Chapter 2




Florent had just begun to study law in Paris when his mother died. She
lived at Le Vigan, in the department of the Gard, and had taken for
her second husband one Quenu, a native of Yvetot in Normandy, whom some
sub-prefect had transplanted to the south and then forgotten there. He
had remained in employment at the sub-prefecture, finding the country
charming, the wine good, and the women very amiable. Three years after
his marriage he had been carried off by a bad attack of indigestion,
leaving as sole legacy to his wife a sturdy boy who resembled him. It
was only with very great difficulty that the widow could pay the college
fees of Florent, her elder son, the issue of her first marriage. He
was a very gentle youth, devoted to his studies, and constantly won the
chief prizes at school. It was upon him that his mother lavished all her
affection and based all her hopes. Perhaps, in bestowing so much love on
this slim pale youth, she was giving evidence of her preference for her
first husband, a tender-hearted, caressing Provencal, who had loved
her devotedly. Quenu, whose good humour and amiability had at first
attracted her, had perhaps displayed too much self-satisfaction, and
shown too plainly that he looked upon himself as the main source
of happiness. At all events she formed the opinion that her
younger son--and in southern families younger sons are still often
sacrificed--would never do any good; so she contented herself with
sending him to a school kept by a neighbouring old maid, where the lad
learned nothing but how to idle his time away. The two brothers grew up
far apart from each other, as though they were strangers.

When Florent arrived at Le Vigan his mother was already buried. She had
insisted upon having her illness concealed from him till the very last
moment, for fear of disturbing his studies. Thus he found little Quenu,
who was then twelve years old, sitting and sobbing alone on a table in
the middle of the kitchen. A furniture dealer, a neighbour, gave him
particulars of his mother's last hours. She had reached the end of her
resources, had killed herself by the hard work which she had undertaken
to earn sufficient money that her elder son might continue his legal
studies. To her modest trade in ribbons, the profits of which were but
small, she had been obliged to add other occupations, which kept her
up very late at night. Her one idea of seeing Florent established as an
advocate, holding a good position in the town, had gradually caused her
to become hard and miserly, without pity for either herself or others.
Little Quenu was allowed to wander about in ragged breeches, and in
blouses from which the sleeves were falling away. He never dared to
serve himself at table, but waited till he received his allowance of
bread from his mother's hands. She gave herself equally thin slices, and
it was to the effects of this regimen that she had succumbed, in deep
despair at having failed to accomplish her self-allotted task.

This story made a most painful impression upon Florent's tender nature,
and his sobs wellnigh choked him. He took his little half brother in his
arms, held him to his breast, and kissed him as though to restore to him
the love of which he had unwittingly deprived him. Then he looked at the
lad's gaping shoes, torn sleeves, and dirty hands, at all the manifest
signs of wretchedness and neglect. And he told him that he would take
him away, and that they would both live happily together. The next day,
when he began to inquire into affairs, he felt afraid that he would not
be able to keep sufficient money to pay for the journey back to Paris.
However, he was determined to leave Le Vigan at any cost. He was
fortunately able to sell the little ribbon business, and this enabled
him to discharge his mother's debts, for despite her strictness in money
matters she had gradually run up bills. Then, as there was nothing left,
his mother's neighbour, the furniture dealer, offered him five hundred
francs for her chattels and stock of linen. It was a very good bargain
for the dealer, but the young man thanked him with tears in his eyes.
He bought his brother some new clothes, and took him away that same
evening.

On his return to Paris he gave up all thought of continuing to attend
the Law School, and postponed every ambitious project. He obtained a
few pupils, and established himself with little Quenu in the Rue Royer
Collard, at the corner of the Rue Saint Jacques, in a big room which he
furnished with two iron bedsteads, a wardrobe, a table, and four chairs.
He now had a child to look after, and this assumed paternity was very
pleasing to him. During the earlier days he attempted to give the lad
some lessons when he returned home in the evening, but Quenu was an
unwilling pupil. He was dull of understanding, and refused to learn,
bursting into tears and regretfully recalling the time when his mother
had allowed him to run wild in the streets. Florent thereupon stopped
his lessons in despair, and to console the lad promised him a holiday of

indefinite length. As an excuse for his own weakness he repeated that he
had not brought his brother to Paris to distress him. To see him grow up
in happiness became his chief desire. He quite worshipped the boy, was
charmed with his merry laughter, and felt infinite joy in seeing him
about him, healthy and vigorous, and without a care. Florent for his
part remained very slim and lean in his threadbare coat, and his face
began to turn yellow amidst all the drudgery and worry of teaching; but
Quenu grew up plump and merry, a little dense, indeed, and scarce able
to read or write, but endowed with high spirits which nothing could
ruffle, and which filled the big gloomy room in the Rue Royer Collard
with gaiety.

Years, meantime, passed by. Florent, who had inherited all his mother's
spirit of devotion, kept Quenu at home as though he were a big, idle
girl. He did not even suffer him to perform any petty domestic duties,
but always went to buy the provisions himself, and attended to the
cooking and other necessary matters. This kept him, he said, from
indulging in his own bad thoughts. He was given to gloominess, and
fancied that he was disposed to evil. When he returned home in the
evening, splashed with mud, and his head bowed by the annoyances to
which other people's children had subjected him, his heart melted
beneath the embrace of the sturdy lad whom he found spinning his top
on the tiled flooring of the big room. Quenu laughed at his brother's
clumsiness in making omelettes, and at the serious fashion in which he
prepared the soup-beef and vegetables. When the lamp was extinguished,
and Florent lay in bed, he sometimes gave way to feelings of sadness. He
longed to resume his legal studies, and strove to map out his duties in
such wise as to secure time to follow the programme of the faculty.
He succeeded in doing this, and was then perfectly happy. But a slight
attack of fever, which confined him to his room for a week, made such a
hole in his purse, and caused him so much alarm, that he abandoned all
idea of completing his studies. The boy was now getting a big
fellow, and Florent took a post as teacher in a school in the Rue de
l'Estrapade, at a salary of eighteen hundred francs per annum. This
seemed like a fortune to him. By dint of economy he hoped to be able to
amass a sum of money which would set Quenu going in the world. When the
lad reached his eighteenth year Florent still treated him as though he
were a daughter for whom a dowry must be provided.

However, during his brother's brief illness Quenu himself had made
certain reflections. One morning he proclaimed his desire to work,
saying that he was now old enough to earn his own living. Florent was
deeply touched at this. Just opposite, on the other side of the street,
lived a working watchmaker whom Quenu, through the curtainless window,
could see leaning over a little table, manipulating all sorts of
delicate things, and patiently gazing at them through a magnifying glass
all day long. The lad was much attracted by the sight, and declared that
he had a taste for watchmaking. At the end of a fortnight, however, he
became restless, and began to cry like a child of ten, complaining
that the work was too complicated, and that he would never be able to
understand all the silly little things that enter into the construction
of a watch.

His next whim was to be a locksmith; but this calling he found too
fatiguing. In a couple of years he tried more than ten different trades.
Florent opined that he acted rightly, that it was wrong to take up a
calling one did not like. However, Quenu's fine eagerness to work for
his living strained the resources of the little establishment very
seriously. Since he had begun flitting from one workshop to another
there had been a constant succession of fresh expenses; money had gone
in new clothes, in meals taken away from home, and in the payment of
footings among fellow workmen. Florent's salary of eighteen hundred
francs was no longer sufficient, and he was obliged to take a couple
of pupils in the evenings. For eight years he had continued to wear the
same old coat.

However, the two brothers had made a friend. One side of the house in
which they lived overlooked the Rue Saint Jacques, where there was a
large poultry-roasting establishment[*] kept by a worthy man called
Gavard, whose wife was dying from consumption amidst an atmosphere
redolent of plump fowls. When Florent returned home too late to cook a
scrap of meat, he was in the habit of laying out a dozen sous or so on
a small portion of turkey or goose at this shop. Such days were feast
days. Gavard in time grew interested in this tall, scraggy customer,
learned his history, and invited Quenu into his shop. Before long the
young fellow was constantly to be found there. As soon as his brother
left the house he came downstairs and installed himself at the rear
of the roasting shop, quite enraptured with the four huge spits which
turned with a gentle sound in front of the tall bright flames.

[*] These rotisseries, now all but extinct, were at one time
a particular feature of the Parisian provision trade. I can
myself recollect several akin to the one described by M.
Zola. I suspect that they largely owed their origin to the
form and dimensions of the ordinary Parisian kitchen stove,
which did not enable people to roast poultry at home in a
convenient way. In the old French cuisine, moreover, roast
joints of meat were virtually unknown; roasting was almost
entirely confined to chickens, geese, turkeys, pheasants,
etc.; and among the middle classes people largely bought
their poultry already cooked of the _rotisseur_, or else
confided it to him for the purpose of roasting, in the same
way as our poorer classes still send their joints to the
baker's. Roasting was also long looked upon in France as a
very delicate art. Brillat-Savarin, in his famous
_Physiologie du Gout_, lays down the dictum that "A man may
become a cook, but is born a _rotisseur_."--Translator.

The broad copper bands of the fireplace glistened brightly, the poultry
steamed, the fat bubbled melodiously in the dripping-pan, and the spits
seemed to talk amongst themselves and to address kindly words to Quenu,
who, with a long ladle, devoutly basted the golden breasts of the fat
geese and turkeys. He would stay there for hours, quite crimson in the
dancing glow of the flames, and laughing vaguely, with a somewhat stupid
expression, at the birds roasting in front of him. Indeed, he did
not awake from this kind of trance until the geese and turkeys were
unspitted. They were placed on dishes, the spits emerged from their
carcasses smoking hot, and a rich gravy flowed from either end and
filled the shop with a penetrating odour. Then the lad, who, standing
up, had eagerly followed every phase of the dishing, would clap his
hands and begin to talk to the birds, telling them that they were very
nice, and would be eaten up, and that the cats would have nothing but
their bones. And he would give a start of delight whenever Gavard handed
him a slice of bread, which he forthwith put into the dripping-pan that
it might soak and toast there for half an hour.

It was in this shop, no doubt, that Quenu's love of cookery took its
birth. Later on, when he had tried all sorts of crafts, he returned,
as though driven by fate, to the spits and the poultry and the savoury
gravy which induces one to lick one's fingers. At first he was afraid
of vexing his brother, who was a small eater and spoke of good fare with
the disdain of a man who is ignorant of it; but afterwards, on seeing
that Florent listened to him when he explained the preparation of some
very elaborate dish, he confessed his desires and presently found a
situation at a large restaurant. From that time forward the life of the
two brothers was settled. They continued to live in the room in the Rue
Royer Collard, whither they returned every evening; the one glowing and
radiant from his hot fire, the other with the depressed countenance of
a shabby, impecunious teacher. Florent still wore his old black coat, as
he sat absorbed in correcting his pupils' exercises; while Quenu, to
put himself more at ease, donned his white apron, cap, and jacket, and,
flitting about in front of the stove, amused himself by baking some
dainty in the oven. Sometimes they smiled at seeing themselves thus
attired, the one all in black, the other all in white. These different
garbs, one bright and the other sombre, seemed to make the big room half
gay and half mournful. Never, however, was there so much harmony in a
household marked by such dissimilarity. Though the elder brother grew
thinner and thinner, consumed by the ardent temperament which he had
inherited from his Provencal father, and the younger one waxed fatter
and fatter like a true son of Normandy, they loved each other in the
brotherhood they derived from their mother--a mother who had been all
devotion.

They had a relation in Paris, a brother of their mother's, one Gradelle,
who was in business as a pork butcher in the Rue Pirouette, near
the central markets. He was a fat, hard-hearted, miserly fellow, and
received his nephews as though they were starving paupers the first time
they paid him a visit. They seldom went to see him afterwards. On
his nameday Quenu would take him a bunch of flowers, and receive a
half-franc piece in return for it. Florent's proud and sensitive nature
suffered keenly when Gradelle scrutinised his shabby clothes with the
anxious, suspicious glance of a miser apprehending a request for a
dinner, or the loan of a five-franc piece. One day, however, it occurred
to Florent in all artlessness to ask his uncle to change a hundred-franc
note for him, and after this the pork butcher showed less alarm at sight
of the lads, as he called them. Still, their friendship got no further
than these infrequent visits.

These years were like a long, sweet, sad dream to Florent. As they
passed he tasted to the full all the bitter joys of self-sacrifice. At
home, in the big room, life was all love and tenderness; but out in the
world, amidst the humiliations inflicted on him by his pupils, and
the rough jostling of the streets, he felt himself yielding to wicked
thoughts. His slain ambitions embittered him. It was long before he
could bring himself to bow to his fate, and accept with equanimity the
painful lot of a poor, plain, commonplace man. At last, to guard against
the temptations of wickedness, he plunged into ideal goodness, and
sought refuge in a self-created sphere of absolute truth and justice. It
was then that he became a republican, entering into the republican idea
even as heart-broken girls enter a convent. And not finding a republic
where sufficient peace and kindliness prevailed to lull his troubles to
sleep, he created one for himself. He took no pleasure in books. All
the blackened paper amidst which he lived spoke of evil-smelling
class-rooms, of pellets of paper chewed by unruly schoolboys, of long,
profitless hours of torture. Besides, books only suggested to him a
spirit of mutiny and pride, whereas it was of peace and oblivion that he
felt most need. To lull and soothe himself with the ideal imaginings, to
dream that he was perfectly happy, and that all the world would likewise
become so, to erect in his brain the republican city in which he would
fain have lived, such now became his recreation, the task, again and
again renewed, of all his leisure hours. He no longer read any books
beyond those which his duties compelled him to peruse; he preferred
to tramp along the Rue Saint Jacques as far as the outer boulevards,
occasionally going yet a greater distance and returning by the Barriere
d'Italie; and all along the road, with his eyes on the Quartier
Mouffetard spread out at his feet, he would devise reforms of great
moral and humanitarian scope, such as he thought would change that city
of suffering into an abode of bliss. During the turmoil of February
1848, when Paris was stained with blood he became quite heartbroken, and
rushed from one to another of the public clubs demanding that the blood
which had been shed should find atonement in "the fraternal embrace
of all republicans throughout the world." He became one of those
enthusiastic orators who preached revolution as a new religion, full of
gentleness and salvation. The terrible days of December 1851, the days
of the Coup d'Etat, were required to wean him from his doctrines of
universal love. He was then without arms; allowed himself to be captured
like a sheep, and was treated as though he were a wolf. He awoke from
his sermon on universal brotherhood to find himself starving on the cold
stones of a casemate at Bicetre.

Quenu, when two and twenty, was distressed with anguish when his brother
did not return home. On the following day he went to seek his corpse at
the cemetery of Montmartre, where the bodies of those shot down on the
boulevards had been laid out in a line and covered with straw, from
beneath which only their ghastly heads projected. However, Quenu's
courage failed him, he was blinded by his tears, and had to pass twice
along the line of corpses before acquiring the certainty that Florent's
was not among them. At last, at the end of a long and wretched week, he
learned at the Prefecture of Police that his brother was a prisoner. He
was not allowed to see him, and when he pressed the matter the police
threatened to arrest him also. Then he hastened off to his uncle
Gradelle, whom he looked upon as a person of importance, hoping that he
might be able to enlist his influence in Florent's behalf. But Gradelle
waxed wrathful, declared that Florent deserved his fate, that he ought
to have known better than to have mixed himself up with those rascally
republicans. And he even added that Florent was destined to turn out
badly, that it was written on his face.

