_ Three days later the necessary formalities were gone through, and
without demur the police authorities at the Prefecture accepted
Florent on Monsieur Verlaque's recommendation as his substitute.
Gavard, by the way, had made it a point to accompany them. When he
again found himself alone with Florent he kept nudging his ribs with
his elbow as they walked along together, and laughed, without saying
anything, while winking his eyes in a jeering way. He seemed to find
something very ridiculous in the appearance of the police officers
whom they met on the Quai de l'Horloge, for, as he passed them, he
slightly shrugged his shoulders and made the grimace of a man seeking
to restrain himself from laughing in people's faces.
On the following morning Monsieur Verlaque began to initiate the new
inspector into the duties of his office. It had been arranged that
during the next few days he should make him acquainted with the
turbulent sphere which he would have to supervise. Poor Verlaque, as
Gavard called him was a pale little man, swathed in flannels,
handkerchiefs, and mufflers. Constantly coughing, he made his way
through the cool, moist atmosphere, and running waters of the fish
market, on a pair of scraggy legs like those of a sickly child.
When Florent made his appearance on the first morning, at seven
o'clock, he felt quite distracted; his eyes were dazed, his head ached
with all the noise and riot. Retail dealers were already prowling
about the auction pavilion; clerks were arriving with their ledgers,
and consigners' agents, with leather bags slung over their shoulders,
sat on overturned chairs by the salesmen's desks, waiting to receive
their cash. Fish was being unloaded and unpacked not only in the
enclosure, but even on the footways. All along the latter were piles
of small baskets, an endless arrival of cases and hampers, and sacks
of mussels, from which streamlets of water trickled. The auctioneers'
assistants, all looking very busy, sprang over the heaps, tore away
the straw at the tops of the baskets, emptied the latter, and tossed
them aside. They then speedily transferred their contents in lots to
huge wickerwork trays, arranging them with a turn of the hand so that
they might show to the best advantage. And when the large tray-like
baskets were all set out, Florent could almost fancy that a whole
shoal of fish had got stranded there, still quivering with life, and
gleaming with rosy nacre, scarlet coral, and milky pearl, all the
soft, pale, sheeny hues of the ocean.
The deep-lying forests of seaweed, in which the mysterious life of the
ocean slumbers, seemed at one haul of the nets to have yielded up all
they contained. There were cod, keeling, whiting, flounders, plaice,
dabs, and other sorts of common fish of a dingy grey with whitish
splotches; there were conger-eels, huge serpent-like creatures, with
small black eyes and muddy, bluish skins, so slimy that they still
seemed to be gliding along, yet alive. There were broad flat skate
with pale undersides edged with a soft red, and superb backs bumpy
with vertebrae, and marbled down to the tautly stretched ribs of their
fins with splotches of cinnabar, intersected by streaks of the tint of
Florentine bronze--a dark medley of colour suggestive of the hues of a
toad or some poisonous flower. Then, too, there were hideous dog-fish,
with round heads, widely-gaping mouths like those of Chinese idols,
and short fins like bats' wings; fit monsters to keep yelping guard
over the treasures of the ocean grottoes. And next came the finer
fish, displayed singly on the osier trays; salmon that gleamed like
chased silver, every scale seemingly outlined by a graving-tool on a
polished metal surface; mullet with larger scales and coarser
markings; large turbot and huge brill with firm flesh white like
curdled milk; tunny-fish, smooth and glossy, like bags of blackish
leather; and rounded bass, with widely gaping mouths which a soul too
large for the body seemed to have rent asunder as it forced its way
out amidst the stupefaction of death. And on all sides there were
sole, brown and grey, in pairs; sand-eels, slim and stiff, like
shavings of pewter; herrings, slightly twisted, with bleeding gills
showing on their silver-worked skins; fat dories tinged with just a
suspicion of carmine; burnished mackerel with green-streaked backs,
and sides gleaming with ever-changing iridescence; and rosy gurnets
with white bellies, their head towards the centre of the baskets and
their tails radiating all around, so that they simulated some strange
florescence splotched with pearly white and brilliant vermilion. There
were rock mullet, too, with delicious flesh, flushed with the pinky
tinge peculiar to the Cyprinus family; boxes of whiting with opaline
reflections; and baskets of smelts--neat little baskets, pretty as
those used for strawberries, and exhaling a strong scent of violets.
And meantime the tiny black eyes of the shrimps dotted as with beads
of jet their soft-toned mass of pink and grey; and spiny crawfish and
lobsters striped with black, all still alive, raised a grating sound
as they tried to crawl along with their broken claws.
Florent gave but indifferent attention to Monsieur Verlaque's
explanations. A flood of sunshine suddenly streamed through the lofty
glass roof of the covered way, lighting up all these precious colours,
toned and softened by the waves--the iridescent flesh-tints of the
shell-fish, the opal of the whiting, the pearly nacre of the mackerel,
the ruddy gold of the mullets, the plated skins of the herrings, and
massive silver of the salmon. It was as though the jewel-cases of some
sea-nymph had been emptied there--a mass of fantastical, undreamt-of
ornaments, a streaming and heaping of necklaces, monstrous bracelets,
gigantic brooches, barbaric gems and jewels, the use of which could
not be divined. On the backs of the skate and the dog-fish you saw, as
it were, big dull green and purple stones set in dark metal, while the
slender forms of the sand-eels and the tails and fins of the smelts
displayed all the delicacy of finely wrought silver-work.
And meantime Florent's face was fanned by a fresh breeze, a sharp,
salt breeze redolent of the sea. It reminded him of the coasts of
Guiana and his voyages. He half fancied that he was gazing at some bay
left dry by the receding tide, with the seaweed steaming in the sun,
the bare rocks drying, and the beach smelling strongly of the brine.
All around him the fish in their perfect freshness exhaled a pleasant
perfume, that slightly sharp, irritating perfume which depraves the
appetite.
Monsieur Verlaque coughed. The dampness was affecting him, and he
wrapped his muffler more closely about his neck.
"Now," said he, "we will pass on to the fresh water fish."
This was in a pavilion beside the fruit market, the last one, indeed,
in the direction of the Rue Rambuteau. On either side of the space
reserved for the auctions were large circular stone basins, divided
into separate compartments by iron gratings. Slender streams of water
flowed from brass jets shaped like swan's necks; and the compartments
were filled with swarming colonies of crawfish, black-backed carp ever
on the move, and mazy tangles of eels, incessantly knotting and
unknotting themselves. Again was Monsieur Verlaque attacked by an
obstinate fit of coughing. The moisture of the atmosphere was more
insipid here than amongst the sea water fish: there was a riverside
scent, as of sun-warmed water slumbering on a bed of sand.
A great number of crawfishes had arrived from Germany that morning in
cases and hampers, and the market was also crowded with river fish
from Holland and England. Several men were unpacking shiny carp from
the Rhine, lustrous with ruddy metallic hues, their scales resembling
bronzed /cloisonne/ enamel; and others were busy with huge pike, the
cruel iron-grey brigands of the waters, who ravenously protruded their
savage jaws; or with magnificent dark-hued with verdigris. And amidst
these suggestions of copper, iron, and bronze, the gudgeon and perch,
the trout, the bleak, and the flat-fish taken in sweep-nets showed
brightly white, the steel-blue tints of their backs gradually toning
down to the soft transparency of their bellies. However, it was the
fat snowy-white barbel that supplied the liveliest brightness in this
gigantic collection of still life.
Bags of young carp were being gently emptied into the basins. The fish
spun round, then remained motionless for a moment, and at last shot
away and disappeared. Little eels were turned out of their hampers in
a mass, and fell to the bottom of the compartments like tangled knots
of snakes; while the larger ones--those whose bodies were about as
thick as a child's arm--raised their heads and slipped of their own
accord into the water with the supple motion of serpents gliding into
the concealment of a thicket. And meantime the other fish, whose death
agony had been lasting all the morning as they lay on the soiled
osiers of the basket-trays, slowly expired amidst all the uproar of
the auctions, opening their mouths as though to inhale the moisture of
the air, with great silent gasps, renewed every few seconds.
However, Monsieur Verlaque brought Florent back to the salt water
fish. He took him all over the place and gave him the minutest
particulars about everything. Round the nine salesmen's desks ranged
along three sides of the pavilion there was now a dense crowd of
surging, swaying heads, above which appeared the clerks, perched upon
high chairs and making entries in their ledgers.
"Are all these clerks employed by the salesmen?" asked Florent.
By way of reply Monsieur Verlaque made a detour along the outside
footway, led him into the enclosure of one of the auctions, and then
explained the working of the various departments of the big yellow
office, which smelt strongly of fish and was stained all over by
drippings and splashings from the hampers. In a little glazed
compartment up above, the collector of the municipal dues took note of
the prices realised by the different lots of fish. Lower down, seated
upon high chairs and with their wrists resting upon little desks, were
two female clerks, who kept account of the business on behalf of the
salesmen. At each end of the stone table in front of the office was a
crier who brought the basket-trays forward in turn, and in a bawling
voice announced what each lot consisted of; while above him the female
clerk, pen in hand, waited to register the price at which the lots
were knocked down. And outside the enclosure, shut up in another
little office of yellow wood, Monsieur Verlaque showed Florent the
cashier, a fat old woman, who was ranging coppers and five-franc
pierces in piles.
