Rue de Bussy is the Paris street where Eveline Hutchins establishes an independent home, making an ordinary neighborhood market and a modest salon the setting for both domestic routine and private political refuge. The street marks a change from living with Eleanor Stoddard: Eveline now has a small place of her own, where the rhythms of shopping, resting, and receiving visitors offer a measure of privacy amid the unsettled life of postwar Paris.

A New Paris Home

By early November, Eveline had moved to a little place on Rue de Bussy, where a street market was held every day. This was distinct from her earlier home with Eleanor on the Quai de la Tournelle, in a mansard apartment overlooking the Seine River. The change shifted the focus from a shared apartment with a sweeping river view to Eveline’s own neighborhood and rooms.

The street also sat within the orbit of Eveline’s work. She and Eleanor shared a Red Cross office, where their days included preparing scrapbooks of ruined French farms and orphaned and starving children for campaigns back home. Rue de Bussy gave Eveline a separate domestic space to return to after that work, rather than simply extending the shared life she had once led with Eleanor.

Market and Salon

The market on Rue de Bussy is described through its cheerful evening atmosphere: under the gaslights, the street smelled of fresh greens, butter, and cheese. Eveline bought rolls for breakfast and small cakes in case someone came to tea. These purchases make the location tangible through everyday provisions, and show her anticipating company even when she is alone.

At home, the little salon was pink and white, with a fire of briquettes burning in the grate. Eveline wrapped herself in a steamer rug and lay down on the couch. The market’s bustle and the salon’s warmth form two sides of her life on the street: a public neighborhood outside, and a small, comfortable interior in which she can withdraw and rest.

Refuge and Political Crosscurrents

At the end of April, Don Stevens arrived in Paris in civilian clothes after resigning from the reconstruction unit. Broke, he asked Eveline to put him up. She worried about the concierge and about Eleanor or J. Ward Moorehouse finding out, but, feeling desperate and bitter, agreed on the condition that Don tell no one where he was staying. Her Rue de Bussy home thus became a concealed refuge, its privacy tested by the social scrutiny she feared.

Don brought revolutionary politics into that private arrangement. He teased Eveline about her bourgeois concerns, argued that such matters would not count after the revolution, and said that the first test of strength was approaching on May Day. He also had her read L’Humanité and took her to Rue du Croissant, showing her the restaurant where Jaurès had been assassinated. Rue de Bussy itself is not the site of those political landmarks, but Eveline’s lodging is the base from which Don draws her toward them.

Significance in Eveline’s Story

Rue de Bussy is significant less as a public landmark than as a lived-in address. Its daily market, small salon, and cautious hospitality give concrete form to Eveline’s attempt to sustain a life apart from her former shared home. The apartment can be restful, as when she returns with breakfast rolls and lies down by the fire; it can also become a place of risk when she conceals Don from the people around her.

The street’s modest domestic scale contrasts with the larger political upheavals surrounding the end of the war. Eveline’s work remains tied to the Red Cross office and its images of wartime suffering, while her private rooms become a setting for companionship, secrecy, and arguments about the coming revolution. Rue de Bussy therefore anchors the novel’s political atmosphere in the practical question of where Eveline lives, whom she lets in, and what she chooses to keep private.