Quenu wept copiously and remained there, almost choked by his sobs. His
uncle, a little ashamed of his harshness, and feeling that he ought to
do something for him, offered to receive him into his house. He wanted
an assistant, and knew that his nephew was a good cook. Quenu was so
much alarmed by the mere thought of going back to live alone in the
big room in the Rue Royer Collard, that then and there he accepted
Gradelle's offer. That same night he slept in his uncle's house, in
a dark hole of a garret just under the room, where there was scarcely
space for him to lie at full length. However, he was less wretched there
than he would have been opposite his brother's empty couch.

He succeeded at length in obtaining permission to see Florent; but on
his return from Bicetre he was obliged to take to his bed. For nearly
three weeks he lay fever-stricken, in a stupefied, comatose state.
Gradelle meantime called down all sorts of maledictions on his
republican nephew; and one morning, when he heard of Florent's departure
for Cayenne, he went upstairs, tapped Quenu on the hands, awoke him, and
bluntly told him the news, thereby bringing about such a reaction that
on the following day the young man was up and about again. His grief
wore itself out, and his soft flabby flesh seemed to absorb his tears.
A month later he laughed again, and then grew vexed and unhappy with
himself for having been merry; but his natural light-heartedness soon
gained the mastery, and he laughed afresh in unconscious happiness.

He now learned his uncle's business, from which he derived even more
enjoyment than from cookery. Gradelle told him, however, that he must
not neglect his pots and pans, that it was rare to find a pork butcher
who was also a good cook, and that he had been lucky in serving in a
restaurant before coming to the shop. Gradelle, moreover, made full use
of his nephew's acquirements, employed him to cook the dinners sent out
to certain customers, and placed all the broiling, and the preparation
of pork chops garnished with gherkins in his special charge. As the
young man was of real service to him, he grew fond of him after his
own fashion, and would nip his plump arms when he was in a good humour.
Gradelle had sold the scanty furniture of the room in the Rue Royer
Collard and retained possession of the proceeds--some forty francs or
so--in order, said he, to prevent the foolish lad, Quenu, from making
ducks and drakes of the cash. After a time, however, he allowed his
nephew six francs a month a pocket-money.

Quenu now became quite happy, in spite of the emptiness of his purse and
the harshness with which he was occasionally treated. He liked to have
life doled out to him; Florent had treated him too much like an indolent
girl. Moreover, he had made a friend at his uncle's. Gradelle, when his
wife died, had been obliged to engage a girl to attend to the shop, and
had taken care to choose a healthy and attractive one, knowing that a
good-looking girl would set off his viands and help to tempt custom.
Amongst his acquaintances was a widow, living in the Rue Cuvier, near
the Jardin des Plantes, whose deceased husband had been postmaster at
Plassans, the seat of a sub-prefecture in the south of France. This
lady, who lived in a very modest fashion on a small annuity, had brought
with her from Plassans a plump, pretty child, whom she treated as her
own daughter. Lisa, as the young one was called, attended upon her with
much placidity and serenity of disposition. Somewhat seriously inclined,
she looked quite beautiful when she smiled. Indeed, her great charm came
from the exquisite manner in which she allowed this infrequent smile
of hers to escape her. Her eyes then became most caressing, and her
habitual gravity imparted inestimable value to these sudden, seductive
flashes. The old lady had often said that one of Lisa's smiles would
suffice to lure her to perdition.

When the widow died she left all her savings, amounting to some ten
thousand francs, to her adopted daughter. For a week Lisa lived alone in
the Rue Cuvier; it was there that Gradelle came in search of her. He had
become acquainted with her by often seeing her with her mistress when
the latter called on him in the Rue Pirouette; and at the funeral
she had struck him as having grown so handsome and sturdy that he had
followed the hearse all the way to the cemetery, though he had not
intended to do so. As the coffin was being lowered into the grave, he
reflected what a splendid girl she would be for the counter of a pork
butcher's shop. He thought the matter over, and finally resolved to
offer her thirty francs a month, with board and lodging. When he made
this proposal, Lisa asked for twenty-four hours to consider it. Then
she arrived one morning with a little bundle of clothes, and her ten
thousand francs concealed in the bosom of her dress. A month later the
whole place belonged to her; she enslaved Gradelle, Quenu, and even the
smallest kitchen-boy. For his part, Quenu would have cut off his fingers
to please her. When she happened to smile, he remained rooted to the
floor, laughing with delight as he gazed at her.

Lisa was the eldest daughter of the Macquarts of Plassans, and her
father was still alive.[*] But she said that he was abroad, and never
wrote to him. Sometimes she just dropped a hint that her mother, now
deceased, had been a hard worker, and that she took after her. She
worked, indeed, very assiduously. However, she sometimes added that
the worthy woman had slaved herself to death in striving to support her
family. Then she would speak of the respective duties of husband and
wife in such a practical though modest fashion as to enchant Quenu. He
assured her that he fully shared her ideas. These were that everyone,
man or woman, ought to work for his or her living, that everyone was
charged with the duty of achieving personal happiness, that great harm
was done by encouraging habits of idleness, and that the presence of so
much misery in the world was greatly due to sloth. This theory of hers
was a sweeping condemnation of drunkenness, of all the legendary loafing
ways of her father Macquart. But, though she did not know it, there was
much of Macquart's nature in herself. She was merely a steady, sensible
Macquart with a logical desire for comfort, having grasped the truth
of the proverb that as you make your bed so you lie on it. To sleep in
blissful warmth there is no better plan than to prepare oneself a soft
and downy couch; and to the preparation of such a couch she gave all
her time and all her thoughts. When no more than six years old she
had consented to remain quietly on her chair the whole day through on
condition that she should be rewarded with a cake in the evening.

[*] See M. Zola's novel, _The Fortune of the Rougons_.--Translator

At Gradelle's establishment Lisa went on leading the calm, methodical
life which her exquisite smiles illumined. She had not accepted the pork
butcher's offer at random. She reckoned upon finding a guardian in him;
with the keen scent of those who are born lucky she perhaps foresaw that
the gloomy shop in the Rue Pirouette would bring her the comfortable
future she dreamed of--a life of healthy enjoyment, and work without
fatigue, each hour of which would bring its own reward. She attended to
her counter with the quiet earnestness with which she had waited upon
the postmaster's widow; and the cleanliness of her aprons soon became
proverbial in the neighbourhood. Uncle Gradelle was so charmed with this
pretty girl that sometimes, as he was stringing his sausages, he would
say to Quenu: "Upon my word, if I weren't turned sixty, I think I should
be foolish enough to marry her. A wife like she'd make is worth her
weight in gold to a shopkeeper, my lad."

Quenu himself was growing still fonder of her, though he laughed merrily
one day when a neighbour accused him of being in love with Lisa. He was
not worried with love-sickness. The two were very good friends, however.
In the evening they went up to their bedrooms together. Lisa slept in a
little chamber adjoining the dark hole which the young man occupied.
She had made this room of hers quite bright by hanging it with muslin
curtains. The pair would stand together for a moment on the landing,
holding their candles in their hands, and chatting as they unlocked
their doors. Then, as they closed them, they said in friendly tones:

"Good night, Mademoiselle Lisa."

"Good night, Monsieur Quenu."

As Quenu undressed himself he listened to Lisa making her own
preparations. The partition between the two rooms was very thin. "There,
she is drawing her curtains now," he would say to himself; "what can she
be doing, I wonder, in front of her chest of drawers? Ah! she's sitting
down now and taking off her shoes. Now she's blown her candle out. Well,
good night. I must get to sleep"; and at times, when he heard her bed
creak as she got into it, he would say to himself with a smile, "Dash
it all! Mademoiselle Lisa is no feather." This idea seemed to amuse him,
and presently he would fall asleep thinking about the hams and salt pork
that he had to prepare the next morning.

This state of affairs went on for a year without causing Lisa a single
blush or Quenu a moment's embarrassment. When the girl came into the
kitchen in the morning at the busiest moment of the day's work, they
grasped hands over the dishes of sausage-meat. Sometimes she helped him,
holding the skins with her plump fingers while he filled them with meat
and fat. Sometimes, too, with the tips of their tongues they just tasted
the raw sausage-meat, to see if it was properly seasoned. She was able
to give Quenu some useful hints, for she knew of many favourite southern
recipes, with which he experimented with much success. He was often
aware that she was standing behind his shoulder, prying into the pans.
If he wanted a spoon or a dish, she would hand it to him. The heat of
the fire would bring their blood to their skins; still, nothing in
the world would have induced the young man to cease stirring the fatty
_bouillis_ which were thickening over the fire while the girl stood
gravely by him, discussing the amount of boiling that was necessary.
In the afternoon, when the shop lacked customers, they quietly chatted
together for hours at a time. Lisa sat behind the counter, leaning back,
and knitting in an easy, regular fashion; while Quenu installed himself
on a big oak block, dangling his legs and tapping his heels against the
wood. They got on wonderfully well together, discussing all sorts of
subjects, generally cookery, and then Uncle Gradelle and the neighbours.
Lisa also amused the young man with stories, just as though he were a
child. She knew some very pretty ones--some miraculous legends, full of
lambs and little angels, which she narrated in a piping voice, with all
her wonted seriousness. If a customer happened to come in, she saved
herself the trouble of moving by asking Quenu to get the required pot of
lard or box of snails. And at eleven o'clock they went slowly up to
bed as on the previous night. As they closed their doors, they calmly
repeated the words:

"Good night, Mademoiselle Lisa."

"Good night, Monsieur Quenu."

One morning Uncle Gradelle was struck dead by apoplexy while preparing
a galantine. He fell forward, with his face against the chopping-block.
Lisa did not lose her self-possession. She remarked that the dead man
could not be left lying in the middle of the kitchen, and had the body
removed into a little back room where Gradelle had slept. Then she
arranged with the assistants what should be said. It must be given out
that the master had died in his bed; otherwise the whole district would
be disgusted, and the shop would lose its customers. Quenu helped to
carry the dead man away, feeling quite confused, and astonished at
being unable to shed any tears. Presently, however, he and Lisa cried
together. Quenu and his brother Florent were the sole heirs. The gossips
of the neighbourhood credited old Gradelle with the possession of a
considerable fortune. However, not a single crown could be discovered.
Lisa seemed very restless and uneasy. Quenu noticed how pensive she
became, how she kept on looking around her from morning till night, as
though she had lost something. At last she decided to have a thorough
cleaning of the premises, declaring that people were beginning to talk,
that the story of the old man's death had got about, and that it was
necessary they should make a great show of cleanliness. One afternoon,
after remaining in the cellar for a couple of hours, whither she herself
had gone to wash the salting-tubs, she came up again, carrying something
in her apron. Quenu was just then cutting up a pig's fry. She waited
till he had finished, talking awhile in an easy, indifferent fashion.
But there was an unusual glitter in her eyes, and she smiled her most
charming smile as she told him that she wanted to speak to him. She led
the way upstairs with seeming difficulty, impeded by what she had in her
apron, which was strained almost to bursting.

By the time she reached the third floor she found herself short of
breath, and for a moment was obliged to lean against the balustrade.
Quenu, much astonished, followed her into her bedroom without saying a
word. It was the first time she had ever invited him to enter it. She
closed the door, and letting go the corners of her apron, which her
stiffened fingers could no longer hold up, she allowed a stream of gold
and silver coins to flow gently upon her bed. She had discovered Uncle
Gradelle's treasure at the bottom of a salting-tub. The heap of money
made a deep impression in the softy downy bed.

Lisa and Quenu evinced a quiet delight. They sat down on the edge of the
bed, Lisa at the head and Quenu at the foot, on either side of the heap
of coins, and they counted the money out upon the counterpane, so as to
avoid making any noise. There were forty thousand francs in gold, and
three thousand francs in silver, whilst in a tin box they found bank
notes to the value of forty-two thousand francs. It took them two hours
to count up the treasure. Quenu's hands trembled slightly, and it was
Lisa who did most of the work.

They arranged the gold on the pillow in little heaps, leaving the silver
in the hollow depression of the counterpane. When they had ascertained
the total amount--eighty-five thousand francs, to them an enormous
sum--they began to chat. And their conversation naturally turned upon
their future, and they spoke of their marriage, although there had never
been any previous mention of love between them. But this heap of money
seemed to loosen their tongues. They had gradually seated themselves
further back on the bed, leaning against the wall, beneath the white
muslin curtains; and as they talked together, their hands, playing with
the heap of silver between them, met, and remained linked amidst
the pile of five-franc pieces. Twilight surprised them still sitting
together. Then, for the first time, Lisa blushed at finding the young
man by her side. For a few moments, indeed, although not a thought of
evil had come to them, they felt much embarrassed. Then Lisa went to
get her own ten thousand francs. Quenu wanted her to put them with his
uncle's savings. He mixed the two sums together, saying with a laugh
that the money must be married also. Then it was agreed that Lisa should
keep the hoard in her chest of drawers. When she had locked it up they
both quietly went downstairs. They were now practically husband and
wife.

The wedding took place during the following month. The neighbours
considered the match a very natural one, and in every way suitable. They
had vaguely heard the story of the treasure, and Lisa's honesty was the
subject of endless eulogy. After all, said the gossips, she might well
have kept the money herself, and not have spoken a word to Quenu about
it; if she had spoken, it was out of pure honesty, for no one had seen
her find the hoard. She well deserved, they added, that Quenu should
make her his wife. That Quenu, by the way, was a lucky fellow; he
wasn't a beauty himself, yet he had secured a beautiful wife, who had
disinterred a fortune for him. Some even went so far as to whisper that
Lisa was a simpleton for having acted as she had done; but the young
woman only smiled when people speaking to her vaguely alluded to all
these things. She and her husband lived on as previously, in happy
placidity and quiet affection. She still assisted him as before, their
hands still met amidst the sausage-meat, she still glanced over his
shoulder into the pots and pans, and still nothing but the great fire in
the kitchen brought the blood to their cheeks.

However, Lisa was a woman of practical common sense, and speedily saw
the folly of allowing eighty-five thousand francs to lie idle in a chest
of drawers. Quenu would have willingly stowed them away again at the
bottom of the salting-tub until he had gained as much more, when they
could have retired from business and have gone to live at Suresnes, a
suburb to which both were partial. Lisa, however, had other ambitions.
The Rue Pirouette did not accord with her ideas of cleanliness, her
craving for fresh air, light, and healthy life. The shop where Uncle
Gradelle had accumulated his fortune, sou by sou, was a long, dark
place, one of those suspicious looking pork butchers' shops of the old
quarters of the city, where the well-worn flagstones retain a strong
odour of meat in spite of constant washings. Now the young woman longed
for one of those bright modern shops, ornamented like a drawing-room,
and fringing the footway of some broad street with windows of
crystalline transparence. She was not actuated by any petty ambition to
play the fine lady behind a stylish counter, but clearly realised that
commerce in its latest development needed elegant surroundings. Quenu
showed much alarm the first time his wife suggested that they ought to
move and spend some of their money in decorating a new shop. However,
Lisa only shrugged her shoulders and smiled at finding him so timorous.

One evening, when night was falling and the shop had grown dark, Quenu
and Lisa overheard a woman of the neighbourhood talking to a friend
outside their door.

