t you throw them out of the window like everyone else? Putin! Salope!’
The Woman On The Third Floor: ‘Vache!’
Thereupon a whole variegated chorus of yells, as windows were flung open on every side and half the street joined in the quarrel. They shut up abruptly ten minutes later, when a squadron of cavalry rode past and people stopped shouting to look at them.
I sketch this scene, just to convey something of the spirit of the Rue du Coq d’Or. Not that quarrels were the only thing that happened there—but still, we seldom got through the morning without at least one outburst of this description. Quarrels, and the desolate cries of street hawkers, and the shouts of children chasing orange-peel over the cobbles, and at night loud singing and the sour reek of the refuse-carts, made up the atmosphere of the street.
It was a very narrow street—a ravine of tall, leprous houses, lurching towards one another in queer attitudes, as though they had all been frozen in the act of collapse. All the houses were hotels and packed to the tiles with lodgers, mostly Poles, Arabs and Italians. At the foot of the hotels were tiny bistros, where you could be drunk for the equivalent of a shilling. On Saturday nights about a third of the male population of the quarter was drunk. There was fighting over women, and the Arab navvies who lived in the cheapest hotels used to conduct mysterious feuds, and fight them out with chairs and occasionally revolvers. At night the policemen would only come through the street two together. It was a fairly rackety place. And yet amid the noise and dirt lived the usual respectable French shopkeepers, bakers and laundresses and the like, keeping themselves to themselves and quietly piling up small fortunes. It was quite a representative Paris slum.
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