"There is a double control, you see," said Monsieur Verlaque; "the
control of the Prefecture of the Seine and that of the Prefecture of
Police. The latter, which licenses the salesmen, claims to have the
right of supervision over them; and the municipality asserts its right
to be represented at the transactions as they are subject to
taxation."
He went on expatiating at length in his faint cold voice respecting
the rival claims of the two Prefectures. Florent, however, was paying
but little heed, his attention being concentrated on a female clerk
sitting on one of the high chairs just in front of him. She was a
tall, dark woman of thirty, with big black eyes and an easy calmness
of manner, and she wrote with outstretched fingers like a girl who had
been taught the regulation method of the art.
However, Florent's attention was diverted by the yelping of the crier,
who was just offering a magnificent turbot for sale.
"I've a bid of thirty francs! Thirty francs, now; thirty francs!"
He repeated these words in all sorts of keys, running up and down a
strange scale of notes full of sudden changes. Humpbacked and with
his face twisted askew, and his hair rough and disorderly, he wore a
great blue apron with a bib; and with flaming eyes and outstretched
arms he cried vociferously: "Thirty-one! thirty-two! thirty-three!
Thirty-three francs fifty centimes! thirty-three fifty!"
Then he paused to take breath, turning the basket-tray and pushing it
farther upon the table. The fish-wives bent forward and gently touched
the turbot with their finger-tips. Then the crier began again with
renewed energy, hurling his figures towards the buyers with a wave of
the hand and catching the slightest indication of a fresh bid--the
raising of a finger, a twist of the eyebrows, a pouting of the lips, a
wink, and all with such rapidity and such a ceaseless jumble of words
that Florent, utterly unable to follow him, felt quite disconcerted
when, in a sing-song voice like that of a priest intoning the final
words of a versicle, he chanted: "Forty-two! forty-two! The turbot
goes for forty-two francs."
It was the beautiful Norman who had made the last bid. Florent
recognised her as she stood in the line of fish-wives crowding against
the iron rails which surrounded the enclosure. The morning was fresh
and sharp, and there was a row of tippets above the display of big
white aprons, covering the prominent bosoms and stomachs and sturdy
shoulders. With high-set chignon set off with curls, and white and
dainty skin, the beautiful Norman flaunted her lace bow amidst tangled
shocks of hair covered with dirty kerchiefs, red noses eloquent of
drink, sneering mouths, and battered faces suggestive of old pots. And
she also recognised Madame Quenu's cousin, and was so surprised to see
him there that she began gossiping to her neighbours about him.
The uproar of voices had become so great that Monsieur Verlaque
renounced all further attempt to explain matters to Florent. On the
footway close by, men were calling out the larger fish with prolonged
shouts, which sounded as though they came from gigantic speaking-
trumpets; and there was one individual who roared "Mussels! Mussels!"
in such a hoarse, cracked, clamorous voice that the very roofs of the
market shook. Some sacks of mussels were turned upside down, and their
contents poured into hampers, while others were emptied with shovels.
And there was a ceaseless procession of basket-trays containing skate,
soles, mackerel, conger-eels, and salmon, carried backwards and
forwards amidst the ever-increasing cackle and pushing of the fish-
women as they crowded against the iron rails which creaked with their
pressure. The humpbacked crier, now fairly on the job, waved his
skinny arms in the air and protruded his jaws. Presently, seemingly
lashed into a state of frenzy by the flood of figures that spurted
from his lips, he sprang upon a stool, where, with his mouth twisted
spasmodically and his hair streaming behind him, he could force
nothing more than unintelligible hisses from his parched throat. And
in the meantime, up above, the collector of municipal dues, a little
old man, muffled in a collar of imitation astrachan, remained with
nothing but his nose showing under his black velvet skullcap. And the
tall, dark-complexioned female clerk, with eyes shining calmly in her
face, which had been slightly reddened by the cold, sat on her high
wooden chair, quietly writing, apparently unruffled by the continuous
rattle which came from the hunchback below her.
"That fellow Logre is wonderful," muttered Monsieur Verlaque with a
smile. "He is the best crier in the markets. I believe he could make
people buy boot soles in the belief they were fish!"
Then he and Florent went back into the pavilion. As they again passed
the spot where the fresh water fish was being sold by auction, and
where the bidding seemed much quieter, Monsieur Verlaque explained
that French river fishing was in a bad way.[*] The crier here, a fair,
sorry-looking fellow, who scarcely moved his arms, was disposing of
some lots of eels and crawfish in a monotonous voice, while the
assistants fished fresh supplies out of the stone basins with their
short-handled nets.
[*] M. Zola refers, of course, to the earlier years of the Second
Empire. Under the present republican Government, which has largely
fostered fish culture, matters have considerably improved.--
Translator.
However, the crowd round the salesmen's desks was still increasing.
Monsieur Verlaque played his part as Florent's instructor in the most
conscientious manner, clearing the way by means of his elbows, and
guiding his successor through the busiest parts. The upper-class
retail dealers were there, quietly waiting for some of the finer fish,
or loading the porters with their purchases of turbot, tunny, and
salmon. The street-hawkers who had clubbed together to buy lots of
herrings and small flat-fish were dividing them on the pavement. There
were also some people of the smaller middle class, from distant parts
of the city, who had come down at four o'clock in the morning to buy a
really fresh fish, and had ended by allowing some enormous lot,
costing from forty to fifty francs, to be knocked down to them, with
the result that they would be obliged to spend the whole day in
getting their friends and acquaintances to take the surplus off their
hands. Every now and then some violent pushing would force a gap
through part of the crowd. A fish-wife, who had got tightly jammed,
freed herself, shaking her fists and pouring out a torrent of abuse.
Then a compact mass of people again collected, and Florent, almost
suffocated, declared that he had seen quite enough, and understood all
that was necessary.
As Monsieur Verlaque was helping him to extricate himself from the
crowd, they found themselves face to face with the handsome Norman.
She remained stock-still in front of them, and with her queenly air
inquired:
"Well, is it quite settled? You are going to desert us, Monsieur
Verlaque?"
"Yes, yes," replied the little man; "I am going to take a rest in the
country, at Clamart. The smell of the fish is bad for me, it seems.
Here, this is the gentleman who is going to take my place."
So speaking he turned round to introduce Florent to her. The handsome
Norman almost choked; however, as Florent went off, he fancied he
could hear her whisper to her neighbours, with a laugh: "Well, we
shall have some fine fun now, see if we don't!"
The fish-wives had begun to set out their stalls. From all the taps at
the corners of the marble slabs water was gushing freely; and there
was a rustling sound all round, like the plashing of rain, a streaming
of stiff jets of water hissing and spurting. And then, from the lower
side of the sloping slabs, great drops fell with a softened murmur,
splashing on the flagstones where a mass of tiny streams flowed along
here and there, turning holes and depressions into miniature lakes,
and afterwards gliding in a thousand rills down the slope towards the
Rue Rambuteau. A moist haze ascended, a sort of rainy dust, bringing
fresh whiffs of air to Florent's face, whiffs of that salt, pungent
sea breeze which he remembered so well; while in such fish as was
already laid out he once more beheld the rosy nacres, gleaming corals,
and milky pearls, all the rippling colour and glaucous pallidity of
the ocean world.
That first morning left him much in doubt; indeed, he regretted that
he had yielded to Lisa's insistence. Ever since his escape from the
greasy drowsiness of the kitchen he had been accusing himself of base
weakness with such violence that tears had almost risen in his eyes.
But he did not dare to go back on his word. He was a little afraid of
Lisa, and could see the curl of her lips and the look of mute reproach
upon her handsome face. He felt that she was too serious a woman to be
trifled with. However, Gavard happily inspired him with a consoling
thought. On the evening of the day on which Monsieur Verlaque had
conducted him through the auction sales, Gavard took him aside and
told him, with a good deal of hesitation, that "the poor devil" was
not at all well off. And after various remarks about the scoundrelly
Government which ground the life out of its servants without allowing
them even the means to die in comfort, he ended by hinting that it
would be charitable on Florent's part to surrender a part of his
salary to the old inspector. Florent welcomed the suggestion with
delight. It was only right, he considered, for he looked upon himself
simply as Monsieur Verlaque's temporary substitute; and besides, he
himself really required nothing, as he boarded and lodged with his
brother. Gavard added that he thought if Florent gave up fifty francs
out of the hundred and fifty which he would receive monthly, the
arrangement would be everything that could be desired; and, lowering
his voice, he added that it would not be for long, for the poor fellow
was consumptive to his very bones. Finally it was settled that Florent
should see Monsieur Verlaque's wife, and arrange matters with her, to
avoid any possibility of hurting the old man's feelings.