"No, indeed! I've given up dealing with them," said she. "I wouldn't buy
a bit of black-pudding from them now on any account. They had a dead man
in their kitchen, you know."

Quenu wept with vexation. The story of Gradelle's death in the kitchen
was clearly getting about; and his nephew began to blush before his
customers when he saw them sniffing his wares too closely. So, of his
own accord, he spoke to his wife of her proposal to take a new shop.
Lisa, without saying anything, had already been looking out for other
premises, and had found some, admirably situated, only a few yards
away, in the Rue Rambuteau. The immediate neighbourhood of the central
markets, which were being opened just opposite, would triple their
business, and make their shop known all over Paris.

Quenu allowed himself to be drawn into a lavish expenditure of money; he
laid out over thirty thousand francs in marble, glass, and gilding.
Lisa spent hours with the workmen, giving her views about the slightest
details. When she was at last installed behind the counter, customers
arrived in a perfect procession, merely for the sake of examining the
shop. The inside walls were lined from top to bottom with white marble.
The ceiling was covered with a huge square mirror, framed by a broad
gilded cornice, richly ornamented, whilst from the centre hung a crystal
chandelier with four branches. And behind the counter, and on the left,
and at the far end of the shop were other mirrors, fitted between the
marble panels and looking like doors opening into an infinite series
of brightly lighted halls, where all sorts of appetising edibles were
displayed. The huge counter on the right hand was considered a very fine
piece of work. At intervals along the front were lozenge-shaped panels
of pinky marble. The flooring was of tiles, alternately white and pink,
with a deep red fretting as border. The whole neighbourhood was proud
of the shop, and no one again thought of referring to the kitchen in
the Rue Pirouette, where a man had died. For quite a month women stopped
short on the footway to look at Lisa between the saveloys and bladders
in the window. Her white and pink flesh excited as much admiration as
the marbles. She seemed to be the soul, the living light, the healthy,
sturdy idol of the pork trade; and thenceforth one and all baptised her
"Lisa the beauty."

To the right of the shop was the dining-room, a neat looking apartment
containing a sideboard, a table, and several cane-seated chairs of light
oak. The matting on the floor, the wallpaper of a soft yellow tint, the
oil-cloth table-cover, coloured to imitate oak, gave the room a somewhat
cold appearance, which was relieved only by the glitter of a brass
hanging lamp, suspended from the ceiling, and spreading its big shade
of transparent porcelain over the table. One of the dining-room doors
opened into the huge square kitchen, at the end of which was a small
paved courtyard, serving for the storage of lumber--tubs, barrels
and pans, and all kinds of utensils not in use. To the left of the
water-tap, alongside the gutter which carried off the greasy water,
stood pots of faded flowers, removed from the shop window, and slowly
dying.

Business was excellent. Quenu, who had been much alarmed by the initial
outlay, now regarded his wife with something like respect, and told his
friends that she had "a wonderful head." At the end of five years they
had nearly eighty thousand francs invested in the State funds. Lisa
would say that they were not ambitious, that they had no desire to pile
up money too quickly, or else she would have enabled her husband to
gain hundreds and thousands of francs by prompting him to embark in the
wholesale pig trade. But they were still young, and had plenty of
time before them; besides, they didn't care about a rough, scrambling
business, but preferred to work at their ease, and enjoy life, instead
of wearing themselves out with endless anxieties.

"For instance," Lisa would add in her expansive moments, "I have, you
know, a cousin in Paris. I never see him, as the two families have
fallen out. He has taken the name of Saccard,[*] on account of certain
matters which he wants to be forgotten. Well, this cousin of mine, I'm
told, makes millions and millions of francs; but he gets no enjoyment
out of life. He's always in a state of feverish excitement, always
rushing hither and thither, up to his neck in all sorts of worrying
business. Well, it's impossible, isn't it, for such a man to eat his
dinner peaceably in the evening? We, at any rate, can take our meals
comfortably, and make sure of what we eat, and we are not harassed by
worries as he is. The only reason why people should care for money
is that money's wanted for one to live. People like comfort; that's
natural. But as for making money simply for the sake of making it, and
giving yourself far more trouble and anxiety to gain it than you can
ever get pleasure from it when it's gained, why, as for me, I'd rather
sit still and cross my arms. And besides, I should like to see all those
millions of my cousin's. I can't say that I altogether believe in
them. I caught sight of him the other day in his carriage. He was quite
yellow, and looked ever so sly. A man who's making money doesn't have
that kind of expression. But it's his business, and not mine. For our
part, we prefer to make merely a hundred sous at a time, and to get a
hundred sous' worth of enjoyment out of them."

[*] See M. Zola's novel, _Money_.

The household was undoubtedly thriving. A daughter had been born to the
young couple during their first year of wedlock, and all three of
them looked blooming. The business went on prosperously, without any
laborious fatigue, just as Lisa desired. She had carefully kept free of
any possible source of trouble or anxiety, and the days went by in an
atmosphere of peaceful, unctuous prosperity. Their home was a nook of
sensible happiness--a comfortable manger, so to speak, where father,
mother, and daughter could grow sleek and fat. It was only Quenu who
occasionally felt sad, through thinking of his brother Florent. Up to
the year 1856 he had received letters from him at long intervals. Then
no more came, and he had learned from a newspaper that three convicts
having attempted to escape from the Ile du Diable, had been drowned
before they were able to reach the mainland. He had made inquiries
at the Prefecture of Police, but had not learnt anything definite; it
seemed probable that his brother was dead. However, he did not lose
all hope, though months passed without any tidings. Florent, in the
meantime, was wandering about Dutch Guiana, and refrained from writing
home as he was ever in hope of being able to return to France. Quenu at
last began to mourn for him as one mourns for those whom one has been
unable to bid farewell. Lisa had never known Florent, but she spoke
very kindly whenever she saw her husband give way to his sorrow; and
she evinced no impatience when for the hundredth time or so he began to
relate stories of his early days, of his life in the big room in the
Rue Royer Collard, the thirty-six trades which he had taken up one after
another, and the dainties which he had cooked at the stove, dressed all
in white, while Florent was dressed all in black. To such talk as this,
indeed, she listened placidly, with a complacency which never wearied.

It was into the midst of all this happiness, ripening after careful
culture, that Florent dropped one September morning just as Lisa was
taking her matutinal bath of sunshine, and Quenu, with his eyes still
heavy with sleep, was lazily applying his fingers to the congealed fat
left in the pans from the previous evening. Florent's arrival caused
a great commotion. Gavard advised them to conceal the "outlaw," as
he somewhat pompously called Florent. Lisa, who looked pale, and more
serious than was her wont, at last took him to the fifth floor, where
she gave him the room belonging to the girl who assisted her in the
shop. Quenu had cut some slices of bread and ham, but Florent was
scarcely able to eat. He was overcome by dizziness and nausea, and went
to bed, where he remained for five days in a state of delirium,
the outcome of an attack of brain-fever, which fortunately received
energetic treatment. When he recovered consciousness he perceived Lisa
sitting by his bedside, silently stirring some cooling drink in a cup.
As he tried to thank her, she told him that he must keep perfectly
quiet, and that they could talk together later on. At the end of another
three days Florent was on his feet again. Then one morning Quenu went up
to tell him that Lisa awaited them in her room on the first floor.

Quenu and his wife there occupied a suite of three rooms and a
dressing-room. You first passed through an antechamber, containing
nothing but chairs, and then a small sitting-room, whose furniture,
shrouded in white covers, slumbered in the gloom cast by the Venetian
shutters, which were always kept closed so as to prevent the light blue
of the upholstery from fading. Then came the bedroom, the only one of
the three which was really used. It was very comfortably furnished in
mahogany. The bed, bulky and drowsy of aspect in the depths of the
damp alcove, was really wonderful, with its four mattresses, its four
pillows, its layers of blankets, and its corpulent _edredon_. It was
evidently a bed intended for slumber. A mirrored wardrobe, a washstand
with drawers, a small central table with a worked cover, and several
chairs whose seats were protected by squares of lace, gave the room an
aspect of plain but substantial middle-class luxury. On the left-hand
wall, on either side of the mantelpiece, which was ornamented with some
landscape-painted vases mounted on bronze stands, and a gilt timepiece
on which a figure of Gutenberg, also gilt, stood in an attitude of
deep thought, hung portraits in oils of Quenu and Lisa, in ornate
oval frames. Quenu had a smiling face, while Lisa wore an air of grave
propriety; and both were dressed in black and depicted in flattering
fashion, their features idealised, their skins wondrously smooth,
their complexions soft and pinky. A carpet, in the Wilton style, with
a complicated pattern of roses mingling with stars, concealed the
flooring; while in front of the bed was a fluffy mat, made out of long
pieces of curly wool, a work of patience at which Lisa herself had
toiled while seated behind her counter. But the most striking object
of all in the midst of this array of new furniture was a great square,
thick-set secretaire, which had been re-polished in vain, for the cracks
and notches in the marble top and the scratches on the old mahogany
front, quite black with age, still showed plainly. Lisa had desired to
retain this piece of furniture, however, as Uncle Gradelle had used it
for more than forty years. It would bring them good luck, she said. It's
metal fastenings were truly something terrible, it's lock was like that
of a prison gate, and it was so heavy that it could scarcely be moved.

When Florent and Quenu entered the room they found Lisa seated at the
lowered desk of the secretaire, writing and putting down figures in a
big, round, and very legible hand. She signed to them not to disturb
her, and the two men sat down. Florent looked round the room, and
notably at the two portraits, the bed and the timepiece, with an air of
surprise.

"There!" at last exclaimed Lisa, after having carefully verified a whole
page of calculations. "Listen to me now; we have an account to render to
you, my dear Florent."

It was the first time that she had so addressed him. However, taking up
the page of figures, she continued: "Your Uncle Gradelle died without
leaving a will. Consequently you and your brother are his sole heirs. We
now have to hand your share over to you."

"But I do not ask you for anything!" exclaimed Florent, "I don't wish
for anything!"

Quenu had apparently been in ignorance of his wife's intentions. He
turned rather pale and looked at her with an expression of displeasure.
Of course, he certainly loved his brother dearly; but there was no
occasion to hurl his uncle's money at him in this way. There would have
been plenty of time to go into the matter later on.

"I know very well, my dear Florent," continued Lisa, "that you did not
come back with the intention of claiming from us what belongs to you;
but business is business, you know, and we had better get things settled
at once. Your uncle's savings amounted to eighty-five thousand francs. I
have therefore put down forty-two thousand five hundred to your credit.
See!"

She showed him the figures on the sheet of paper.

"It is unfortunately not so easy to value the shop, plant,
stock-in-trade, and goodwill. I have only been able to put down
approximate amounts, but I don't think I have underestimated anything.
Well, the total valuation which I have made comes to fifteen thousand
three hundred and ten francs; your half of which is seven thousand six
hundred and fifty-five francs, so that your share amounts, in all, to
fifty thousand one hundred and fifty-five francs. Please verify it for
yourself, will you?"

She had called out the figures in a clear, distinct voice, and she now
handed the paper to Florent, who was obliged to take it.

"But the old man's business was certainly never worth fifteen thousand
francs!" cried Quenu. "Why, I wouldn't have given ten thousand for it!"

He had ended by getting quite angry with his wife. Really, it was absurd
to carry honesty to such a point as that! Had Florent said one word
about the business? No, indeed, he had declared that he didn't wish for
anything.

"The business was worth fifteen thousand three hundred and ten francs,"
Lisa re-asserted, calmly. "You will agree with me, my dear Florent, that
it is quite unnecessary to bring a lawyer into our affairs. It is for us
to arrange the division between ourselves, since you have now turned up
again. I naturally thought of this as soon as you arrived; and, while
you were in bed with the fever, I did my best to draw up this little
inventory. It contains, as you see, a fairly complete statement of
everything. I have been through our old books, and have called up my
memory to help me. Read it aloud, and I will give you any additional
information you may want."

Florent ended by smiling. He was touched by this easy and, as it were,
natural display of probity. Placing the sheet of figures on the young
woman's knee, he took hold of her hand and said, "I am very glad, my
dear Lisa, to hear that you are prosperous, but I will not take your
money. The heritage belongs to you and my brother, who took care of my
uncle up to the last. I don't require anything, and I don't intend to
hamper you in carrying on your business."

Lisa insisted, and even showed some vexation, while Quenu gnawed his
thumbs in silence to restrain himself.

"Ah!" resumed Florent with a laugh, "if Uncle Gradelle could hear you,
I think he'd come back and take the money away again. I was never a
favourite of his, you know."

"Well, no," muttered Quenu, no longer able to keep still, "he certainly
wasn't over fond of you."

Lisa, however, still pressed the matter. She did not like to have money
in her secretaire that did not belong to her; it would worry her, said
she; the thought of it would disturb her peace. Thereupon Florent, still
in a joking way, proposed to invest his share in the business. Moreover,
said he, he did not intend to refuse their help; he would, no doubt, be
unable to find employment all at once; and then, too, he would need a
complete outfit, for he was scarcely presentable.

"Of course," cried Quenu, "you will board and lodge with us, and we will
buy you all that you want. That's understood. You know very well that we
are not likely to leave you in the streets, I hope!"

He was quite moved now, and even felt a trifle ashamed of the alarm he
had experienced at the thought of having to hand over a large amount of
money all at once. He began to joke, and told his brother that he would
undertake to fatten him. Florent gently shook his hand; while Lisa
folded up the sheet of figures and put it away in a drawer of the
secretaire.

"You are wrong," she said by way of conclusion. "I have done what I was
bound to do. Now it shall be as you wish. But, for my part, I should
never have had a moment's peace if I had not put things before you. Bad
thoughts would quite upset me."

They then began to speak of another matter. It would be necessary to
give some reason for Florent's presence, and at the same time avoid
exciting the suspicion of the police. He told them that in order to
return to France he had availed himself of the papers of a poor fellow
who had died in his arms at Surinam from yellow fever. By a singular
coincidence this young fellow's Christian name was Florent.

Florent Laquerriere, to give him his name in full, had left but one
relation in Paris, a female cousin, and had been informed of her death
while in America. Nothing could therefore be easier than for Quenu's
half brother to pass himself off as the man who had died at Surinam.
Lisa offered to take upon herself the part of the female cousin. They
then agreed to relate that their cousin Florent had returned from
abroad, where he had failed in his attempts to make a fortune, and that
they, the Quenu-Gradelles, as they were called in the neighbourhood, had
received him into their house until he could find suitable employment.
When this was all settled, Quenu insisted upon his brother making
a thorough inspection of the rooms, and would not spare him the
examination of a single stool. Whilst they were in the bare looking
chamber containing nothing but chairs, Lisa pushed open a door, and
showing Florent a small dressing room, told him that the shop girl
should sleep in it, so that he could retain the bedroom on the fifth
floor.

In the evening Florent was arrayed in new clothes from head to foot.
He had insisted upon again having a black coat and black trousers, much
against the advice of Quenu, upon whom black had a depressing effect.
No further attempts were made to conceal his presence in the house, and
Lisa told the story which had been planned to everyone who cared to
hear it. Henceforth Florent spent almost all his time on the premises,
lingering on a chair in the kitchen or leaning against the marble-work
in the shop. At meal times Quenu plied him with food, and evinced
considerable vexation when he proved such a small eater and left half
the contents of his liberally filled plate untouched. Lisa had resumed
her old life, evincing a kindly tolerance of her brother-in-law's
presence, even in the morning, when he somewhat interfered with the
work. Then she would momentarily forget him, and on suddenly perceiving
his black form in front of her give a slight start of surprise,
followed, however, by one of her sweet smiles, lest he might feel at
all hurt. This skinny man's disinterestedness had impressed her, and she
regarded him with a feeling akin to respect, mingled with vague fear.
Florent had for his part only felt that there was great affection around
him.

