Three Steps Down

A shop beneath the level of the street:

A passage at the side led to the private office; but in the provinces the processes of typography excite such a lively interest, that customers usually preferred to enter by way of the glass door in the street front, though they at once descended three steps, for the floor of the workshop lay below the level of the street.

From a larger description of Lucien’s print shop in Balzac’s Grand Illusions (”Two Poets”).

Tags: glass door, step, three steps