A street in Leiden, where he has journeyed from his country home. He has come to pick up his mail--directed as usual to an erroneous address in order to mask his whereabouts in the Netherlands from the too curious back in France--and to pay a visit on an intellectual supporter. On his journey here he had gone out of his way to see a beached whale nearby--one of several to have become trapped on shore in recent months.

The late morning sky dotted with fleecy clouds. 

He passses along the way to Leiden several handsome country cottages.

After the heat and humidity of summer, the populace enjoys the gentler warmth of a fall day. On the front stoop, in a doorway, beside a freshly opened window, they take the air. As he strolls beside a canal foul with the smell of the human excrement accumulated there, down a wide, immaculate street lined with trees, past brick and stone, snug, shipshape houses with red clay tile roofs, there is much to see.

In another open doorway a few houses away, a young girl, hands patiently folded, leans back against her solicitous mother as she carefully picks lice out of her daughter's blond hair. Within the same house, barely visible through one of the large front windows, the girl's brother grooms his dog, crushing the fleas he  finds in its fur between the fingernails of his thumb and forefinger, and a servant inspects the floor inch by inch for louse eggs and prepares to spread lye--as well as chalk and turpentine on the walls--to prevent their return.
 

Before a house a maidservant on her knees scrubs and sands the front stoop and will do the same--as she does each and every morning--for that portion of the sidewalk and the street itself belonging to the household. In the open doorway of the three-story, many-windowed house of brick, a woman in search of better light sits threading a needle as she prepares to sew. To the left, in a doorway leading to a courtyard, another servant opens a barrel. If he had walked through the door and turned to the right, he might have discovered a small girl holding her dog in her lap, a sword in its scabbard hung over an open door, two Dutch men talking business over tankards of beer and tobacco.

Without even acknowledging his presence, lost in thought, he passes a rat catcher, a grotesque man dressed in rags, leaning on a walking stick, accompanied by an equally mangy dog.

Nearby a prostitute plies her trade.

A woman peels apples, aided by her small daughter who stands beside her, unwinding with delight each fruit's long ribbon of skin.

A  game of skittles is in progress.

A fish vendor offers her goods.

A beggar approaches with great caution, careful not to be seen by the constabulary who will arrest him on sight, but is rebuffed without acknowledgment.

At another open window, an elegantly dressed woman stands reading a letter.

Walking straight ahead, he notices none of this. After all, he had withdrawn to the Netherlands a decade ago in search of solitude, not to trouble himself with his fellow citizens.