When bedtime came he went upstairs, a little wearied by his lazy day,
with the two young men whom Quenu employed as assistants, and who slept
in attics adjoining his own. Leon, the apprentice, was barely fifteen
years of age. He was a slight, gentle looking lad, addicted to stealing
stray slices of ham and bits of sausages. These he would conceal under
his pillow, eating them during the night without any bread. Several
times at about one o'clock in the morning Florent almost fancied that
Leon was giving a supper-party; for he heard low whispering followed by
a sound of munching jaws and rustling paper. And then a rippling girlish
laugh would break faintly on the deep silence of the sleeping house like
the soft trilling of a flageolet.

The other assistant, Auguste Landois, came from Troyes. Bloated with
unhealthy fat, he had too large a head, and was already bald, although
only twenty-eight years of age. As he went upstairs with Florent on the
first evening, he told him his story in a confused, garrulous way. He
had at first come to Paris merely for the purpose of perfecting himself
in the business, intending to return to Troyes, where his cousin,
Augustine Landois, was waiting for him, and there setting up for himself
as a pork butcher. He and she had had the game godfather and bore
virtually the same Christian name. However, he had grown ambitious; and
now hoped to establish himself in business in Paris by the aid of the
money left him by his mother, which he had deposited with a notary
before leaving Champagne.

Auguste had got so far in his narrative when the fifth floor was
reached; however, he still detained Florent, in order to sound the
praises of Madame Quenu, who had consented to send for Augustine Landois
to replace an assistant who had turned out badly. He himself was now
thoroughly acquainted with his part of the business, and his cousin was
perfecting herself in shop management. In a year or eighteen months they
would be married, and then they would set up on their own account in
some populous corner of Paris, at Plaisance most likely. They were in no
great hurry, he added, for the bacon trade was very bad that year.
Then he proceeded to tell Florent that he and his cousin had been
photographed together at the fair of St. Ouen, and he entered the attic
to have another look at the photograph, which Augustine had left on
the mantelpiece, in her desire that Madame Quenu's cousin should have a
pretty room. Auguste lingered there for a moment, looking quite livid
in the dim yellow light of his candle, and casting his eyes around the
little chamber which was still full of memorials of the young girl.
Next, stepping up to the bed, he asked Florent if it was comfortable.
His cousin slept below now, said he, and would be better there in the
winter, for the attics were very cold. Then at last he went off, leaving
Florent alone with the bed, and standing in front of the photograph.
As shown on the latter Auguste looked like a sort of pale Quenu, and
Augustine like an immature Lisa.

Florent, although on friendly terms with the assistants, petted by his
brother, and cordially treated by Lisa, presently began to feel very
bored. He had tried, but without success, to obtain some pupils;
moreover, he purposely avoided the students' quarter for fear of being
recognised. Lisa gently suggested to him that he had better try to
obtain a situation in some commercial house, where he could take charge
of the correspondence and keep the books. She returned to this subject
again and again, and at last offered to find a berth for him herself.
She was gradually becoming impatient at finding him so often in her way,
idle, and not knowing what to do with himself. At first this impatience
was merely due to the dislike she felt of people who do nothing but
cross their arms and eat, and she had no thought of reproaching him for
consuming her substance.

"For my own part," she would say to him, "I could never spend the whole
day in dreamy lounging. You can't have any appetite for your meals. You
ought to tire yourself."

Gavard, also, was seeking a situation for Florent, but in a very
extraordinary and most mysterious fashion. He would have liked to find
some employment of a dramatic character, or in which there should be a
touch of bitter irony, as was suitable for an outlaw. Gavard was a man
who was always in opposition. He had just completed his fiftieth year,
and he boasted that he had already passed judgment on four Governments.
He still contemptuously shrugged his shoulders at the thought of Charles
X, the priests and nobles and other attendant rabble, whom he had helped
to sweep away. Louis Philippe, with his bourgeois following, had been an
imbecile, and he could tell how the citizen-king had hoarded his coppers
in a woollen stocking. As for the Republic of '48, that had been a
mere farce, the working classes had deceived him; however, he no longer
acknowledged that he had applauded the Coup d'Etat, for he now looked
upon Napoleon III as his personal enemy, a scoundrel who shut himself
up with Morny and others to indulge in gluttonous orgies. He was never
weary of holding forth upon this subject. Lowering his voice a little,
he would declare that women were brought to the Tuileries in closed
carriages every evening, and that he, who was speaking, had one night
heard the echoes of the orgies while crossing the Place du Carrousel. It
was Gavard's religion to make himself as disagreeable as possible to any
existing Government. He would seek to spite it in all sorts of ways,
and laugh in secret for several months at the pranks he played. To begin
with, he voted for candidates who would worry the Ministers at the Corps
Legislatif. Then, if he could rob the revenue, or baffle the police, and
bring about a row of some kind or other, he strove to give the affair as
much of an insurrectionary character as possible. He told a great many
lies, too; set himself up as being a very dangerous man; talked as
though "the satellites of the Tuileries" were well acquainted with him
and trembled at the sight of him; and asserted that one half of them
must be guillotined, and the other half transported, the next time there
was "a flare-up." His violent political creed found food in boastful,
bragging talk of this sort; he displayed all the partiality for a
lark and a rumpus which prompts a Parisian shopkeeper to take down
his shutters on a day of barricade-fighting to get a good view of the
corpses of the slain. When Florent returned from Cayenne, Gavard opined
that he had got hold of a splendid chance for some abominable trick, and
bestowed much thought upon the question of how he might best vent his
spleen on the Emperor and Ministers and everyone in office, down to the
very lowest police constable.

Gavard's manners with Florent were altogether those of a man tasting
some forbidden pleasure. He contemplated him with blinking eyes, lowered
his voice even when making the most trifling remark, and grasped his
hand with all sorts of masonic flummery. He had at last lighted upon
something in the way of an adventure; he had a friend who was really
compromised, and could, without falsehood speak of the dangers he
incurred. He undoubtedly experienced a secret alarm at the sight of
this man who had returned from transportation, and whose fleshlessness
testified to the long sufferings he had endured; however, this touch of
alarm was delightful, for it increased his notion of his own importance,
and convinced him that he was really doing something wonderful in
treating a dangerous character as a friend. Florent became a sort of
sacred being in his eyes: he swore by him alone, and had recourse to his
name whenever arguments failed him and he wanted to crush the Government
once and for all.

Gavard had lost his wife in the Rue Saint Jacques some months after the
Coup d'Etat; however, he had kept on his roasting shop till 1856. At
that time it was reported that he had made large sums of money by going
into partnership with a neighbouring grocer who had obtained a contract
for supplying dried vegetables to the Crimean expeditionary corps. The
truth was, however, that, having sold his shop, he lived on his income
for a year without doing anything. He himself did not care to talk
about the real origin of his fortune, for to have revealed it would have
prevented him from plainly expressing his opinion of the Crimean War,
which he referred to as a mere adventurous expedition, "undertaken
simply to consolidate the throne and to fill certain persons' pockets."
At the end of a year he had grown utterly weary of life in his bachelor
quarters. As he was in the habit of visiting the Quenu-Gradelles almost
daily, he determined to take up his residence nearer to them, and came
to live in the Rue de la Cossonnerie. The neighbouring markets, with
their noisy uproar and endless chatter, quite fascinated him; and he
decided to hire a stall in the poultry pavilion, just for the purpose
of amusing himself and occupying his idle hours with all the gossip.
Thenceforth he lived amidst ceaseless tittle-tattle, acquainted with
every little scandal in the neighbourhood, his head buzzing with
the incessant yelping around him. He blissfully tasted a thousand
titillating delights, having at last found his true element, and bathing
in it, with the voluptuous pleasure of a carp swimming in the sunshine.
Florent would sometimes go to see him at his stall. The afternoons were
still very warm. All along the narrow alleys sat women plucking
poultry. Rays of light streamed in between the awnings, and in the
warm atmosphere, in the golden dust of the sunbeams, feathers fluttered
hither and thither like dancing snowflakes. A trail of coaxing calls and
offers followed Florent as he passed along. "Can I sell you a fine duck,
monsieur?" "I've some very fine fat chickens here, monsieur; come and
see!" "Monsieur! monsieur, do just buy this pair of pigeons!" Deafened
and embarrassed he freed himself from the women, who still went on
plucking as they fought for possession of him; and the fine down flew
about and wellnigh choked him, like hot smoke reeking with the strong
odour of the poultry. At last, in the middle of the alley, near the
water-taps, he found Gavard ranting away in his shirt-sleeves, in front
of his stall, with his arms crossed over the bib of his blue apron. He
reigned there, in a gracious, condescending way, over a group of ten or
twelve women. He was the only male dealer in that part of the market.
He was so fond of wagging his tongue that he had quarrelled with five or
six girls whom he had successively engaged to attend to his stall, and
had now made up his mind to sell his goods himself, naively explaining
that the silly women spent the whole blessed day in gossiping, and that
it was beyond his power to manage them. As someone, however, was still
necessary to supply his place whenever he absented himself he took in
Marjolin, who was prowling about, after attempting in turn all the petty
market callings.

Florent sometimes remained for an hour with Gavard, amazed by his
ceaseless flow of chatter, and his calm serenity and assurance amid the
crowd of petticoats. He would interrupt one woman, pick a quarrel with
another ten stalls away, snatch a customer from a third, and make as
much noise himself as his hundred and odd garrulous neighbours, whose
incessant clamour kept the iron plates of the pavilion vibrating
sonorously like so many gongs.

The poultry dealer's only relations were a sister-in-law and a niece.
When his wife died, her eldest sister, Madame Lecoeur, who had become
a widow about a year previously, had mourned for her in an exaggerated
fashion, and gone almost every evening to tender consolation to the
bereaved husband. She had doubtless cherished the hope that she might
win his affection and fill the yet warm place of the deceased. Gavard,
however, abominated lean women; and would, indeed, only stroke such
cats and dogs as were very fat; so that Madame Lecoeur, who was long and
withered, failed in her designs.

With her feelings greatly hurt, furious at the ex-roaster's five-franc
pieces eluding her grasp, she nurtured great spite against him. He
became the enemy to whom she devoted all her time. When she saw him
set up in the markets only a few yards away from the pavilion where she
herself sold butter and eggs and cheese, she accused him of doing so
simply for the sake of annoying her and bringing her bad luck. From that
moment she began to lament, and turned so yellow and melancholy that she
indeed ended by losing her customers and getting into difficulties. She
had for a long time kept with her the daughter of one of her sisters,
a peasant woman who had sent her the child and then taken no further
trouble about it.

This child grew up in the markets. Her surname was Sarriet, and so she
soon became generally known as La Sarriette. At sixteen years of age she
had developed into such a charming sly-looking puss that gentlemen came
to buy cheeses at her aunt's stall simply for the purpose of ogling her.
She did not care for the gentlemen, however; with her dark hair, pale
face, and eyes glistening like live embers, her sympathies were with the
lower ranks of the people. At last she chose as her lover a young man
from Menilmontant who was employed by her aunt as a porter. At twenty
she set up in business as a fruit dealer with the help of some funds
procured no one knew how; and thenceforth Monsieur Jules, as her lover
was called, displayed spotless hands, a clean blouse, and a velvet cap;
and only came down to the market in the afternoon, in his slippers.
They lived together on the third storey of a large house in the Rue
Vauvilliers, on the ground floor of which was a disreputable cafe.

Madame Lecoeur's acerbity of temper was brought to a pitch by what she
called La Sarriette's ingratitude, and she spoke of the girl in the most
violent and abusive language. They broke off all intercourse, the aunt
fairly exasperated, and the niece and Monsieur Jules concocting stories
about the aunt, which the young man would repeat to the other dealers
in the butter pavilion. Gavard found La Sarriette very entertaining,
and treated her with great indulgence. Whenever they met he would
good-naturedly pat her cheeks.

One afternoon, whilst Florent was sitting in his brother's shop, tired
out with the fruitless pilgrimages he had made during the morning in
search of work, Marjolin made his appearance there. This big lad,
who had the massiveness and gentleness of a Fleming, was a protege of
Lisa's. She would say that there was no evil in him; that he was
indeed a little bit stupid, but as strong as a horse, and particularly
interesting from the fact that nobody knew anything of his parentage. It
was she who had got Gavard to employ him.

Lisa was sitting behind the counter, feeling annoyed by the sight of
Florent's muddy boots which were soiling the pink and white tiles of the
flooring. Twice already had she risen to scatter sawdust about the shop.
However, she smiled at Marjolin as he entered.

"Monsieur Gavard," began the young man, "has sent me to ask--"

But all at once he stopped and glanced round; then in a lower voice he
resumed: "He told me to wait till there was no one with you, and then to
repeat these words, which he made me learn by heart: 'Ask them if there
is no danger, and if I can come and talk to them of the matter they know
about.'"

"Tell Monsieur Gavard that we are expecting him," replied Lisa, who was
quite accustomed to the poultry dealer's mysterious ways.

Marjolin, however, did not go away; but remained in ecstasy before the
handsome mistress of the shop, contemplating her with an expression of
fawning humility.

Touched, as it were, by this mute adoration, Lisa spoke to him again.

"Are you comfortable with Monsieur Gavard?" she asked. "He's not an
unkind man, and you ought to try to please him."

"Yes, Madame Lisa."

"But you don't behave as you should, you know. Only yesterday I saw you
clambering about the roofs of the market again; and, besides, you are
constantly with a lot of disreputable lads and lasses. You ought to
remember that you are a man now, and begin to think of the future."

"Yes, Madame Lisa."

However, Lisa had to get up to wait upon a lady who came in and wanted
a pound of pork chops. She left the counter and went to the block at
the far end of the shop. Here, with a long, slender knife, she cut three
chops in a loin of pork; and then, raising a small cleaver with her
strong hand, dealt three sharp blows which separated the chops from
the loin. At each blow she dealt, her black merino dress rose slightly
behind her, and the ribs of her stays showed beneath her tightly
stretched bodice. She slowly took up the chops and weighed them with an
air of gravity, her eyes gleaming and her lips tightly closed.

When the lady had gone, and Lisa perceived Marjolin still full of
delight at having seen her deal those three clean, forcible blows with
the cleaver, she at once called out to him, "What! haven't you gone
yet?"

He thereupon turned to go, but she detained him for a moment longer.

"Now, don't let me see you again with that hussy Cadine," she said. "Oh,
it's no use to deny it! I saw you together this morning in the tripe
market, watching men breaking the sheep's heads. I can't understand
what attraction a good-looking young fellow like you can find in such a
slipshod slattern as Cadine. Now then, go and tell Monsieur Gavard that
he had better come at once, while there's no one about."

Marjolin thereupon went off in confusion, without saying a word.