The thought of this kindly action afforded Florent great relief, and
he now accepted his duties with the object of doing good, thus
continuing to play the part which he had been fulfilling all his life.
However, he made the poultry dealer promise that he would not speak of
the matter to anyone; and as Gavard also felt a vague fear of Lisa, he
kept the secret, which was really very meritorious in him.
And now the whole pork shop seemed happy. Handsome Lisa manifested the
greatest friendliness towards her brother-in-law. She took care that
he went to bed early, so as to be able to rise in good time; she kept
his breakfast hot for him; and she no longer felt ashamed at being
seen talking to him on the footway, now that he wore a laced cap.
Quenu, quite delighted by all these good signs, sat down to table in
the evening between his wife and brother with a lighter heart than
ever. They often lingered over dinner till nine o'clock, leaving the
shop in Augustine's charge, and indulging in a leisurely digestion
interspersed with gossip about the neighbourhood, and the dogmatic
opinions of Lisa on political topics; Florent also had to relate how
matters had gone in the fish market that day. He gradually grew less
frigid, and began to taste the happiness of a well-regulated
existence. There was a well-to-do comfort and trimness about the light
yellowish dining room which had a softening influence upon him as soon
as he crossed its threshold. Handsome Lisa's kindly attentions wrapped
him, as it were, in cotton-wool; and mutual esteem and concord reigned
paramount.
Gavard, however, considered the Quenu-Gradelles' home to be too
drowsy. He forgave Lisa her weakness for the Emperor, because, he
said, one ought never to discuss politics with women, and beautiful
Madame Quenu was, after all, a very worthy person, who managed her
business admirably. Nevertheless, he much preferred to spend his
evenings at Monsieur Lebigre's, where he met a group of friends who
shared his own opinions. Thus when Florent was appointed to the
inspectorship of the fish market, Gavard began to lead him astray,
taking him off for hours, and prompting him to lead a bachelor's life
now that he had obtained a berth.
Monsieur Lebigre was the proprietor of a very fine establishment,
fitted up in the modern luxurious style. Occupying the right-hand
corner of the Rue Pirouette, and looking on to the Rue Rambuteau, it
formed, with its four small Norwegian pines in green-painted tubs
flanking the doorway, a worthy pendant to the big pork shop of the
Quenu-Gradelles. Through the clear glass windows you could see the
interior, which was decorated with festoons of foliage, vine branches,
and grapes, painted on a soft green ground. The floor was tiled with
large black and white squares. At the far end was the yawning cellar
entrance, above which rose a spiral staircase hung with red drapery,
and leading to the billiard-room on the first floor. The counter or
"bar" on the right looked especially rich, and glittered like polished
silver. Its zinc-work, hanging with a broad bulging border over the
sub-structure of white and red marble, edged it with a rippling sheet
of metal as if it were some high altar laden with embroidery. At one
end, over a gas stove, stood porcelain pots, decorated with circles of
brass, and containing punch and hot wine. At the other extremity was a
tall and richly sculptured marble fountain, from which a fine stream
of water, so steady and continuous that it looked as though it were
motionless, flowed into a basin. In the centre, edged on three sides
by the sloping zinc surface of the counter, was a second basin for
rinsing and cooling purposes, where quart bottles of draught wine,
partially empty, reared their greenish necks. Then on the counter, to
the right and left of this central basin, were batches of glasses
symmetrically arranged: little glasses for brandy, thick tumblers for
draught wine, cup glasses for brandied fruits, glasses for absinthe,
glass mugs for beer, and tall goblets, all turned upside down and
reflecting the glitter of the counter. On the left, moreover, was a
metal urn, serving as a receptacle for gratuities; whilst a similar
one on the right bristled with a fan-like arrangement of coffee
spoons.
Monsieur Lebigre was generally to be found enthroned behind his
counter upon a seat covered with buttoned crimson leather. Within easy
reach of his hand were the liqueurs in cut-glass decanters protruding
from the compartments of a stand. His round back rested against a huge
mirror which completely filled the panel behind him; across it ran two
glass shelves supporting an array of jars and bottles. Upon one of
them the glass jars of preserved fruits, cherries, plums, and peaches,
stood out darkly; while on the other, between symmetrically arranged
packets of finger biscuits, were bright flasks of soft green and red
and yellow glass, suggesting strange mysterious liqueurs, or floral
extracts of exquisite limpidity. Standing on the glass shelf in the
white glow of the mirror, these flasks, flashing as if on fire, seemed
to be suspended in the air.
To give his premises the appearance of a cafe, Monsieur Lebigre had
placed two small tables of bronzed iron and four chairs against the
wall, in front of the counter. A chandelier with five lights and
frosted globes hung down from the ceiling. On the left was a round
gilt timepiece, above a /tourniquet/[*] fixed to the wall. Then at the
far end came the private "cabinet," a corner of the shop shut off by a
partition glazed with frosted glass of a small square pattern. In the
daytime this little room received a dim light from a window that
looked on to the Rue Pirouette; and in the evening, a gas jet burnt
over the two tables painted to resemble marble. It was there that
Gavard and his political friends met each evening after dinner. They
looked upon themselves as being quite at home there, and had prevailed
on the landlord to reserve the place for them. When Monsieur Lebigre
had closed the door of the glazed partition, they knew themselves to
be so safely screened from intrusion that they spoke quite
unreservedly of the great "sweep out" which they were fond of
discussing. No unprivileged customer would have dared to enter.
[*] This is a kind of dial turning on a pivot, and usually enclosed in
a brass frame, from which radiate a few small handles or spokes.
Round the face of the dial--usually of paper--are various
numerals, and between the face and its glass covering is a small
marble or wooden ball. The appliance is used in lieu of dice or
coins when two or more customers are "tossing" for drinks. Each in
turn sends the dial spinning round, and wins or loses according to
the numeral against which the ball rests when the dial stops. As I
can find no English name for the appliance, I have thought it best
to describe it.--Translator.
On the first day that Gavard took Florent off he gave him some
particulars of Monsieur Lebigre. He was a good fellow, he said, who
sometimes came to drink his coffee with them; and, as he had said one
day that he had fought in '48, no one felt the least constraint in his
presence. He spoke but little, and seemed rather thick-headed. As the
gentlemen passed him on their way to the private room they grasped his
hand in silence across the glasses and bottles. By his side on the
crimson leather seat behind the counter there was generally a fair
little woman, whom he had engaged as counter assistant in addition to
the white-aproned waiter who attended to the tables and the billiard-
room. The young woman's name was Rose, and she seemed a very gentle
and submissive being. Gavard, with a wink of his eye, told Florent
that he fancied Lebigre had a weakness for her. It was she, by the
way, who waited upon the friends in the private room, coming and
going, with her happy, humble air, amidst the stormiest political
discussions.
Upon the day on which the poultry dealer took Florent to Lebigre's to
present him to his friends, the only person whom the pair found in the
little room when they entered it was a man of some fifty years of age,
of a mild and thoughtful appearance. He wore a rather shabby-looking
hat and a long chestnut-coloured overcoat, and sat, with his chin
resting on the ivory knob of a thick cane, in front of a glass mug
full of beer. His mouth was so completely concealed by a vigorous
growth of beard that his face had a dumb, lipless appearance.
"How are you, Robine?" exclaimed Gavard.
Robine silently thrust out his hand, without making any reply, though
his eyes softened into a slight smile of welcome. Then he let his chin
drop on to the knob of his cane again, and looked at Florent over his
beer. Florent had made Gavard swear to keep his story a secret for
fear of some dangerous indiscretion; and he was not displeased to
observe a touch of distrust in the discreet demeanour of the gentleman
with the heavy beard. However, he was really mistaken in this, for
Robine never talked more than he did now. He was always the first to
arrive, just as the clock struck eight; and he always sat in the same
corner, never letting go his hold of his cane, and never taking off
either his hat or his overcoat. No one had ever seen him without his
hat upon his head. He remained there listening to the talk of the
others till midnight, taking four hours to empty his mug of beer, and
gazing successively at the different speakers as though he heard them
with his eyes. When Florent afterwards questioned Gavard about Robine,
the poultry dealer spoke of the latter as though he held him in high
esteem. Robine, he asserted, was an extremely clever and able man,
and, though he was unable to say exactly where he had given proof of
his hostility to the established order of things, he declared that he
was one of the most dreaded of the Government's opponents. He lived in
the Rue Saint Denis, in rooms to which no one as a rule could gain
admission. The poultry dealer, however, asserted that he himself had
once been in them. The wax floors, he said, were protected by strips
of green linen; and there were covers over the furniture, and an
alabaster timepiece with columns. He had caught a glimpse of the back
of a lady, who was just disappearing through one doorway as he was
entering by another, and had taken her to be Madame Robine. She
appeared to be an old lady of very genteel appearance, with her hair
arranged in corkscrew curls; but of this he could not be quite
certain. No one knew why they had taken up their abode amidst all the
uproar of a business neighbourhood; for the husband did nothing at
all, spending his days no one knew how and living on no one knew what,
though he made his appearance every evening as though he were tired
but delighted with some excursion into the highest regions of
politics.
