As the shabby section of the audience rose to its feet, waving its hats and food-wrappers, a rich, stale smell wafted through the auditorium. It had something of the fog on the boulevard outside, where the pavements were sticky with rain, but also something more intimate : it suggested old stew and course tobacco, the coat racks and bookshelves of a pawnshop, and damp straw mattresses impregnated with urine and patchouli. It was – as though the set designer had intended some ironical epilogue – the smell of the real Latin Quarter.

As the shabby section of the audience rose to its feet, waving its hats and food-wrappers, a rich, stale smell wafted through the auditorium. It had something of the fog on the boulevard outside, where the pavements were sticky with rain, but also something more intimate : it suggested old stew and course tobacco, the coat racks and bookshelves of a pawnshop, and damp straw mattresses impregnated with urine and patchouli. It was – as though the set designer had intended some ironical epilogue – the smell of the real Latin Quarter.

– Graham Robb –

Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris

© License assigned to YouCanQuoteME. License CC BY-NC 4.0

📲 Copy this QR code to share the phrase wherever you want