Handsome Lisa remained standing behind her counter, with her head turned
slightly in the direction of her markets, and Florent gazed at her in
silence, surprised to see her looking so beautiful. He had never looked
at her properly before; indeed, he did not know the right way to look at
a woman. He now saw her rising above the viands on the counter. In front
of her was an array of white china dishes, containing long Arles and
Lyons sausages, slices of which had already been cut off, with tongues
and pieces of boiled pork; then a pig's head in a mass of jelly; an open
pot of preserved sausage-meat, and a large box of sardines disclosing a
pool of oil. On the right and left, upon wooden platters, were mounds
of French and Italian brawn, a common French ham, of a pinky hue, and a
Yorkshire ham, whose deep red lean showed beneath a broad band of fat.
There were other dishes too, round ones and oval ones, containing spiced
tongue, truffled galantine, and a boar's head stuffed with pistachio
nuts; while close to her, in reach of her hand, stood some yellow
earthen pans containing larded veal, _pate de foie gras_, and hare-pie.

As there were no signs of Gavard's coming, she arranged some fore-end
bacon upon a little marble shelf at the end of the counter, put the jars
of lard and dripping back into their places, wiped the plates of each
pair of scales, and saw to the fire of the heater, which was getting
low. Then she turned her head again, and gazed in silence towards
the markets. The smell of all the viands ascended around her, she was
enveloped, as it were, by the aroma of truffles. She looked beautifully
fresh that afternoon. The whiteness of all the dishes was supplemented
by that of her sleevelets and apron, above which appeared her plump
neck and rosy cheeks, which recalled the soft tones of the hams and the
pallor of all the transparent fat.

As Florent continued to gaze at her he began to feel intimidated,
disquieted by her prim, sedate demeanour; and in lieu of openly looking
at her he ended by glancing surreptitiously in the mirrors around the
shop, in which her back and face and profile could be seen. The mirror
on the ceiling, too, reflected the top of her head, with its tightly
rolled chignon and the little bands lowered over her temples. There
seemed, indeed, to be a perfect crowd of Lisas, with broad shoulders,
powerful arms, and round, full bosoms. At last Florent checked his
roving eyes, and let them rest on a particularly pleasing side view of
the young woman as mirrored between two pieces of pork. From the hooks
running along the whole line of mirrors and marbles hung sides of pork
and bands of larding fat; and Lisa, with her massive neck, rounded hips,
and swelling bosom seen in profile, looked like some waxwork queen in
the midst of the dangling fat and meat. However, she bent forward and
smiled in a friendly way at the two gold-fish which were ever and ever
swimming round the aquarium in the window.

Gavard entered the shop. With an air of great importance he went to
fetch Quenu from the kitchen. Then he seated himself upon a small
marble-topped table, while Florent remained on his chair and Lisa behind
the counter; Quenu meantime leaning his back against a side of pork.
And thereupon Gavard announced that he had at last found a situation for
Florent. They would be vastly amused when they heard what it was, and
the Government would be nicely caught.

But all at once he stopped short, for a passing neighbour, Mademoiselle
Saget, having seen such a large party gossiping together at the
Quenu-Gradelles', had opened the door and entered the shop. Carrying
her everlasting black ribbonless straw hat, which appropriately cast a
shadow over her prying white face, she saluted the men with a slight bow
and Lisa with a sharp smile.

She was an acquaintance of the family, and still lived in the house
in the Rue Pirouette where she had resided for the last forty years,
probably on a small private income; but of that she never spoke. She
had, however, one day talked of Cherbourg, mentioning that she had been
born there. Nothing further was ever known of her antecedents. All her
conversation was about other people; she could tell the whole story of
their daily lives, even to the number of things they sent to be
washed each month; and she carried her prying curiosity concerning her
neighbours' affairs so far as to listen behind their doors and open
their letters. Her tongue was feared from the Rue Saint Denis to the
Rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and from the Rue Saint Honore to the Rue
Mauconseil. All day long she went ferreting about with her empty bag,
pretending that she was marketing, but in reality buying nothing, as her
sole purpose was to retail scandal and gossip, and keep herself fully
informed of every trifling incident that happened. Indeed, she had
turned her brain into an encyclopaedia brimful of every possible
particular concerning the people of the neighbourhood and their homes.

Quenu had always accused her of having spread the story of his Uncle
Gradelle's death on the chopping-block, and had borne her a grudge ever
since. She was extremely well posted in the history of Uncle Gradelle
and the Quenus, and knew them, she would say, by heart. For the last
fortnight, however, Florent's arrival had greatly perplexed her, filled
her, indeed, with a perfect fever of curiosity. She became quite ill
when she discovered any unforeseen gap in her information. And yet she
could have sworn that she had seen that tall lanky fellow somewhere or
other before.

She remained standing in front of the counter, examining the dishes one
after another, and saying in a shrill voice:

"I hardly know what to have. When the afternoon comes I feel quite
famished for my dinner, and then, later on, I don't seem able to fancy
anything at all. Have you got a cutlet rolled in bread-crumbs left,
Madame Quenu?"

Without waiting for a reply, she removed one of the covers of the
heater. It was that of the compartment reserved for the chitterlings,
sausages, and black-puddings. However, the chafing-dish was quite cold,
and there was nothing left but one stray forgotten sausage.

"Look under the other cover, Mademoiselle Saget," said Lisa. "I believe
there's a cutlet there."

"No, it doesn't tempt me," muttered the little old woman, poking her
nose under the other cover, however, all the same. "I felt rather a
fancy for one, but I'm afraid a cutlet would be rather too heavy in the
evening. I'd rather have something, too, that I need not warm."

While speaking she had turned towards Florent and looked at him; then
she looked at Gavard, who was beating a tattoo with his finger-tips
on the marble table. She smiled at them, as though inviting them to
continue their conversation.

"Wouldn't a little piece of salt pork suit you?" asked Lisa.

"A piece of salt pork? Yes, that might do."

Thereupon she took up the fork with plated handle, which was lying at
the edge of the dish, and began to turn all the pieces of pork about,
prodding them, lightly tapping the bones to judge of their thickness,
and minutely scrutinising the shreds of pinky meat. And as she turned
them over she repeated, "No, no; it doesn't tempt me."

"Well, then, have a sheep's tongue, or a bit of brawn, or a slice of
larded veal," suggested Lisa patiently.

Mademoiselle Saget, however, shook her head. She remained there for
a few minutes longer, pulling dissatisfied faces over the different
dishes; then, seeing that the others were determined to remain silent,
and that she would not be able to learn anything, she took herself off.

"No; I rather felt a fancy for a cutlet rolled in bread-crumbs," she
said as she left the shop, "but the one you have left is too fat. I must
come another time."

Lisa bent forward to watch her through the sausage-skins hanging in the
shop-front, and saw her cross the road and enter the fruit market.

"The old she-goat!" growled Gavard.

Then, as they were now alone again, he began to tell them of the
situation he had found for Florent. A friend of his, he said, Monsieur
Verlaque, one of the fish market inspectors, was so ill that he was
obliged to take a rest; and that very morning the poor man had told
him that he should be very glad to find a substitute who would keep his
berth open for him in case he should recover.

"Verlaque, you know, won't last another six months," added Gavard, "and
Florent will keep the place. It's a splendid idea, isn't it? And it will
be such a take-in for the police! The berth is under the Prefecture, you
know. What glorious fun to see Florent getting paid by the police, eh?"

He burst into a hearty laugh; the idea struck him as so extremely
comical.

"I won't take the place," Florent bluntly replied. "I've sworn I'll
never accept anything from the Empire, and I would rather die of
starvation than serve under the Prefecture. It is quite out of the
question, Gavard, quite so!"

Gavard seemed somewhat put out on hearing this. Quenu had lowered his
head, while Lisa, turning round, looked keenly at Florent, her neck
swollen, her bosom straining her bodice almost to bursting point. She
was just going to open her mouth when La Sarriette entered the shop, and
there was another pause in the conversation.

"Dear me!" exclaimed La Sarriette with her soft laugh, "I'd almost
forgotten to get any bacon fat. Please, Madame Quenu, cut me a dozen
thin strips--very thin ones, you know; I want them for larding larks.
Jules has taken it into his head to eat some larks. Ah! how do you do,
uncle?"

She filled the whole shop with her dancing skirts and smiled brightly at
everyone. Her face looked fresh and creamy, and on one side her hair was
coming down, loosened by the wind which blew through the markets. Gavard
grasped her hands, while she with merry impudence resumed: "I'll bet
that you were talking about me just as I came in. Tell me what you were
saying, uncle."

However, Lisa now called to her, "Just look and tell me if this is thin
enough."

She was cutting the strips of bacon fat with great care on a piece of
board in front of her. Then as she wrapped them up she inquired, "Can I
give you anything else?"

"Well, yes," replied La Sarriette; "since I'm about it, I think I'll
have a pound of lard. I'm awfully fond of fried potatoes; I can make a
breakfast off a penn'orth of potatoes and a bunch of radishes. Yes, I'll
have a pound of lard, please, Madame Quenu."

Lisa placed a sheet of stout paper in the pan of the scales. Then she
took the lard out of a jar under the shelves with a boxwood spatula,
gently adding small quantities to the fatty heap, which began to melt
and run slightly. When the plate of the scale fell, she took up the
paper, folded it, and rapidly twisted the ends with her finger-tips.

"That makes twenty-four sous," she said; "the bacon is six sous--thirty
sous altogether. There's nothing else you want, is there?"

"No," said La Sarriette, "nothing." She paid her money, still laughing
and showing her teeth, and staring the men in the face. Her grey skirt
was all awry, and her loosely fastened red neckerchief allowed a little
of her white bosom to appear. Before she went away she stepped up to
Gavard again, and pretending to threaten him exclaimed: "So you won't
tell me what you were talking about as I came in? I could see you
laughing from the street. Oh, you sly fellow! Ah! I sha'n't love you any
longer!"

Then she left the shop and ran across the road.

"It was Mademoiselle Saget who sent her here," remarked handsome Lisa
drily.

Then silence fell again for some moments. Gavard was dismayed at
Florent's reception of his proposal. Lisa was the first to speak. "It
was wrong of you to refuse the post, Florent," she said in the most
friendly tones. "You know how difficult it is to find any employment,
and you are not in a position to be over-exacting."

"I have my reasons," Florent replied.

Lisa shrugged her shoulders. "Come now," said she, "you really can't be
serious, I'm sure. I can understand that you are not in love with the
Government, but it would be too absurd to let your opinions prevent
you from earning your living. And, besides, my dear fellow, the Emperor
isn't at all a bad sort of man. You don't suppose, do you, that he knew
you were eating mouldy bread and tainted meat? He can't be everywhere,
you know, and you can see for yourself that he hasn't prevented us here
from doing pretty well. You are not at all just; indeed you are not."

Gavard, however, was getting very fidgety. He could not bear to hear
people speak well of the Emperor.

"No, no, Madame Quenu," he interrupted; "you are going too far. It is a
scoundrelly system altogether."

"Oh, as for you," exclaimed Lisa vivaciously, "you'll never rest until
you've got yourself plundered and knocked on the head as the result of
all your wild talk. Don't let us discuss politics; you would only make
me angry. The question is Florent, isn't it? Well, for my part, I say
that he ought to accept this inspectorship. Don't you think so too,
Quenu?"

Quenu, who had not yet said a word, was very much put out by his wife's
sudden appeal.

"It's a good berth," he replied, without compromising himself.

Then, amidst another interval of awkward silence, Florent resumed: "I
beg you, let us drop the subject. My mind is quite made up. I shall
wait."

"You will wait!" cried Lisa, losing patience.

Two rosy fires had risen to her cheeks. As she stood there, erect, in
her white apron, with rounded, swelling hips, it was with difficulty
that she restrained herself from breaking out into bitter words.
However, the entrance of another person into the shop arrested her
anger. The new arrival was Madame Lecoeur.

"Can you let me have half a pound of mixed meats at fifty sous the
pound?" she asked.

She at first pretended not to notice her brother-in-law; but presently
she just nodded her head to him, without speaking. Then she scrutinised
the three men from head to foot, doubtless hoping to divine their secret
by the manner in which they waited for her to go. She could see that she
was putting them out, and the knowledge of this rendered her yet more
sour and angular, as she stood there in her limp skirts, with her long,
spider-like arms bent and her knotted fingers clasped beneath her apron.
Then, as she coughed slightly, Gavard, whom the silence embarrassed,
inquired if she had a cold.

She curtly answered in the negative. Her tightly stretched skin was of
a red-brick colour on those parts of her face where her bones protruded,
and the dull fire burning in her eyes and scorching their lids testified
to some liver complaint nurtured by the querulous jealousy of her
disposition. She turned round again towards the counter, and watched
each movement made by Lisa as she served her with the distrustful glance
of one who is convinced that an attempt will be made to defraud her.

"Don't give me any saveloy," she exclaimed; "I don't like it."

Lisa had taken up a slender knife, and was cutting some thin slices
of sausage. She next passed on to the smoked ham and the common ham,
cutting delicate slices from each, and bending forward slightly as she
did so, with her eyes ever fixed on the knife. Her plump rosy hands,
flitting about the viands with light and gentle touches, seemed to have
derived suppleness from contact with all the fat.

"You would like some larded veal, wouldn't you?" she asked, bringing a
yellow pan towards her.

Madame Lecoeur seemed to be thinking the matter over at considerable
length; however, she at last said that she would have some. Lisa had
now begun to cut into the contents of the pans, from which she removed
slices of larded veal and hare _pate_ on the tip of a broad-bladed
knife. And she deposited each successive slice on the middle of a sheet
of paper placed on the scales.

"Aren't you going to give me some of the boar's head with pistachio
nuts?" asked Madame Lecoeur in her querulous voice.

Lisa was obliged to add some of the boar's head. But the butter dealer
was getting exacting, and asked for two slices of galantine. She was
very fond of it. Lisa, who was already irritated, played impatiently
with the handles of the knives, and told her that the galantine was
truffled, and that she could only include it in an "assortment" at three
francs the pound. Madame Lecoeur, however, continued to pry into the
dishes, trying to find something else to ask for. When the "assortment"
was weighed she made Lisa add some jelly and gherkins to it. The block
of jelly, shaped like a Savoy cake, shook on its white china dish
beneath the angry violence of Lisa's hand; and as with her finger-tips
she took a couple of gherkins from a jar behind the heater, she made the
vinegar spurt over the sides.

"Twenty-five sous, isn't it?" Madame Lecoeur leisurely inquired.

She fully perceived Lisa's covert irritation, and greatly enjoyed the
sight of it, producing her money as slowly as possible, as though,
indeed, her silver had got lost amongst the coppers in her pocket. And
she glanced askance at Gavard, relishing the embarrassed silence which
her presence was prolonging, and vowing that she would not go off, since
they were hiding some trickery or other from her. However, Lisa at
last put the parcel in her hands, and she was then obliged to make her
departure. She went away without saying a word, but darting a searching
glance all round the shop.

"It was that Saget who sent her too!" burst out Lisa, as soon as the old
woman was gone. "Is the old wretch going to send the whole market here
to try to find out what we talk about? What a prying, malicious set they
are! Did anyone ever hear before of crumbed cutlets and 'assortments'
being bought at five o'clock in the afternoon? But then they'd rack
themselves with indigestion rather than not find out! Upon my word,
though, if La Saget sends anyone else here, you'll see the reception
she'll get. I would bundle her out of the shop, even if she were my own
sister!"