"Well, have you read the speech from the throne?" asked Gavard, taking
up a newspaper that was lying on the table.
Robine shrugged his shoulders. Just at that moment, however, the door
of the glazed partition clattered noisily, and a hunchback made his
appearance. Florent at once recognised the deformed crier of the fish
market, though his hands were now washed and he was neatly dressed,
with his neck encircled by a great red muffler, one end of which hung
down over his hump like the skirt of a Venetian cloak.
"Ah, here's Logre!" exclaimed the poultry dealer. "Now we shall hear
what he thinks about the speech from the throne."
Logre, however, was apparently furious. To begin with he almost broke
the pegs off in hanging up his hat and muffler. Then he threw himself
violently into a chair, and brought his fist down on the table, while
tossing away the newspaper.
"Do you think I read their fearful lies?" he cried.
Then he gave vent to the anger raging within him. "Did ever anyone
hear," he cried, "of masters making such fools of their people? For
two whole hours I've been waiting for my pay! There were ten of us in
the office kicking our heels there. Then at last Monsieur Manoury
arrived in a cab. Where he had come from I don't know, and don't care,
but I'm quite sure it wasn't any respectable place. Those salesmen are
all a parcel of thieves and libertines! And then, too, the hog
actually gave me all my money in small change!"
Robine expressed his sympathy with Logre by the slight movement of his
eyelids. But suddenly the hunchback bethought him of a victim upon
whom to pour out his wrath. "Rose! Rose!" he cried, stretching his
head out of the little room.
The young woman quickly responded to the call, trembling all over.
"Well," shouted Logre, "what do you stand staring at me like that for?
Much good that'll do! You saw me come in, didn't you? Why haven't you
brought me my glass of black coffee, then?"
Gavard ordered two similar glasses, and Rose made all haste to bring
what was required, while Logre glared sternly at the glasses and
little sugar trays as if studying them. When he had taken a drink he
seemed to grow somewhat calmer.
"But it's Charvet who must be getting bored," he said presently. "He
is waiting outside on the pavement for Clemence."
Charvet, however, now made his appearance, followed by Clemence. He
was a tall, scraggy young man, carefully shaved, with a skinny nose
and thin lips. He lived in the Rue Vavin, behind the Luxembourg, and
called himself a professor. In politics he was a disciple of
Hebert.[*] He wore his hair very long, and the collar and lapels of
his threadbare frock-coat were broadly turned back. Affecting the
manner and speech of a member of the National Convention, he would
pour out such a flood of bitter words and make such a haughty display
of pedantic learning that he generally crushed his adversaries. Gavard
was afraid of him, though he would not confess it; still, in Charvet's
absence he would say that he really went too far. Robine, for his
part, expressed approval of everything with his eyes. Logre sometimes
opposed Charvet on the question of salaries; but the other was really
the autocrat of the coterie, having the greatest fund of information
and the most overbearing manner. For more than ten years he and
Clemence had lived together as man and wife, in accordance with a
previously arranged contract, the terms of which were strictly
observed by both parties to it. Florent looked at the young woman with
some little surprise, but at last he recollected where he had
previously seen her. This was at the fish auction. She was, indeed,
none other than the tall dark female clerk whom he had observed
writing with outstretched fingers, after the manner of one who had
been carefully instructed in the art of holding a pen.
[*] Hebert, as the reader will remember, was the furious demagogue
with the foul tongue and poisoned pen who edited the /Pere
Duchesne/ at the time of the first French Revolution. We had a
revival of his politics and his journal in Paris during the
Commune of 1871.--Translator.
Rose made her appearance at the heels of the two newcomers. Without
saying a word she placed a mug of beer before Charvet and a tray
before Clemence, who in a leisurely way began to compound a glass of
"grog," pouring some hot water over a slice of lemon, which she
crushed with her spoon, and glancing carefully at the decanter as she
poured out some rum, so as not to add more of it than a small liqueur
glass could contain.
Gavard now presented Florent to the company, but more especially to
Charvet. He introduced them to one another as professors, and very
able men, who would be sure to get on well together. But it was
probable that he had already been guilty of some indiscretion, for all
the men at once shook hands with a tight and somewhat masonic squeeze
of each other's fingers. Charvet, for his part, showed himself almost
amiable; and whether he and the others knew anything of Florent's
antecedents, they at all events indulged in no embarrassing allusions.
"Did Manoury pay you in small change?" Logre asked Clemence.
She answered affirmatively, and produced a roll of francs and another
of two-franc pieces, and unwrapped them. Charvet watched her, and his
eyes followed the rolls as she replaced them in her pocket, after
counting their contents and satisfying herself that they were correct.
"We have our accounts to settle," he said in a low voice.
"Yes, we'll settle up to-night," the young woman replied. "But we are
about even, I should think. I've breakfasted with you four times,
haven't I? But I lent you a hundred sous last week, you know."
Florent, surprised at hearing this, discreetly turned his head away.
Then Clemence slipped the last roll of silver into her pocket, drank a
little of her grog, and, leaning against the glazed partition, quietly
settled herself down to listen to the men talking politics. Gavard had
taken up the newspaper again, and, in tones which he strove to render
comic, was reading out some passages of the speech from the throne
which had been delivered that morning at the opening of the Chambers.
Charvet made fine sport of the official phraseology; there was not a
single line of it which he did not tear to pieces. One sentence
afforded especial amusement to them all. It was this: "We are
confident, gentlemen, that, leaning on your lights[*] and the
conservative sentiments of the country, we shall succeed in increasing
the national prosperity day by day."
[*] In the sense of illumination of mind. It has been necessary to
give a literal translation of this phrase to enable the reader to
realise the point of subsequent witticisms in which Clemence and
Gavard indulge.--Translator.
Logre rose up and repeated this sentence, and by speaking through his
nose succeeded fairly well in mimicking the Emperor's drawling voice.
"It's lovely, that prosperity of his; why, everyone's dying of
hunger!" said Charvet.
"Trade is shocking," asserted Gavard.
"And what in the name of goodness is the meaning of anybody 'leaning
on lights'?" continued Clemence, who prided herself upon literary
culture.
Robine himself even allowed a faint laugh to escape from the depths of
his beard. The discussion began to grow warm. The party fell foul of
the Corps Legislatif, and spoke of it with great severity. Logre did
not cease ranting, and Florent found him the same as when he cried the
fish at the auctions--protruding his jaws and hurling his words
forward with a wave of the arm, whilst retaining the crouching
attitude of a snarling dog. Indeed, he talked politics in just the
same furious manner as he offered a tray full of soles for sale.
Charvet, on the other hand, became quieter and colder amidst the smoke
of the pipes and the fumes of the gas which were now filling the
little den; and his voice assumed a dry incisive tone, sharp like a
guillotine blade, while Robine gently wagged his head without once
removing his chin from the ivory knob of his cane. However, some
remark of Gavard's led the conversation to the subject of women.
"Woman," declared Charvet drily, "is the equal of man; and, that being
so, she ought not to inconvenience him in the management of his life.
Marriage is a partnership, in which everything should be halved. Isn't
that so, Clemence?"
"Clearly so," replied the young woman, leaning back with her head
against the wall and gazing into the air.
However, Florent now saw Lacaille, the costermonger, and Alexandre,
the porter, Claude Lantier's friend, come into the little room. In the
past these two had long remained at the other table in the sanctum;
they did not belong to the same class as the others. By the help of
politics, however, their chairs had drawn nearer, and they had ended
by forming part of the circle. Charvet, in whose eyes they represented
"the people," did his best to indoctrinate them with his advanced
political theories, while Gavard played the part of the shopkeeper
free from all social prejudices by clinking glasses with them.
Alexandre was a cheerful, good-humoured giant, with the manner of a
big merry lad. Lacaille, on the other hand, was embittered; his hair
was already grizzling; and, bent and wearied by his ceaseless
perambulations through the streets of Paris, he would at times glance
loweringly at the placid figure of Robine, and his sound boots and
heavy coat.
