A horse-drawn omnibus has stopped in Place Gabriel Péri on the corner of rue Saint-Lazare. Passengers tumble off and set a course for the great railway terminal across the road. The upper deck appears to be almost fully occupied – the prospective passengers, adults and small children in summer finery, await a female straggler making a slow descent of the winding staircase. Pedestrians amble casually through the busy traffic, some with heads bowed, trusting to providence. The bus has travelled south from Batignolles down rue de Rome and will continue towards the Grands Boulevards. Thanks to Google Streetview (below) we can see that many of the buildings remain broadly unchanged and this location remains in use as a bus terminal although a century has passed since the card was posted in 1908. Finally we have a card that shows the view the bus passengers would have seen as they approached the station in the form in which it was rebuilt in the 1880s.
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