The three men remained silent in presence of this explosion of anger.
Gavard had gone to lean over the brass rail of the window-front, where,
seemingly lost in thought, he began playing with one of the cut-glass
balusters detached from its wire fastening. Presently, however, he
raised his head. "Well, for my part," he said, "I looked upon it all as
an excellent joke."

"Looked upon what as a joke?" asked Lisa, still quivering with
indignation.

"The inspectorship."

She raised her hands, gave a last glance at Florent, and then sat down
upon the cushioned bench behind the counter and said nothing further.
Gavard, however, began to explain his views at length; the drift of his
argument being that it was the Government which would look foolish in
the matter, since Florent would be taking its money.

"My dear fellow," he said complacently, "those scoundrels all but
starved you to death, didn't they? Well, you must make them feed you
now. It's a splendid idea; it caught my fancy at once!"

Florent smiled, but still persisted in his refusal. Quenu, in the hope
of pleasing his wife, did his best to find some good arguments. Lisa,
however, appeared to pay no further attention to them. For the last
moment or two she had been looking attentively in the direction of the
markets. And all at once she sprang to her feet again, exclaiming, "Ah!
it is La Normande that they are sending to play the spy on us now! Well,
so much the worse for La Normande; she shall pay for the others!"

A tall female pushed the shop door open. It was the handsome fish-girl,
Louise Mehudin, generally known as La Normande. She was a bold-looking
beauty, with a delicate white skin, and was almost as plump as Lisa,
but there was more effrontery in her glance, and her bosom heaved with
warmer life. She came into the shop with a light swinging step, her gold
chain jingling on her apron, her bare hair arranged in the latest style,
and a bow at her throat, a lace bow, which made her one of the most
coquettish-looking queens of the markets. She brought a vague odour
of fish with her, and a herring-scale showed like a tiny patch of
mother-of-pearl near the little finger of one of her hands. She and
Lisa having lived in the same house in the Rue Pirouette, were intimate
friends, linked by a touch of rivalry which kept each of them busy
with thoughts of the other. In the neighbourhood people spoke of "the
beautiful Norman," just as they spoke of "beautiful Lisa." This brought
them into opposition and comparison, and compelled each of them to do
her utmost to sustain her reputation for beauty. Lisa from her counter
could, by stooping a little, perceive the fish-girl amidst her salmon
and turbot in the pavilion opposite; and each kept a watch on the
other. Beautiful Lisa laced herself more tightly in her stays; and the
beautiful Norman replied by placing additional rings on her fingers and
additional bows on her shoulders. When they met they were very bland and
unctuous and profuse in compliments; but all the while their eyes
were furtively glancing from under their lowered lids, in the hope of
discovering some flaw. They made a point of always dealing with each
other, and professed great mutual affection.

"I say," said La Normande, with her smiling air, "it's to-morrow evening
that you make your black-puddings, isn't it?"

Lisa maintained a cold demeanour. She seldom showed any anger; but when
she did it was tenacious, and slow to be appeased. "Yes," she replied
drily, with the tips of her lips.

"I'm so fond of black-puddings, you know, when they come straight out
of the pot," resumed La Normande. "I'll come and get some of you
to-morrow."

She was conscious of her rival's unfriendly greeting. However, she
glanced at Florent, who seemed to interest her; and then, unwilling to
go off without having the last word, she was imprudent enough to add: "I
bought some black-pudding of you the day before yesterday, you know, and
it wasn't quite sweet."

"Not quite sweet!" repeated Lisa, very pale, and her lips quivering.

She might, perhaps, have once more restrained herself, for fear of La
Normande imagining that she was overcome by envious spite at the
sight of the lace bow; but the girl, not content with playing the spy,
proceeded to insult her, and that was beyond endurance. So, leaning
forward, with her hands clenched on the counter, she exclaimed, in a
somewhat hoarse voice: "I say! when you sold me that pair of soles
last week, did I come and tell you, before everybody that they were
stinking?"

"Stinking! My soles stinking!" cried the fish dealer, flushing scarlet.

For a moment they remained silent, choking with anger, but glaring
fiercely at each other over the array of dishes. All their honeyed
friendship had vanished; a word had sufficed to reveal what sharp teeth
there were behind their smiling lips.

"You're a vulgar, low creature!" cried the beautiful Norman. "You'll
never catch me setting foot in here again, I can tell you!"

"Get along with you, get along with you," exclaimed beautiful Lisa. "I
know quite well whom I've got to deal with!"

The fish-girl went off, hurling behind her a coarse expression which
left Lisa quivering. The whole scene had passed so quickly that the
three men, overcome with amazement, had not had time to interfere.
Lisa soon recovered herself, and was resuming the conversation, without
making any allusion to what had just occurred, when the shop girl,
Augustine, returned from an errand on which she had been sent. Lisa
thereupon took Gavard aside, and after telling him to say nothing for
the present to Monsieur Verlaque, promised that she would undertake to
convince her brother-in-law in a couple of days' time at the utmost.
Quenu then returned to his kitchen, while Gavard took Florent off with
him. And as they were just going into Monsieur Lebigre's to drink a drop
of vermouth together he called his attention to three women standing in
the covered way between the fish and poultry pavilions.

"They're cackling together!" he said with an envious air.

The markets were growing empty, and Mademoiselle Saget, Madame Lecoeur,
and La Sarriette alone lingered on the edge of the footway. The old maid
was holding forth.

"As I told you before, Madame Lecoeur," said she, "they've always got
your brother-in-law in their shop. You saw him there yourself just now,
didn't you?"

"Oh yes, indeed! He was sitting on a table, and seemed quite at home."

"Well, for my part," interrupted La Sarriette, "I heard nothing wrong;
and I can't understand why you're making such a fuss."

Mademoiselle Saget shrugged her shoulders. "Ah, you're very innocent
yet, my dear," she said. "Can't you see why the Quenus are always
attracting Monsieur Gavard to their place? Well, I'll wager that he'll
leave all he has to their little Pauline."

"You believe that, do you?" cried Madame Lecoeur, white with rage. Then,
in a mournful voice, as though she had just received some heavy blow,
she continued: "I am alone in the world, and have no one to take my
part; he is quite at liberty to do as he pleases. His niece sides with
him too--you heard her just now. She has quite forgotten all that she
cost me, and wouldn't stir a hand to help me."

"Indeed, aunt," exclaimed La Sarriette, "you are quite wrong there! It's
you who've never had anything but unkind words for me."

They became reconciled on the spot, and kissed one another. The niece
promised that she would play no more pranks, and the aunt swore by
all she held most sacred that she looked upon La Sarriette as her own
daughter. Then Mademoiselle Saget advised them as to the steps they
ought to take to prevent Gavard from squandering his money. And they
all agreed that the Quenu-Gradelles were very disreputable folks, and
required closely watching.

"I don't know what they're up to just now," said the old maid, "but
there's something suspicious going on, I'm sure. What's your opinion,
now, of that fellow Florent, that cousin of Madame Quenu's?"

The three women drew more closely together, and lowered their voices.

"You remember," said Madame Lecoeur, "that we saw him one morning with
his boots all split, and his clothes covered with dust, looking just
like a thief who's been up to some roguery. That fellow quite frightens
me."

"Well, he's certainly very thin," said La Sarriette, "but he isn't
ugly."

Mademoiselle Saget was reflecting, and she expressed her thoughts
aloud. "I've been trying to find out something about him for the last
fortnight, but I can make nothing of it. Monsieur Gavard certainly knows
him. I must have met him myself somewhere before, but I can't remember
where."

She was still ransacking her memory when La Normande swept up to them
like a whirlwind. She had just left the pork shop.

"That big booby Lisa has got nice manners, I must say!" she cried,
delighted to be able to relieve herself. "Fancy her telling me that I
sold nothing but stinking fish! But I gave her as good as she deserved,
I can tell you! A nice den they keep, with their tainted pig meat which
poisons all their customers!"

"But what had you been saying to her?" asked the old maid, quite
frisky with excitement, and delighted to hear that the two women had
quarrelled.

"I! I'd said just nothing at all--no, not that! I just went into the
shop and told her very civilly that I'd buy some black-pudding to-morrow
evening, and then she overwhelmed me with abuse. A dirty hypocrite she
is, with her saint-like airs! But she'll pay more dearly for this than
she fancies!"

The three women felt that La Normande was not telling them the truth,
but this did not prevent them from taking her part with a rush of bad
language. They turned towards the Rue Rambuteau with insulting mien,
inventing all sorts of stories about the uncleanliness of the cookery at
the Quenu's shop, and making the most extraordinary accusations. If the
Quenus had been detected selling human flesh the women could not have
displayed more violent and threatening anger. The fish-girl was obliged
to tell her story three times over.

"And what did the cousin say?" asked Mademoiselle Saget, with wicked
intent.

"The cousin!" repeated La Normande, in a shrill voice. "Do you really
believe that he's a cousin? He's some lover or other, I'll wager, the
great booby!"

The three others protested against this. Lisa's honourability was an
article of faith in the neighbourhood.

"Stuff and nonsense!" retorted La Normande. "You can never be sure about
those smug, sleek hypocrites."

Mademoiselle Saget nodded her head as if to say that she was not
very far from sharing La Normande's opinion. And she softly added:
"Especially as this cousin has sprung from no one knows where; for it's
a very doubtful sort of account that the Quenus give of him."

"Oh, he's the fat woman's sweetheart, I tell you!" reaffirmed the
fish-girl; "some scamp or vagabond picked up in the streets. It's easy
enough to see it."

"She has given him a complete outfit," remarked Madame Lecoeur. "He must
be costing her a pretty penny."

"Yes, yes," muttered the old maid; "perhaps you are right. I must really
get to know something about him."

Then they all promised to keep one another thoroughly informed of
whatever might take place in the Quenu-Gradelle establishment. The
butter dealer pretended that she wished to open her brother-in-law's
eyes as to the sort of places he frequented. However, La Normande's
anger had by this time toned down, and, a good sort of girl at heart,
she went off, weary of having talked so much on the matter.

"I'm sure that La Normande said something or other insolent," remarked
Madame Lecoeur knowingly, when the fish-girl had left them. "It is just
her way; and it scarcely becomes a creature like her to talk as she did
of Lisa."

The three women looked at each other and smiled. Then, when Madame
Lecoeur also had gone off, La Sarriette remarked to Mademoiselle Saget:
"It is foolish of my aunt to worry herself so much about all these
affairs. It's that which makes her so thin. Ah! she'd have willingly
taken Gavard for a husband if she could only have got him. Yet she used
to beat me if ever a young man looked my way."

Mademoiselle Saget smiled once more. And when she found herself alone,
and went back towards the Rue Pirouette, she reflected that those three
cackling hussies were not worth a rope to hang them. She was, indeed,
a little afraid that she might have been seen with them, and the idea
somewhat troubled her, for she realised that it would be bad policy to
fall out with the Quenu-Gradelles, who, after all, were well-to-do folks
and much esteemed. So she went a little out of her way on purpose to
call at Taboureau the baker's in the Rue Turbigo--the finest baker's
shop in the whole neighbourhood. Madame Taboureau was not only an
intimate friend of Lisa's, but an accepted authority on every subject.
When it was remarked that "Madame Taboureau had said this," or "Madame
Taboureau had said that," there was no more to be urged. So the old
maid, calling at the baker's under pretence of inquiring at what time
the oven would be hot, as she wished to bring a dish of pears to be
baked, took the opportunity to eulogise Lisa, and lavish praise upon the
sweetness and excellence of her black-puddings. Then, well pleased at
having prepared this moral alibi and delighted at having done what she
could to fan the flames of a quarrel without involving herself in it,
she briskly returned home, feeling much easier in her mind, but
still striving to recall where she had previously seen Madame Quenu's
so-called cousin.

That same evening, after dinner, Florent went out and strolled for some
time in one of the covered ways of the markets. A fine mist was rising,
and a grey sadness, which the gas lights studded as with yellow tears,
hung over the deserted pavilions. For the first time Florent began to
feel that he was in the way, and to recognise the unmannerly fashion in
which he, thin and artless, had tumbled into this world of fat people;
and he frankly admitted to himself that his presence was disturbing
the whole neighbourhood, and that he was a source of discomfort to the
Quenus--a spurious cousin of far too compromising appearance. These
reflections made him very sad; not, indeed, that they had noticed the
slightest harshness on the part of his brother or Lisa: it was their
very kindness, rather, that was troubling him, and he accused himself of
a lack of delicacy in quartering himself upon them. He was beginning to
doubt the propriety of his conduct. The recollection of the conversation
in the shop during the afternoon caused him a vague disquietude. The
odour of the viands on Lisa's counter seemed to penetrate him; he felt
himself gliding into nerveless, satiated cowardice. Perhaps he had acted
wrongly in refusing the inspectorship offered him. This reflection gave
birth to a stormy struggle in his mind, and he was obliged to brace and
shake himself before he could recover his wonted rigidity of principles.
However, a moist breeze had risen, and was blowing along the covered
way, and he regained some degree of calmness and resolution on being
obliged to button up his coat. The wind seemingly swept from his clothes
all the greasy odour of the pork shop, which had made him feel so
languid.

He was returning home when he met Claude Lantier. The artist, hidden
in the folds of his greenish overcoat, spoke in a hollow voice full of
suppressed anger. He was in a passion with painting, declared that it
was a dog's trade, and swore that he would not take up a brush again as
long as he lived. That very afternoon he had thrust his foot through a
study which he had been making of the head of that hussy Cadine.

Claude was subject to these outbursts, the fruit of his inability to
execute the lasting, living works which he dreamed of. And at such times
life became an utter blank to him, and he wandered about the streets,
wrapped in the gloomiest thoughts, and waiting for the morning as for a
sort of resurrection. He used to say that he felt bright and cheerful in
the morning, and horribly miserable in the evening.[*] Each of his days
was a long effort ending in disappointment. Florent scarcely recognised
in him the careless night wanderer of the markets. They had already met
again at the pork shop, and Claude, who knew the fugitive's story, had
grasped his hand and told him that he was a sterling fellow. It was very
seldom, however, that the artist went to the Quenus'.

[*] Claude Lantier's struggle for fame is fully described in
M. Zola's novel, _L'Oeuvre_ ("His Masterpiece").
--Translator.

"Are you still at my aunt's?" he asked. "I can't imagine how you manage
to exist amidst all that cookery. The places reeks with the smell of
meat. When I've been there for an hour I feel as though I shouldn't want
anything to eat for another three days. I ought not to have gone there
this morning; it was that which made me make a mess of my work."

Then, after he and Florent had taken a few steps in silence, he resumed:

"Ah! the good people! They quite grieve me with their fine health. I had
thought of painting their portraits, but I've never been able to succeed
with such round faces, in which there is never a bone. Ah! You wouldn't
find my aunt Lisa kicking her foot through her pans! I was an idiot to
have destroyed Cadine's head! Now that I come to think of it, it wasn't
so very bad, perhaps, after all."

Then they began to talk about Aunt Lisa. Claude said that his mother[*]
had not seen anything of her for a long time, and he hinted that the
pork butcher's wife was somewhat ashamed of her sister having married
a common working man; moreover, she wasn't at all fond of unfortunate
folks. Speaking of himself, he told Florent that a benevolent gentleman
had sent him to college, being very pleased with the donkeys and old
women that he had managed to draw when only eight years old; but the
good soul had died, leaving him an income of a thousand francs, which
just saved him from perishing of hunger.