That evening both Lacaille and Alexandre called for a liqueur glass of
brandy, and then the conversation was renewed with increased warmth
and excitement, the party being now quite complete. A little later,
while the door of the cabinet was left ajar, Florent caught sight of
Mademoiselle Saget standing in front of the counter. She had taken a
bottle from under her apron, and was watching Rose as the latter
poured into it a large measureful of black-currant syrup and a smaller
one of brandy. Then the bottle disappeared under the apron again, and
Mademoiselle Saget, with her hands out of sight, remained talking in
the bright glow of the counter, face to face with the big mirror, in
which the flasks and bottles of liqueurs were reflected like rows of
Venetian lanterns. In the evening all the metal and glass of the
establishment helped to illuminate it with wonderful brilliancy. The
old maid, standing there in her black skirts, looked almost like some
big strange insect amidst all the crude brightness. Florent noticed
that she was trying to inveigle Rose into a conversation, and shrewdly
suspected that she had caught sight of him through the half open
doorway. Since he had been on duty at the markets he had met her at
almost every step, loitering in one or another of the covered ways,
and generally in the company of Madame Lecoeur and La Sarriette. He
had noticed also that the three women stealthily examined him, and
seemed lost in amazement at seeing him installed in the position of
inspector. That evening, however, Rose was no doubt loath to enter
into conversation with the old maid, for the latter at last turned
round, apparently with the intention of approaching Monsieur Lebigre,
who was playing piquet with a customer at one of the bronzed tables.
Creeping quietly along, Mademoiselle Saget had at last managed to
install herself beside the partition of the cabinet, when she was
observed by Gavard, who detested her.
"Shut the door, Florent!" he cried unceremoniously. "We can't even be
by ourselves, it seems!"
When midnight came and Lacaille went away he exchanged a few whispered
words with Monsieur Lebigre, and as the latter shook hands with him he
slipped four five-franc pieces into his palm, without anyone noticing
it. "That'll make twenty-two francs that you'll have to pay to-morrow,
remember," he whispered in his ear. "The person who lends the money
won't do it for less in future. Don't forget, too, that you owe three
days' truck hire. You must pay everything off."
Then Monsieur Lebigre wished the friends good night. He was very
sleepy and should sleep well, he said, with a yawn which revealed his
big teeth, while Rose gazed at him with an air of submissive humility.
However, he gave her a push, and told her to go and turn out the gas
in the little room.
On reaching the pavement, Gavard stumbled and nearly fell. And being
in a humorous vein, he thereupon exclaimed: "Confound it all! At any
rate, I don't seem to be leaning on anybody's lights."
This remark seemed to amuse the others, and the party broke up. A
little later Florent returned to Lebigre's, and indeed he became quite
attached to the "cabinet," finding a seductive charm in Robine's
contemplative silence, Logre's fiery outbursts, and Charvet's cool
venom. When he went home, he did not at once retire to bed. He had
grown very fond of his attic, that girlish bedroom, where Augustine
had left scraps of ribbons, souvenirs, and other feminine trifles
lying about. There still remained some hair-pins on the mantelpiece,
with gilt cardboard boxes of buttons and lozenges, cutout pictures,
and empty pomade pots that retained an odour of jasmine. Then there
were some reels of thread, needles, and a missal lying by the side of
a soiled Dream-book in the drawer of the rickety deal table. A white
summer dress with yellow spots hung forgotten from a nail; while upon
the board which served as a toilet-table a big stain behind the water-
jug showed where a bottle of bandoline had been overturned. The little
chamber, with its narrow iron bed, its two rush-bottomed chairs, and
its faded grey wallpaper, was instinct with innocent simplicity. The
plain white curtains, the childishness suggested by the cardboard
boxes and the Dream-book, and the clumsy coquetry which had stained
the walls, all charmed Florent and brought him back to dreams of
youth. He would have preferred not to have known that plain, wiry-
haired Augustine, but to have been able to imagine that he was
occupying the room of a sister, some bright sweet girl of whose
budding womanhood every trifle around him spoke.
Yet another pleasure which he took was to lean out of the garret
window at nighttime. In front of it was a narrow ledge of roof,
enclosed by an iron railing, and forming a sort of balcony, on which
Augustine had grown a pomegranate in a box. Since the nights had
turned cold, Florent had brought the pomegranate indoors and kept it
by the foot of his bed till morning. He would linger for a few minutes
by the open window, inhaling deep draughts of the sharp fresh air
which was wafted up from the Seine, over the housetops of the Rue de
Rivoli. Below him the roofs of the markets spread confusedly in a grey
expanse, like slumbering lakes on whose surface the furtive reflection
of a pane of glass gleamed every now and then like a silvery ripple.
Farther away the roofs of the meat and poultry pavilions lay in deeper
gloom, and became mere masses of shadow barring the horizon. Florent
delighted in the great stretch of open sky in front of him, in that
spreading expanse of the markets which amidst all the narrow city
streets brought him a dim vision of some strip of sea coast, of the
still grey waters of a bay scarce quivering from the roll of the
distant billows. He used to lose himself in dreams as he stood there;
each night he conjured up the vision of some fresh coast line. To
return in mind to the eight years of despair which he had spent away
from France rendered him both very sad and very happy. Then at last,
shivering all over, he would close the window. Often, as he stood in
front of the fireplace taking off his collar, the photograph of
Auguste and Augustine would fill him with disquietude. They seemed to
be watching him as they stood there, hand in hand, smiling faintly.
Florent's first few weeks at the fish market were very painful to him.
The Mehudins treated him with open hostility, which infected the whole
market with a spirit of opposition. The beautiful Norman intended to
revenge herself on the handsome Lisa, and the latter's cousin seemed a
victim ready to hand.
The Mehudins came from Rouen. Louise's mother still related how she
had first arrived in Paris with a basket of eels. She had ever
afterwards remained in the fish trade. She had married a man employed
in the Octroi service, who had died leaving her with two little girls.
It was she who by her full figure and glowing freshness had won for
herself in earlier days the nickname of "the beautiful Norman," which
her eldest daughter had inherited. Now five and sixty years of age,
Madame Mehudin had become flabby and shapeless, and the damp air of
the fish market had rendered her voice rough and hoarse, and given a
bluish tinge to her skin. Sedentary life had made her extremely bulky,
and her head was thrown backwards by the exuberance of her bosom. She
had never been willing to renounce the fashions of her younger days,
but still wore the flowered gown, the yellow kerchief, and turban-like
head-gear of the classic fish-wife, besides retaining the latter's
loud voice and rapidity of gesture as she stood with her hands on her
hips, shouting out the whole abusive vocabulary of her calling.
She looked back regretfully to the old Marche des Innocents, which the
new central markets had supplanted. She would talk of the ancient
rights of the market "ladies," and mingle stories of fisticuffs
exchanged with the police with reminiscences of the visits she had
paid the Court in the time of Charles X and Louis Philippe, dressed in
silk, and carrying a bouquet of flowers in her hand. Old Mother
Mehudin, as she was now generally called, had for a long time been the
banner-bearer of the Sisterhood of the Virgin at St. Leu. She would
relate that in the processions in the church there she had worn a
dress and cap of tulle trimmed with satin ribbons, whilst holding
aloft in her puffy fingers the gilded staff of the richly-fringed silk
standard on which the figure of the Holy Mother was embroidered.
According to the gossip of the neighbourhood, the old woman had made a
fairly substantial fortune, though the only signs of it were the
massive gold ornaments with which she loaded her neck and arms and
bosom on important occasions. Her two daughters got on badly together
as they grew up. The younger one, Claire, an idle, fair-complexioned
girl, complained of the ill-treatment which she received from her
sister Louise, protesting, in her languid voice, that she could never
submit to be the other's servant. As they would certainly have ended
by coming to blows, their mother separated them. She gave her stall in
the fish market to Louise, while Claire, whom the smell of the skate
and the herrings affected in the lungs, installed herself among the
fresh water fish. And from that time the old mother, although she
pretended to have retired from business altogether, would flit from
one stall to the other, still interfering in the selling of the fish,
and causing her daughters continual annoyance by the foul insolence
with which she would at times speak to customers.
Claire was a fantastical creature, very gentle in her manner, and yet
continually at loggerheads with others. People said that she
invariably followed her own whimsical inclinations. In spite of her
dreamy, girlish face she was imbued with a nature of silent firmness,
a spirit of independence which prompted her to live apart; she never
took things as other people did, but would one day evince perfect
fairness, and the next day arrant injustice. She would sometimes throw
the market into confusion by suddenly increasing or lowering the
prices at her stall, without anyone being able to guess her reason for
doing so. She herself would refuse to explain her motive. By the time
she reached her thirtieth year, her delicate physique and fine skin,
which the water of the tanks seemed to keep continually fresh and
soft, her small, faintly-marked face and lissome limbs would probably
become heavy, coarse, and flabby, till she would look like some faded
saint that had stepped from a stained-glass window into the degrading
sphere of the markets. At twenty-two, however, Claire, in the midst of
her carp and eels, was, to use Claude Lantier's expression, a Murillo.
A Murillo, that is, whose hair was often in disorder, who wore heavy
shoes and clumsily cut dresses, which left her without any figure. But
she was free from all coquetry, and she assumed an air of scornful
contempt when Louise, displaying her bows and ribbons, chaffed her
about her clumsily knotted neckerchiefs. Moreover, she was virtuous;
it was said that the son of a rich shopkeeper in the neighbourhood had
gone abroad in despair at having failed to induce her to listen to his
suit.
