Our way lay through some of the best streets of Villette, streets brightly lit, and far more lively now than at high noon. How brilliant seemed the shops! How glad, gay, and abundant flowed the tide of life along the broad pavement! While I looked, the thought of the Rue Fossette came across me⁠—of the walled-in garden and schoolhouse, and of the dark, vast classes , where, as at this very hour, it was my wont to wander all solitary, gazing at the stars through the high, blindless windows, and listening to the distant voice of the reader in the refectory, monotonously exercised upon the lecture pieuse . Thus must I soon again listen and wander; and this shadow of the future stole with timely sobriety across the radiant present.