[*] Gervaise, the heroine of the _Assommoir_.

"All the same, I would rather have been a working man," continued
Claude. "Look at the carpenters, for instance. They are very happy
folks, the carpenters. They have a table to make, say; well, they make
it, and then go off to bed, happy at having finished the table, and
perfectly satisfied with themselves. Now I, on the other hand, scarcely
get any sleep at nights. All those confounded pictures which I can't
finish go flying about my brain. I never get anything finished and done
with--never, never!"

His voice almost broke into a sob. Then he attempted to laugh; and
afterwards began to swear and pour forth coarse expressions, with the
cold rage of one who, endowed with a delicate, sensitive mind, doubts
his own powers, and dreams of wallowing in the mire. He ended by
squatting down before one of the gratings which admit air into the
cellars beneath the markets--cellars where the gas is continually kept
burning. And in the depths below he pointed out Marjolin and Cadine
tranquilly eating their supper, whilst seated on one of the stone blocks
used for killing the poultry. The two young vagabonds had discovered a
means of hiding themselves and making themselves at home in the cellars
after the doors had been closed.

"What a magnificent animal he is, eh!" exclaimed Claude, with envious
admiration, speaking of Marjolin. "He and Cadine are happy, at all
events! All they care for is eating and kissing. They haven't a care
in the world. Ah, you do quite right, after all, to remain at the pork
shop; perhaps you'll grow sleek and plump there."

Then he suddenly went off. Florent climbed up to his garret, disturbed
by Claude's nervous restlessness, which revived his own uncertainty.
On the morrow, he avoided the pork shop all the morning, and went for
a long walk on the quays. When he returned to lunch, however, he was
struck by Lisa's kindliness. Without any undue insistence she again
spoke to him about the inspectorship, as of something which was well
worth his consideration. As he listened to her, with a full plate in
front of him, he was affected, in spite of himself, by the prim comfort
of his surroundings. The matting beneath his feet seemed very soft;
the gleams of the brass hanging lamp, the soft, yellow tint of
the wallpaper, and the bright oak of the furniture filled him with
appreciation of a life spent in comfort, which disturbed his notions of
right and wrong. He still, however, had sufficient strength to persist
in his refusal, and repeated his reasons; albeit conscious of the bad
taste he was showing in thus ostentatiously parading his animosity and
obstinacy in such a place. Lisa showed no signs of vexation; on the
contrary, she smiled, and the sweetness of her smile embarrassed Florent
far more than her suppressed irritation of the previous evening. At
dinner the subject was not renewed; they talked solely of the great
winter saltings, which would keep the whole staff of the establishment
busily employed.

The evenings were growing cold, and as soon as they had dined they
retired into the kitchen, where it was very warm. The room was so large,
too, that several people could sit comfortably at the square central
table, without in any way impeding the work that was going on. Lighted
by gas, the walls were coated with white and blue tiles to a height
of some five or six feet from the floor. On the left was a great iron
stove, in the three apertures of which were set three large round pots,
their bottoms black with soot. At the end was a small range, which,
fitted with an oven and a smoking-place, served for the broiling; and
up above, over the skimming-spoons, ladles, and long-handled forks, were
several numbered drawers, containing rasped bread, both fine and coarse,
toasted crumbs, spices, cloves, nutmegs, and pepper. On the right,
leaning heavily against the wall, was the chopping-block, a huge mass
of oak, slashed and scored all over. Attached to it were several
appliances, an injecting pump, a forcing-machine, and a mechanical
mincer, which, with their wheels and cranks, imparted to the place an
uncanny and mysterious aspect, suggesting some kitchen of the infernal
regions.

Then, all round the walls upon shelves, and even under the tables,
were iron pots, earthenware pans, dishes, pails, various kinds of tin
utensils, a perfect battery of deep copper saucepans, and swelling
funnels, racks of knives and choppers, rows of larding-pins and
needles--a perfect world of greasy things. In spite of the extreme
cleanliness, grease was paramount; it oozed forth from between the blue
and white tiles on the wall, glistened on the red tiles of the flooring,
gave a greyish glitter to the stove, and polished the edges of the
chopping-block with the transparent sheen of varnished oak. And, indeed,
amidst the ever-rising steam, the continuous evaporation from the three
big pots, in which pork was boiling and melting, there was not a single
nail from ceiling to floor from which grease did not exude.

The Quenu-Gradelles prepared nearly all their stock themselves. All that
they procured from outside were the potted meats of celebrated firms,
with jars of pickles and preserves, sardines, cheese, and edible snails.
They consequently became very busy after September in filling the
cellars which had been emptied during the summer. They continued working
even after the shop had been closed for the night. Assisted by Auguste
and Leon, Quenu would stuff sausages-skins, prepare hams, melt down
lard, and salt the different sorts of bacon. There was a tremendous
noise of cauldrons and cleavers, and the odour of cooking spread through
the whole house. All this was quite independent of the daily business
in fresh pork, _pate de fois gras_, hare patty, galantine, saveloys and
black-puddings.

That evening, at about eleven o'clock, Quenu, after placing a couple of
pots on the fire in order to melt down some lard, began to prepare the
black-puddings. Auguste assisted him. At one corner of the square table
Lisa and Augustine sat mending linen, whilst opposite to them, on the
other side, with his face turned towards the fireplace, was Florent.
Leon was mincing some sausage-meat on the oak block in a slow,
rhythmical fashion.

Auguste first of all went out into the yard to fetch a couple of
jug-like cans full of pigs' blood. It was he who stuck the animals in
the slaughter house. He himself would carry away the blood and interior
portions of the pigs, leaving the men who scalded the carcasses to bring
them home completely dressed in their carts. Quenu asserted that no
assistant in all Paris was Auguste' equal as a pig-sticker. The truth
was that Auguste was a wonderfully keen judge of the quality of the
blood; and the black-pudding proved good every time that he said such
would be the case.

"Well, will the black-pudding be good this time?" asked Lisa.

August put down the two cans and slowly answered: "I believe so, Madame
Quenu; yes, I believe so. I tell it at first by the way the blood flows.
If it spurts out very gently when I pull out the knife, that's a bad
sign, and shows that the blood is poor."

"But doesn't that depend on how far the knife has been stuck in?" asked
Quenu.

A smile came over Auguste's pale face. "No," he replied; "I always let
four digits of the blade go in; that's the right way to measure. But the
best sign of all is when the blood runs out and I beat it with my
hand when it pours into the pail; it ought to be of a good warmth, and
creamy, without being too thick."

Augustine had put down her needle, and with her eyes raised was now
gazing at Auguste. On her ruddy face, crowned by wiry chestnut hair,
there was an expression of profound attention. Lisa and even little
Pauline were also listening with deep interest.

"Well, I beat it, and beat it, and beat it," continued the young man,
whisking his hand about as though he were whipping cream. "And then,
when I take my hand out and look at it, it ought to be greased, as it
were, by the blood and equally coated all over. And if that's the case,
anyone can say without fear of mistake that the black-puddings will be
good."

He remained for a moment in an easy attitude, complacently holding his
hand in the air. This hand, which spent so much of its time in pails of
blood, had brightly gleaming nails, and looked very rosy above his white
sleeve. Quenu had nodded his head in approbation, and an interval
of silence followed. Leon was still mincing. Pauline, however, after
remaining thoughtful for a little while, mounted upon Florent's feet
again, and in her clear voice exclaimed: "I say, cousin, tell me the
story of the gentleman who was eaten by the wild beasts!"

It was probably the mention of the pig's blood which had aroused in the
child's mind the recollection of "the gentleman who had been eaten by
the wild beasts." Florent did not at first understand what she referred
to, and asked her what gentleman she meant. Lisa began to smile.

"She wants you to tell her," she said, "the story of that unfortunate
man--you know whom I mean--which you told to Gavard one evening. She
must have heard you."

At this Florent grew very grave. The little girl got up, and taking the
big cat in her arms, placed it on his knees, saying that Mouton also
would like to hear the story. Mouton, however, leapt on to the table,
where, with rounded back, he remained contemplating the tall, scraggy
individual who for the last fortnight had apparently afforded him matter
for deep reflection. Pauline meantime began to grow impatient, stamping
her feet and insisting on hearing the story.

"Oh, tell her what she wants," said Lisa, as the child persisted and
became quite unbearable; "she'll leave us in peace then."

Florent remained silent for a moment longer, with his eyes turned
towards the floor. Then slowly raising his head he let his gaze rest
first on the two women who were plying their needles, and next on Quenu
and Auguste, who were preparing the pot for the black-puddings. The gas
was burning quietly, the stove diffused a gentle warmth, and all the
grease of the kitchen glistened in an atmosphere of comfort such as
attends good digestion

Then, taking little Pauline upon his knee, and smiling a sad smile,
Florent addressed himself to the child as follows[*]:--

[*] Florent's narrative is not romance, but is based on the
statements of several of the innocent victims whom the third
Napoleon transported to Cayenne when wading through blood to
the power which he so misused.--Translator.

"Once upon a time there was a poor man who was sent away, a long, long
way off, right across the sea. On the ship which carried him were four
hundred convicts, and he was thrown among them. He was forced to live
for five weeks amidst all those scoundrels, dressed like them in coarse
canvas, and feeding at their mess. Foul insects preyed on him, and
terrible sweats robbed him of all his strength. The kitchen, the
bakehouse, and the engine-room made the orlop deck so terribly hot that
ten of the convicts died from it. In the daytime they were sent up in
batches of fifty to get a little fresh air from the sea; and as the crew
of the ship feared them, a couple of cannons were pointed at the little
bit of deck where they took exercise. The poor fellow was very glad
indeed when his turn to go up came. His terrible perspiration then
abated somewhat; still, he could not eat, and felt very ill. During the
night, when he was manacled again, and the rolling of the ship in the
rough sea kept knocking him against his companions, he quite broke down,
and began to cry, glad to be able to do so without being seen."

Pauline was listening with dilated eyes, and her little hands crossed
primly in front of her.

"But this isn't the story of the gentleman who was eaten by the wild
beasts," she interrupted. "This is quite a different story; isn't it
now, cousin?"

"Wait a bit, and you'll see," replied Florent gently. "I shall come
to the gentleman presently. I'm telling you the whole story from the
beginning."

"Oh, thank you," murmured the child, with a delighted expression.
However, she remained thoughtful, evidently struggling with some great
difficulty to which she could find no explanation. At last she spoke.

"But what had the poor man done," she asked, "that he was sent away and
put in the ship?"

Lisa and Augustine smiled. They were quite charmed with the child's
intelligence; and Lisa, without giving the little one a direct reply,
took advantage of the opportunity to teach her a lesson by telling her
that naughty children were also sent away in boats like that.

"Oh, then," remarked Pauline judiciously, "perhaps it served my cousin's
poor man quite right if he cried all night long."

Lisa resumed her sewing, bending over her work. Quenu had not listened.
He had been cutting some little rounds of onion over a pot placed on the
fire; and almost at once the onions began to crackle, raising a clear
shrill chirrup like that of grasshoppers basking in the heat. They gave
out a pleasant odour too, and when Quenu plunged his great wooden spoon
into the pot the chirruping became yet louder, and the whole kitchen was
filled with the penetrating perfume of the onions. Auguste meantime was
preparing some bacon fat in a dish, and Leon's chopper fell faster
and faster, and every now and then scraped the block so as to gather
together the sausage-meat, now almost a paste.

"When they got across the sea," Florent continued, "they took the man to
an island called the Devil's Island,[*] where he found himself amongst
others who had been carried away from their own country. They were
all very unhappy. At first they were kept to hard labour, just like
convicts. The gendarme who had charge of them counted them three times
every day, so as to be sure that none were missing. Later on, they were
left free to do as they liked, being merely locked up at night in a big
wooden hut, where they slept in hammocks stretched between two bars.
At the end of the year they went about barefooted, as their boots were
quite worn out, and their clothes had become so ragged that their flesh
showed through them. They had built themselves some huts with trunks
of trees as a shelter against the sun, which is terribly hot in those
parts; but these huts did not shield them against the mosquitoes, which
covered them with pimples and swellings during the night. Many of them
died, and the others turned quite yellow, so shrunken and wretched,
with their long, unkempt beards, that one could not behold them without
pity."

[*] The Ile du Diable. This spot was selected as the place
of detention of Captain Dreyfus, the French officer
convicted in 1894 of having divulged important military
documents to foreign powers.--Translator.

"Auguste, give me the fat," cried Quenu; and when the apprentice had
handed him the dish he let the pieces of bacon-fat slide gently into the
pot, and then stirred them with his spoon. A yet denser steam now rose
from the fireplace.

"What did they give them to eat?" asked little Pauline, who seemed
deeply interested.

"They gave them maggoty rice and foul meat," answered Florent, whose
voice grew lower as he spoke. "The rice could scarcely be eaten. When
the meat was roasted and very well done it was just possible to swallow
it; but if it was boiled, it smelt so dreadfully that the men had nausea
and stomach ache."

"I'd rather have lived upon dry bread," said the child, after thinking
the matter carefully over.

Leon, having finished the mincing, now placed the sausage-meat upon the
square table in a dish. Mouton, who had remained seated with his eyes
fixed upon Florent, as though filled with amazement by his story, was
obliged to retreat a few steps, which he did with a very bad grace. Then
he rolled himself up, with his nose close to the sausage-meat, and began
to purr.

Lisa was unable to conceal her disgust and amazement. That foul
rice, that evil-smelling meat, seemed to her to be scarcely credible
abominations, which disgraced those who had eaten them as much as it did
those who had provided them; and her calm, handsome face and round neck
quivered with vague fear of the man who had lived upon such horrid food.

"No, indeed, it was not a land of delights," Florent resumed, forgetting
all about little Pauline, and fixing his dreamy eyes upon the steaming
pot. "Every day brought fresh annoyances--perpetual grinding tyranny,
the violation of every principle of justice, contempt for all human
charity, which exasperated the prisoners, and slowly consumed them with
a fever of sickly rancour. They lived like wild beasts, with the lash
ceaselessly raised over their backs. Those torturers would have liked to
kill the poor man--Oh, no; it can never be forgotten; it is impossible!
Such sufferings will some day claim vengeance."

His voice had fallen, and the pieces of fat hissing merrily in the pot
drowned it with the sound of their boiling. Lisa, however, heard him,
and was frightened by the implacable expression which had suddenly come
over his face; and, recollecting the gentle look which he habitually
wore, she judged him to be a hypocrite.

Florent's hollow voice had brought Pauline's interest and delight to the
highest pitch, and she fidgeted with pleasure on his knee.

"But the man?" she exclaimed. "Go on about the man!"

Florent looked at her, and then appeared to remember, and smiled his sad
smile again.