Louise, the beautiful Norman, was of a different nature. She had been
engaged to be married to a clerk in the corn market; but a sack of
flour falling upon the young man had broken his back and killed him.
Not very long afterwards Louise had given birth to a boy. In the
Mehudins' circle of acquaintance she was looked upon as a widow; and
the old fish-wife in conversation would occasionally refer to the time
when her son-in-law was alive.
The Mehudins were a power in the markets. When Monsieur Verlaque had
finished instructing Florent in his new duties, he advised him to
conciliate certain of the stall-holders, if he wished his life to be
endurable; and he even carried his sympathy so far as to put him in
possession of the little secrets of the office, such as the various
little breaches of rule that it was necessary to wink at, and those at
which he would have to feign stern displeasure; and also the
circumstances under which he might accept a small present. A market
inspector is at once a constable and a magistrate; he has to maintain
proper order and cleanliness, and settle in a conciliatory spirit all
disputes between buyers and sellers. Florent, who was of a weak
disposition put on an artificial sternness when he was obliged to
exercise his authority, and generally over-acted his part. Moreover,
his gloomy, pariah-like face and bitterness of spirit, the result of
long suffering, were against him.
The beautiful Norman's idea was to involve him in some quarrel or
other. She had sworn that he would not keep his berth a fortnight.
"That fat Lisa's much mistaken," said she one morning on meeting
Madame Lecoeur, "if she thinks that she's going to put people over us.
We don't want such ugly wretches here. That sweetheart of hers is a
perfect fright!"
After the auctions, when Florent commenced his round of inspection,
strolling slowly through the dripping alleys, he could plainly see the
beautiful Norman watching him with an impudent smile on her face. Her
stall, which was in the second row on the left, near the fresh water
fish department faced the Rue Rambuteau. She would turn round,
however, and never take her eyes off her victim whilst making fun of
him with her neighbours. And when he passed in front of her, slowly
examining the slabs, she feigned hilarious merriment, slapped her fish
with her hand, and turned her jets of water on at full stream,
flooding the pathway. Nevertheless Florent remained perfectly calm.
At last, one morning as was bound to happen, war broke out. As Florent
reached La Normande's stall that day an unbearable stench assailed his
nostrils. On the marble slab, in addition to part of a magnificent
salmon, showing its soft roseate flesh, there lay some turbots of
creamy whiteness, a few conger-eels pierced with black pins to mark
their divisions, several pairs of soles, and some bass and red mullet
--in fact, quite a display of fresh fish. But in the midst of it,
amongst all these fish whose eyes still gleamed and whose gills were
of a bright crimson, there lay a huge skate of a ruddy tinge,
splotched with dark stains--superb, indeed, with all its strange
colourings. Unfortunately, it was rotten; its tail was falling off and
the ribs of its fins were breaking through the skin.
"You must throw that skate away," said Florent as he came up.
The beautiful Norman broke into a slight laugh. Florent raised his
eyes and saw her standing before him, with her back against the bronze
lamp post which lighted the stalls in her division. She had mounted
upon a box to keep her feet out of the damp, and appeared very tall as
he glanced at her. She looked also handsomer than usual, with her hair
arranged in little curls, her sly face slightly bent, her lips
compressed, and her hands showing somewhat too rosily against her big
white apron. Florent had never before seen her decked with so much
jewellery. She had long pendants in her ears, a chain round her neck,
a brooch in her dress body, and quite a collection of rings on two
fingers of her left hand and one of her right.
As she still continued to look slyly at Florent, without making any
reply, the latter continued: "Do you hear? You must remove that
skate."
He had not yet noticed the presence of old Madame Mehudin, who sat all
of a heap on a chair in a corner. She now got up, however, and, with
her fists resting on the marble slap, insolently exclaimed: "Dear me!
And why is she to throw her skate away? You won't pay her for it, I'll
bet!"
Florent immediately understood the position. The women at the other
stalls began to titter, and he felt that he was surrounded by covert
rebellion, which a word might cause to blaze forth. He therefore
restrained himself, and in person drew the refuse-pail from under the
stall and dropped the skate into it. Old Madame Mehudin had already
stuck her hands on her hips, while the beautiful Norman, who had not
spoken a word, burst into another malicious laugh as Florent strode
sternly away amidst a chorus of jeers, which he pretended not to hear.
Each day now some new trick was played upon him, and he was obliged to
walk through the market alleys as warily as though he were in a
hostile country. He was splashed with water from the sponges employed
to cleanse the slabs; he stumbled and almost fell over slippery refuse
intentionally spread in his way; and even the porters contrived to run
their baskets against the nape of his neck. One day, moreover, when
two of the fish-wives were quarrelling, and he hastened up to prevent
them coming to blows, he was obliged to duck in order to escape being
slapped on either cheek by a shower of little dabs which passed over
his head. There was a general outburst of laughter on this occasion,
and Florent always believed that the two fish-wives were in league
with the Mehudins. However, his old-time experiences as a teacher had
endowed him with angelic patience, and he was able to maintain a
magisterial coolness of manner even when anger was hotly rising within
him, and his whole being quivered with a sense of humiliation. Still,
the young scamps of the Rue de l'Estrapade had never manifested the
savagery of these fish-wives, the cruel tenacity of these huge
females, whose massive figures heaved and shook with a giant-like joy
whenever he fell into any trap. They stared him out of countenance
with their red faces; and in the coarse tones of their voices and the
impudent gesture of their hands he could read volumes of filthy abuse
levelled at himself. Gavard would have been quite in his element
amidst all these petticoats, and would have freely cuffed them all
round; but Florent, who had always been afraid of women, gradually
felt overwhelmed as by a sort of nightmare in which giant women, buxom
beyond all imagination, danced threateningly around him, shouting at
him in hoarse voices and brandishing bare arms, as massive as any
prize-fighter's.
Amongst this hoard of females, however, Florent had one friend. Claire
unhesitatingly declared that the new inspector was a very good fellow.
When he passed in front of her, pursued by the coarse abuse of the
others, she gave him a pleasant smile, sitting nonchalantly behind her
stall, with unruly errant locks of pale hair straying over her neck
and her brow, and the bodice of her dress pinned all askew. He also
often saw her dipping her hands into her tanks, transferring the fish
from one compartment to another, and amusing herself by turning on the
brass taps, shaped like little dolphins with open mouths, from which
the water poured in streamlets. Amidst the rustling sound of the water
she had some of the quivering grace of a girl who has just been
bathing and has hurriedly slipped on her clothes.
One morning she was particularly amiable. She called the inspector to
her to show him a huge eel which had been the wonder of the market
when exhibited at the auction. She opened the grating, which she had
previously closed over the basin in whose depths the eel seemed to be
lying sound asleep.
"Wait a moment," she said, "and I'll show it to you."
Then she gently slipped her bare arm into the water; it was not a very
plump arm, and its veins showed softly blue beneath its satiny skin.
As soon as the eel felt her touch, it rapidly twisted round, and
seemed to fill the narrow trough with its glistening greenish coils.
And directly it had settled down to rest again Claire once more
stirred it with her fingertips.
"It is an enormous creature," Florent felt bound to say. "I have
rarely seen such a fine one."
Claire thereupon confessed to him that she had at first been
frightened of eels; but now she had learned how to tighten her grip so
that they could not slip away. From another compartment she took a
smaller one, which began to wriggle both with head and tail, as she
held it about the middle in her closed fist. This made her laugh. She
let it go, then seized another and another, scouring the basin and
stirring up the whole heap of snaky-looking creatures with her slim
fingers.
Afterwards she began to speak of the slackness of trade. The hawkers
on the foot-pavement of the covered way did the regular saleswomen a
great deal of injury, she said. Meantime her bare arm, which she had
not wiped, was glistening and dripping with water. Big drops trickled
from each finger.
"Oh," she exclaimed suddenly, "I must show you my carp, too!"
She now removed another grating, and, using both hands, lifted out a
large carp, which began to flap its tail and gasp. It was too big to
be held conveniently, so she sought another one. This was smaller, and
she could hold it with one hand, but the latter was forced slightly
open by the panting of the sides each time that the fish gasped. To
amuse herself it occurred to Claire to pop the tip of her thumb into
the carp's mouth whilst it was dilated. "It won't bite," said she with
her gentle laugh; "it's not spiteful. No more are the crawfishes; I'm
not the least afraid of them."
She plunged her arm into the water again, and from a compartment full
of a confused crawling mass brought up a crawfish that had caught her
little finger in its claws. She gave the creature a shake, but it no
doubt gripped her too tightly, for she turned very red, and snapped
off its claw with a quick, angry gesture, though still continuing to
smile.
"By the way," she continued quickly, to conceal her emotion, "I
wouldn't trust myself with a pike; he'd cut off my fingers like a
knife."