"The man," he continued, "was weary of remaining on the island, and
had but one thought--that of making his escape by crossing the sea
and reaching the mainland, whose white coast line could be seen on the
horizon in clear weather. But it was no easy matter to escape. It was
necessary that a raft should be built, and as several of the prisoners
had already made their escape, all the trees on the island had been
felled to prevent the others from obtaining timber. The island was,
indeed, so bare and naked, so scorched by the blazing sun, that life in
it had become yet more perilous and terrible. However, it occurred to
the man and two of his companions to employ the timbers of which their
huts were built; and one evening they put out to sea on some rotten
beams, which they had fastened together with dry branches. The wind
carried them towards the coast. Just as daylight was about to appear,
the raft struck on a sandbank with such violence that the beams were
severed from their lashings and carried out to sea. The three poor
fellows were almost engulfed in the sand. Two of them sank in it to
their waists, while the third disappeared up to his chin, and his
companions were obliged to pull him out. At last they reached a rock,
so small that there was scarcely room for them to sit down upon it. When
the sun rose they could see the coast in front of them, a bar of grey
cliffs stretching all along the horizon. Two, who knew how to swim,
determined to reach those cliffs. They preferred to run the risk of
being drowned at once to that of slowly starving on the rock. But they
promised their companion that they would return for him when they had
reached land and had been able to procure a boat."

"Ah, I know now!" cried little Pauline, clapping her hands with glee.
"It's the story of the gentleman who was eaten by the crabs!"

"They succeeded in reaching the coast," continued Florent, "but it was
quite deserted; and it was only at the end of four days that they were
able to get a boat. When they returned to the rock, they found their
companion lying on his back, dead, and half-eaten by crabs, which were
still swarming over what remained of his body."[*]

[*] In deference to the easily shocked feelings of the
average English reader I have somewhat modified this
passage. In the original M. Zola fully describes the awful
appearance of the body.--Translator.
A murmur of disgust escaped Lisa and Augustine, and a horrified grimace
passed over the face of Leon, who was preparing the skins for the
black-puddings. Quenu stopped in the midst of his work and looked
at Auguste, who seemed to have turned faint. Only little Pauline
was smiling. In imagination the others could picture those swarming,
ravenous crabs crawling all over the kitchen, and mingling gruesome
odours with the aroma of the bacon-fat and onions.

"Give me the blood," cried Quenu, who had not been following the story.

Auguste came up to him with the two cans, from which he slowly
poured the blood, while Quenu, as it fell, vigorously stirred the
now thickening contents of the pot. When the cans were emptied, Quenu
reached up to one of the drawers above the range, and took out some
pinches of spice. Then he added a plentiful seasoning of pepper.

"They left him there, didn't they," Lisa now asked of Florent, "and
returned themselves in safety?"

"As they were going back," continued Florent, "the wind changed, and
they were driven out into the open sea. A wave carried away one of their
oars, and the water swept so furiously into the boat that their whole
time was taken up in baling it out with their hands. They tossed about
in this way in sight of the coast, carried away by squalls and then
brought back again by the tide, without a mouthful of bread to eat, for
their scanty stock of provisions had been consumed. This went on for
three days."

"Three days!" cried Lisa in stupefaction; "three days without food!"

"Yes, three days without food. When the east wind at last brought them
to shore, one of them was so weak that he lay on the beach the whole
day. In the evening he died. His companion had vainly attempted to get
him to chew some leaves which he gathered from the trees."

At this point Augustine broke into a slight laugh. Then, ashamed at
having done so and not wishing to be considered heartless, she stammered
out in confusion: "Oh! I wasn't laughing at that. It was Mouton. Do just
look at Mouton, madame."

Then Lisa in her turn began to smile. Mouton, who had been lying all
this time with his nose close to the dish of sausage-meat, had probably
begun to feel distressed and disgusted by the presence of all this food,
for he had risen and was rapidly scratching the table with his paws as
though he wanted to bury the dish and its contents. At last, however,
turning his back to it and lying down on his side, he stretched himself
out, half closing his eyes and rubbing his head against the table with
languid pleasure. Then they all began to compliment Mouton. He never
stole anything, they said, and could be safely left with the meat.
Pauline related that he licked her fingers and washed her face after
dinner without trying to bite her.

However, Lisa now came back to the question as to whether it were
possible to live for three days without food. In her opinion it was not.
"No," she said, "I can't believe it. No one ever goes three days
without food. When people talk of a person dying of hunger, it is a mere
expression. They always get something to eat, more or less. It is only
the most abandoned wretches, people who are utterly lost----"

She was doubtless going to add, "vagrant rogues," but she stopped short
and looked at Florent. The scornful pout of her lips and the expression
of her bright eyes plainly signified that in her belief only villains
made such prolonged fasts. It seemed to her that a man able to remain
without food for three days must necessarily be a very dangerous
character. For, indeed, honest folks never placed themselves in such a
position.

Florent was now almost stifling. In front of him the stove, into which
Leon had just thrown several shovelfuls of coal, was snoring like a lay
clerk asleep in the sun; and the heat was very great. Auguste, who had
taken charge of the lard melting in the pots, was watching over it in a
state of perspiration, and Quenu wiped his brow with his sleeve whilst
waiting for the blood to mix. A drowsiness such as follows gross
feeding, an atmosphere heavy with indigestion, pervaded the kitchen.

"When the man had buried his comrade in the sand," Florent continued
slowly, "he walked off alone straight in front of him. Dutch Guiana, in
which country he now was, is a land of forests intermingled with rivers
and swamps. The man walked on for more than a week without coming across
a single human dwelling-place. All around, death seemed to be lurking
and lying in wait for him. Though his stomach was racked by hunger, he
often did not dare to eat the bright-coloured fruits which hung from the
trees; he was afraid to touch the glittering berries, fearing lest they
should be poisonous. For whole days he did not see a patch of sky, but
tramped on beneath a canopy of branches, amidst a greenish gloom that
swarmed with horrible living creatures. Great birds flew over his head
with a terrible flapping of wings and sudden strange calls resembling
death groans; apes sprang, wild animals rushed through the thickets
around him, bending the saplings and bringing down a rain of leaves, as
though a gale were passing. But it was particularly the serpents that
turned his blood cold when, stepping upon a matting of moving, withered
leaves, he caught sight of their slim heads gliding amidst a horrid maze
of roots. In certain nooks, nooks of dank shadow, swarming colonies
of reptiles--some black, some yellow, some purple, some striped, some
spotted, and some resembling withered reeds--suddenly awakened into life
and wriggled away. At such times the man would stop and look about for
a stone on which he might take refuge from the soft yielding ground
into which his feet sank; and there he would remain for hours,
terror-stricken on espying in some open space near by a boa, who,
with tail coiled and head erect, swayed like the trunk of a big tree
splotched with gold.

"At night he used to sleep in the trees, alarmed by the slightest
rustling of the branches, and fancying that he could hear endless swarms
of serpents gliding through the gloom. He almost stifled beneath the
interminable expanse of foliage. The gloomy shade reeked with close,
oppressive heat, a clammy dankness and pestilential sweat, impregnated
with the coarse aroma of scented wood and malodorous flowers.

"And when at last, after a long weary tramp, the man made his way out of
the forest and beheld the sky again, he found himself confronted by wide
rivers which barred his way. He skirted their banks, keeping a watchful
eye on the grey backs of the alligators and the masses of drifting
vegetation, and then, when he came to a less suspicious-looking spot,
he swam across. And beyond the rivers the forests began again. At other
times there were vast prairie lands, leagues of thick vegetation, in
which, at distant intervals, small lakes gleamed bluely. The man then
made a wide detour, and sounded the ground beneath him before advancing,
having but narrowly escaped from being swallowed up and buried beneath
one of those smiling plains which he could hear cracking at each step he
took. The giant grass, nourished by all the collected humus, concealed
pestiferous marshes, depths of liquid mud; and amongst the expanses of
verdure spread over the glaucous immensity to the very horizon there
were only narrow stretches of firm ground with which the traveller must
be acquainted if he would avoid disappearing for ever. One night the
man sank down as far as his waist. At each effort he made to extricate
himself the mud threatened to rise to his mouth. Then he remained
quite still for nearly a couple of hours; and when the moon rose he was
fortunately able to catch hold of a branch of a tree above his head. By
the time he reached a human dwelling his hands and feet were bruised and
bleeding, swollen with poisonous stings. He presented such a pitiable,
famished appearance that those who saw him were afraid of him. They
tossed him some food fifty yards away from the house, and the master of
it kept guard over his door with a loaded gun."

Florent stopped, his voice choked by emotion, and his eyes gazing
blankly before him. For some minutes he had seemed to be speaking to
himself alone. Little Pauline, who had grown drowsy, was lying in his
arms with her head thrown back, though striving to keep her wondering
eyes open. And Quenu, for his part, appeared to be getting impatient.

"Why, you stupid!" he shouted to Leon, "don't you know how to hold a
skin yet? What do you stand staring at me for? It's the skin you should
look at, not me! There, hold it like that, and don't move again!"

With his right hand Leon was raising a long string of sausage-skin, at
one end of which a very wide funnel was inserted; while with his left
hand he coiled the black-pudding round a metal bowl as fast as Quenu
filled the funnel with big spoonfuls of the meat. The latter, black and
steaming, flowed through the funnel, gradually inflating the skin, which
fell down again, gorged to repletion and curving languidly. As Quenu had
removed the pot from the range both he and Leon stood out prominently,
he broad visaged, and the lad slender of profile, in the burning glow
which cast over their pale faces and white garments a flood of rosy
light.

Lisa and Augustine watched the filling of the skin with great interest,
Lisa especially; and she in her turn found fault with Leon because he
nipped the skin too tightly with his fingers, which caused knots to
form, she said. When the skin was quite full, Quenu let it slip gently
into a pot of boiling water; and seemed quite easy in his mind again,
for now nothing remained but to leave it to boil.

"And the man--go on about the man!" murmured Pauline, opening her eyes,
and surprised at no longer hearing the narrative.

Florent rocked her on his knee, and resumed his story in a slow,
murmuring voice, suggestive of that of a nurse singing an infant to
sleep.

"The man," he said, "arrived at a large town. There he was at first
taken for an escaped convict, and was kept in prison for several months.
Then he was released, and turned his hand to all sorts of work. He
kept accounts and taught children to read, and at one time he was even
employed as a navvy in making an embankment. He was continually hoping
to return to his own country. He had saved the necessary amount of money
when he was attacked by yellow fever. Then, believing him to be dead,
those about him divided his clothes amongst themselves; so that when he
at last recovered he had not even a shirt left. He had to begin all over
again. The man was very weak, and was afraid he might have to remain
where he was. But at last he was able to get away, and he returned."

His voice had sunk lower and lower, and now died away altogether in a
final quivering of his lips. The close of the story had lulled little
Pauline to sleep, and she was now slumbering with her head on Florent's
shoulder. He held her with one arm, and still gently rocked her on his
knee. No one seemed to pay any further attention to him, so he remained
still and quiet where he was, holding the sleeping child.

Now came the tug of war, as Quenu said. He had to remove the
black-puddings from the pot. In order to avoid breaking them or getting
them entangled, he coiled them round a thick wooden pin as he drew them
out, and then carried them into the yard and hung them on screens, where
they quickly dried. Leon helped him, holding up the drooping ends. And
as these reeking festoons of black-pudding crossed the kitchen they left
behind them a trail of odorous steam, which still further thickened the
dense atmosphere.

Auguste, on his side, after giving a hasty glance at the lard moulds,
now took the covers off the two pots in which the fat was simmering, and
each bursting bubble discharged an acrid vapour into the kitchen. The
greasy haze had been gradually rising ever since the beginning of
the evening, and now it shrouded the gas and pervaded the whole room,
streaming everywhere, and veiling the ruddy whiteness of Quenu and his
two assistants. Lisa and Augustine had risen from their seats; and all
were panting as though they had eaten too much.

Augustine carried the sleeping Pauline upstairs; and Quenu, who liked to
fasten up the kitchen himself, gave Auguste and Leon leave to go to
bed, saying that he would fetch the black-pudding himself. The younger
apprentice stole off with a very red face, having managed to secrete
under his shirt nearly a yard of the pudding, which must have almost
scalded him. Then the Quenus and Florent remained alone, in silence.
Lisa stood nibbling a little piece of the hot pudding, keeping her
pretty lips well apart all the while, for fear of burning them, and
gradually the black compound vanished in her rosy mouth.

"Well," said she, "La Normande was foolish in behaving so rudely; the
black-pudding's excellent to-day."

However, there was a knock at the passage door, and Gavard, who stayed
at Monsieur Lebigre's every evening until midnight, came in. He had
called for a definite answer about the fish inspectorship.

"You must understand," he said, "that Monsieur Verlaque cannot wait any
longer; he is too ill. So Florent must make up his mind. I have promised
to give a positive answer early to-morrow."

"Well, Florent accepts," Lisa quietly remarked, taking another nibble at
some black-pudding.

Florent, who had remained in his chair, overcome by a strange feeling of
prostration, vainly endeavoured to rise and protest.

"No, no, say nothing," continued Lisa; "the matter is quite settled. You
have suffered quite enough already, my dear Florent. What you have just
been telling us is enough to make one shudder. It is time now for you
to settle down. You belong to a respectable family, you received a good
education, and it is really not fitting that you should go wandering
about the highways like a vagrant. At your age childishness is no longer
excusable. You have been foolish; well, all that will be forgotten
and forgiven. You will take your place again among those of your own
class--the class of respectable folks--and live in future like other
people."

Florent listened in astonishment, quite unable to say a word. Lisa
was, doubtless, right. She looked so healthy, so serene, that it was
impossible to imagine that she desired anything but what was proper. It
was he, with his fleshless body and dark, equivocal-looking countenance,
who must be in the wrong, and indulging in unrighteous dreams. He could,
indeed, no longer understand why he had hitherto resisted.

Lisa, however, continued to talk to him with an abundant flow of words,
as though he were a little boy found in fault and threatened with the
police. She assumed, indeed, a most maternal manner, and plied him with
the most convincing reasons. And at last, as a final argument, she said:

"Do it for us, Florent. We occupy a fair position in the neighbourhood
which obliges us to use a certain amount of circumspection; and, to tell
you the truth, between ourselves, I'm afraid that people will begin
to talk. This inspectorship will set everything right; you will be
somebody; you will even be an honour to us."

Her manner had become caressingly persuasive, and Florent was penetrated
by all the surrounding plenteousness, all the aroma filling the kitchen,
where he fed, as it were, on the nourishment floating in the atmosphere.
He sank into blissful meanness, born of all the copious feeding that
went on in the sphere of plenty in which he had been living during the
last fortnight. He felt, as it were, the titillation of forming fat
which spread slowly all over his body. He experienced the languid
beatitude of shopkeepers, whose chief concern is to fill their bellies.
At this late hour of night, in the warm atmosphere of the kitchen, all
his acerbity and determination melted away. That peaceable evening,
with the odour of the black-pudding and the lard, and the sight of plump
little Pauline slumbering on his knee, had so enervated him that he
found himself wishing for a succession of such evenings--endless ones
which would make him fat.

However, it was the sight of Mouton that chiefly decided him. Mouton was
sound asleep, with his stomach turned upwards, one of his paws resting
on his nose, and his tail twisted over this side, as though to keep him
warm; and he was slumbering with such an expression of feline happiness
that Florent, as he gazed at him, murmured: "No, it would be too
foolish! I accept the berth. Say that I accept it, Gavard."

Then Lisa finished eating her black-pudding, and wiped her fingers on
the edge of her apron. And next she got her brother-in-law's candle
ready for him, while Gavard and Quenu congratulated him on his decision.
It was always necessary for a man to settle down, said they; the
breakneck freaks of politics did not provide one with food. And,
meantime, Lisa, standing there with the lighted candle in her hand,
looked at him with an expression of satisfaction resting on her handsome
face, placid like that of some sacred cow.




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