She thereupon showed him some big pike arranged in order of size upon
clean scoured shelves, beside some bronze-hued tench and little heaps
of gudgeon. Her hands were now quite slimy with handling the carp, and
as she stood there in the dampness rising from the tanks, she held
them outstretched over the dripping fish on the stall. She seemed
enveloped by an odour of spawn, that heavy scent which rises from
among the reeds and water-lilies when the fish, languid in the
sunlight, discharge their eggs. Then she wiped her hands on her apron,
still smiling the placid smile of a girl who knew nothing of passion
in that quivering atmosphere of the frigid loves of the river.
The kindliness which Claire showed to Florent was but a slight
consolation to him. By stopping to talk to the girl he only drew upon
himself still coarser jeers from the other stallkeepers. Claire
shrugged her shoulders, and said that her mother was an old jade, and
her sister a worthless creature. The injustice of the market folk
towards the new inspector filled her with indignation. The war between
them, however, grew more bitter every day. Florent had serious
thoughts of resigning his post; indeed, he would not have retained it
for another twenty-four hours if he had not been afraid that Lisa
might imagine him to be a coward. He was frightened of what she might
say and what she might think. She was naturally well aware of the
contest which was going on between the fish-wives and their inspector;
for the whole echoing market resounded with it, and the entire
neighbourhood discussed each fresh incident with endless comments.
"Ah, well," Lisa would often say in the evening, after dinner, "I'd
soon bring them to reason if I had anything to do with them! Why, they
are a lot of dirty jades that I wouldn't touch with the tip of my
finger! That Normande is the lowest of the low! I'd soon crush her,
that I would! You should really use your authority, Florent. You are
wrong to behave as you do. Put your foot down, and they'll all come to
their senses very quickly, you'll see."
A terrible climax was presently reached. One morning the servant of
Madame Taboureau, the baker, came to the market to buy a brill; and
the beautiful Norman, having noticed her lingering near her stall for
several minutes, began to make overtures to her in a coaxing way:
"Come and see me; I'll suit you," she said. "Would you like a pair of
soles, or a fine turbot?"
Then as the servant at last came up, and sniffed at a brill with that
dissatisfied pout which buyers assume in the hope of getting what they
want at a lower price, La Normande continued:
"Just feel the weight of that, now," and so saying she laid the brill,
wrapped in a sheet of thick yellow paper, on the woman's open palm.
The servant, a mournful little woman from Auvergne, felt the weight of
the brill, and examined its gills, still pouting, and saying not a
word.
"And how much do you want for it?" she asked presently, in a reluctant
tone.
"Fifteen francs," replied La Normande.
At this the servant hastily laid the brill on the stall again, and
seemed anxious to hurry away, but the other detained her. "Wait a
moment," said she. "What do you offer?"
"No, no, I can't take it. It is much too dear."
"Come, now, make me an offer."
"Well, will you take eight francs?"
Old Madame Mehudin, who was there, suddenly seemed to wake up, and
broke out into a contemptuous laugh. Did people think that she and her
daughter stole the fish they sold? "Eight francs for a brill that
size!" she exclaimed. "You'll be wanting one for nothing next, to use
as a cooling plaster!"
Meantime La Normande turned her head away, as though greatly offended.
However, the servant came back twice and offered nine francs; and
finally she increased her bid to ten.
"All right, come on, give me your money!" cried the fish-girl, seeing
that the woman was now really going away.
The servant took her stand in front of the stall and entered into a
friendly gossip with old Madame Mehudin. Madame Taboureau, she said,
was so exacting! She had got some people coming to dinner that
evening, some cousins from Blois a notary and his wife. Madame
Taboureau's family, she added, was a very respectable one, and she
herself, although only a baker, had received an excellent education.
"You'll clean it nicely for me, won't you?" added the woman, pausing
in her chatter.
With a jerk of her finger La Normande had removed the fish's entrails
and tossed them into a pail. Then she slipped a corner of her apron
under its gills to wipe away a few grains of sand. "There, my dear,"
she said, putting the fish into the servant's basket, "you'll come
back to thank me."
Certainly the servant did come back a quarter of an hour afterwards,
but it was with a flushed, red face. She had been crying, and her
little body was trembling all over with anger. Tossing the brill on to
the marble slab, she pointed to a broad gash in its belly that reached
the bone. Then a flood of broken words burst from her throat, which
was still contracted by sobbing: "Madame Taboureau won't have it. She
says she couldn't put it on her table. She told me, too, that I was an
idiot, and let myself be cheated by anyone. You can see for yourself
that the fish is spoilt. I never thought of turning it round; I quite
trusted you. Give me my ten francs back."
"You should look at what you buy," the handsome Norman calmly
observed.
And then, as the servant was just raising her voice again, old Madame
Mehudin got up. "Just you shut up!" she cried. "We're not going to
take back a fish that's been knocking about in other people's houses.
How do we know that you didn't let it fall and damage it yourself?"
"I! I damage it!" The little servant was choking with indignation.
"Ah! you're a couple of thieves!" she cried, sobbing bitterly. "Yes, a
couple of thieves! Madame Taboureau herself told me so!"
Matters then became uproarious. Boiling over with rage and brandishing
their fists, both mother and daughter fairly exploded; while the poor
little servant, quite bewildered by their voices, the one hoarse and
the other shrill, which belaboured her with insults as though they
were battledores and she a shuttlecock, sobbed on more bitterly than
ever.
"Be off with you! Your Madame Taboureau would like to be half as fresh
as that fish is! She'd like us to sew it up for her, no doubt!"
"A whole fish for ten francs! What'll she want next!"
Then came coarse words and foul accusations. Had the servant been the
most worthless of her sex she could not have been more bitterly
upbraided.
Florent, whom the market keeper had gone to fetch, made his appearance
when the quarrel was at its hottest. The whole pavilion seemed to be
in a state of insurrection. The fish-wives, who manifest the keenest
jealousy of each other when the sale of a penny herring is in
question, display a united front when a quarrel arises with a buyer.
They sang the popular old ditty, "The baker's wife has heaps of
crowns, which cost her precious little"; they stamped their feet, and
goaded the Mehudins as though the latter were dogs which they were
urging on to bite and devour. And there were even some, having stalls
at the other end of the alley, who rushed up wildly, as though they
meant to spring at the chignon of the poor little woman, she meantime
being quite submerged by the flood of insulting abuse poured upon her.
"Return mademoiselle her ten francs," said Florent sternly, when he
had learned what had taken place.
But old Madame Mehudin had her blood up. "As for you, my little man,"
quoth she, "go to blazes! Here, that's how I'll return the ten
francs!"
As she spoke, she flung the brill with all her force at the head of
Madame Taboureau's servant, who received it full in the face. The
blood spurted from her nose, and the brill, after adhering for a
moment to her cheeks, fell to the ground and burst with a flop like
that of a wet clout. This brutal act threw Florent into a fury. The
beautiful Norman felt frightened and recoiled, as he cried out: "I
suspend you for a week, and I will have your licence withdrawn. You
hear me?"
Then, as the other fish-wives were still jeering behind him, he turned
round with such a threatening air that they quailed like wild beasts
mastered by the tamer, and tried to assume an expression of innocence.
When the Mehudins had returned the ten francs, Florent peremptorily
ordered them to cease selling at once. The old woman was choking with
rage, while the daughter kept silent, but turned very white. She, the
beautiful Norman, to be driven out of her stall!
Claire said in her quiet voice that it served her mother and sister
right, a remark which nearly resulted in the two girls tearing each
other's hair out that evening when they returned home to the Rue
Pirouette. However, when the Mehudins came back to the market at the
week's end, they remained very quiet, reserved, and curt of speech,
though full of a cold-blooded wrath. Moreover, they found the pavilion
quite calm and restored to order again. From that day forward the
beautiful Norman must have harboured the thought of some terrible
vengeance. She felt that she really had Lisa to thank for what had
happened. She had met her, the day after the battle, carrying her head
so high, that she had sworn she would make her pay dearly for her
glance of triumph. She held interminable confabulations with Madame
Saget, Madame Lecoeur, and La Sarriette, in quiet corners of the
market; however, all their chatter about the shameless conduct which
they slanderously ascribed to Lisa and her cousin, and about the hairs
which they declared were found in Quenu's chitterlings, brought La
Normande little consolation. She was trying to think of some very
malicious plan of vengeance, which would strike her rival to the
heart.
Her child was growing up in the fish market in all freedom and
neglect. When but three years old the youngster had been brought
there, and day by day remained squatting on some rag amidst the fish.
He would fall asleep beside the big tunnies as though he were one of
them, and awake among the mackerel and whiting. The little rascal
smelt of fish as strongly as though he were some big fish's offspring.
For a long time his favourite pastime, whenever his mother's back was
turned, was to build walls and houses of herrings; and he would also
play at soldiers on the marble slab, arranging the red gurnets in
confronting lines, pushing them against each other, and battering
their heads, while imitating the sound of drum and trumpet with his
lips; after which he would throw them all into a heap again, and
exclaim that they were dead. When he grew older he would prowl about
his aunt Claire's stall to get hold of the bladders of the carp and
pike which she gutted. He placed them on the ground and made them
burst, an amusement which afforded him vast delight. When he was seven
he rushed about the alleys, crawled under the stalls, ferreted amongst
the zinc bound fish boxes, and became the spoiled pet of all the
women. Whenever they showed him something fresh which pleased him, he
would clasp his hands and exclaim in ecstasy, "Oh, isn't it stunning!"
/Muche/ was the exact word which he used; /muche/ being the equivalent
of "stunning" in the lingo of the markets; and he used the expression
so often that it clung to him as a nickname. He became known all over
the place as "Muche." It was Muche here, there and everywhere; no one
called him anything else. He was to be met with in every nook; in out-
of-the-way corners of the offices in the auction pavilion; among the
piles of oyster baskets, and betwixt the buckets where the refuse was
thrown. With a pinky fairness of skin, he was like a young barbel
frisking and gliding about in deep water. He was as fond of running,
streaming water as any young fry. He was ever dabbling in the pools in
the alleys. He wetted himself with the drippings from the tables, and
when no one was looking often slyly turned on the taps, rejoicing in
the bursting gush of water. But it was especially beside the fountains
near the cellar steps that his mother went to seek him in the evening,
and she would bring him thence with his hands quite blue, and his
shoes, and even his pockets, full of water.
At seven years old Muche was as pretty as an angel, and as coarse in
his manners as any carter. He had curly chestnut hair, beautiful eyes,
and an innocent-looking mouth which gave vent to language that even a
gendarme would have hesitated to use. Brought up amidst all the
ribaldry and profanity of the markets, he had the whole vocabulary of
the place on the tip of his tongue. With his hands on his hips he
often mimicked Grandmother Mehudin in her anger, and at these times
the coarsest and vilest expressions would stream from his lips in a
voice of crystalline purity that might have belonged to some little
chorister chanting the /Ave Maria/. He would even try to assume a
hoarse roughness of tone, seek to degrade and taint that exquisite
freshness of childhood which made him resemble a /bambino/ on the
Madonna's knees. The fish-wives laughed at him till they cried; and
he, encouraged, could scarcely say a couple of words without rapping
out an oath. But in spite of all this he still remained charming,
understanding nothing of the dirt amidst which he lived, kept in
vigorous health by the fresh breezes and sharp odours of the fish
market, and reciting his vocabulary of coarse indecencies with as pure
a face as though he were saying his prayers.
The winter was approaching, and Muche seemed very sensitive to the
cold. As soon as the chilly weather set in he manifested a strong
predilection for the inspector's office. This was situated in the
left-hand corner of the pavilion, on the side of the Rue Rambuteau.
The furniture consisted of a table, a stack of drawers, an easy-chair,
two other chairs, and a stove. It was this stove which attracted
Muche. Florent quite worshipped children, and when he saw the little
fellow, with his dripping legs, gazing wistfully through the window,
he made him come inside. His first conversation with the lad caused
him profound amazement. Muche sat down in front of the stove, and in
his quiet voice exclaimed: "I'll just toast my toes, do you see? It's
d----d cold this morning." Then he broke into a rippling laugh, and
added: "Aunt Claire looks awfully blue this morning. Is it true, sir,
that you are sweet on her?"
Amazed though he was, Florent felt quite interested in the odd little
fellow. The handsome Norman retained her surly bearing, but allowed
her son to frequent the inspector's office without a word of
objection. Florent consequently concluded that he had the mother's
permission to receive the boy, and every afternoon he asked him in; by
degrees forming the idea of turning him into a steady, respectable
young fellow. He could almost fancy that his brother Quenu had grown
little again, and that they were both in the big room in the Rue
Royer-Collard once more. The life which his self-sacrificing nature
pictured to him as perfect happiness was a life spent with some young
being who would never grow up, whom he could go on teaching for ever,
and in whose innocence he might still love his fellow man. On the
third day of his acquaintance with Muche he brought an alphabet to the
office, and the lad delighted him by the intelligence he manifested.
He learned his letters with all the sharp precocity which marks the
Parisian street arab, and derived great amusement from the woodcuts
illustrating the alphabet.
He found opportunities, too, for plenty of fine fun in the little
office, where the stove still remained the chief attraction and a
source of endless enjoyment. At first he cooked potatoes and chestnuts
at it, but presently these seemed insipid, and he thereupon stole some
gudgeons from his aunt Claire, roasted them one by one, suspended from
a string in front of the glowing fire, and then devoured them with
gusto, though he had no bread. One day he even brought a carp with
him; but it was impossible to roast it sufficiently, and it made such
a smell in the office that both window and door had to be thrown open.
Sometimes, when the odour of all these culinary operations became too
strong, Florent would throw the fish into the street, but as a rule he
only laughed. By the end of a couple of months Muche was able to read
fairly well, and his copy-books did him credit.
Meantime, every evening the lad wearied his mother with his talk about
his good friend Florent. His good friend Florent had drawn him
pictures of trees and of men in huts, said he. His good friend Florent
waved his arm and said that men would be far better if they all knew
how to read. And at last La Normande heard so much about Florent that
she seemed to be almost intimate with this man against whom she
harboured so much rancour. One day she shut Muche up at home to
prevent him from going to the inspector's, but he cried so bitterly
that she gave him his liberty again on the following morning. There
was very little determination about her, in spite of her broad
shoulders and bold looks. When the lad told her how nice and warm he
had been in the office, and came back to her with his clothes quite
dry, she felt a sort of vague gratitude, a pleasure in knowing that he
had found a shelter-place where he could sit with his feet in front of
a fire. Later on, she was quite touched when he read her some words
from a scrap of soiled newspaper wrapped round a slice of conger-eel.
By degrees, indeed, she began to think, though without admitting it,
that Florent could not really be a bad sort of fellow. She felt
respect for his knowledge, mingled with an increasing curiosity to see
more of him and learn something of his life. Then, all at once, she
found an excuse for gratifying this inquisitiveness. She would use it
as a means of vengeance. It would be fine fun to make friends with
Florent and embroil him with that great fat Lisa.
"Does your good friend Florent ever speak to you about me?" she asked
Muche one morning as she was dressing him.
"Oh, no," replied the boy. "We enjoy ourselves."
"Well, you can tell him that I've quite forgiven him, and that I'm
much obliged to him for having taught you to read."
Thenceforward the child was entrusted with some message every day. He
went backwards and forwards from his mother to the inspector, and from
the inspector to his mother, charged with kindly words and questions
and answers, which he repeated mechanically without knowing their
meaning. He might, indeed, have been safely trusted with the most
compromising communications. However, the beautiful Norman felt afraid
of appearing timid, and so one day she herself went to the inspector's
office and sat down on the second chair, while Muche was having his
writing lesson. She proved very suave and complimentary, and Florent
was by far the more embarrassed of the two. They only spoke of the
lad; and when Florent expressed a fear that he might not be able to
continue the lessons in the office, La Normande invited him to come to
their home in the evening. She spoke also of payment; but at this he
blushed, and said that he certainly would not come if any mention were
made of money. Thereupon the young woman determined in her own mind
that she would recompense him with presents of choice fish.
Peace was thus made between them; the beautiful Norman even took
Florent under her protection. Apart from this, however, the whole
market was becoming reconciled to the new inspector, the fish-wives
arriving at the conclusion that he was really a better fellow than
Monsieur Verlaque, notwithstanding his strange eyes. It was only old
Madame Mehudin who still shrugged her shoulders, full of rancour as
she was against the "long lanky-guts," as she contemptuously called
him. And then, too, a strange thing happened. One morning, when
Florent stopped with a smile before Claire's tanks, the girl dropped
an eel which she was holding and angrily turned her back upon him, her
cheeks quite swollen and reddened by temper. The inspector was so much
astonished that he spoke to La Normande about it.
"Oh, never mind her," said the young woman; "she's cracked. She makes
a point of always differing from everybody else. She only behaved like
that to annoy me."
La Normande was now triumphant--she strutted about her stall, and
became more coquettish than ever, arranging her hair in the most
elaborate manner. Meeting the handsome Lisa one day she returned her
look of scorn, and even burst out laughing in her face. The certainty
she felt of driving the mistress of the pork shop to despair by
winning her cousin from her endowed her with a gay, sonorous laugh,
which rolled up from her chest and rippled her white plump neck. She
now had the whim of dressing Muche very showily in a little Highland
costume and velvet bonnet. The lad had never previously worn anything
but a tattered blouse. It unfortunately happened, however, that just
about this time he again became very fond of the water. The ice had
melted and the weather was mild, so he gave his Scotch jacket a bath,
turning the fountain tap on at full flow and letting the water pour
down his arm from his elbow to his hand. He called this "playing at
gutters." Then a little later, when his mother came up and caught him,
she found him with two other young scamps watching a couple of little
fishes swimming about in his velvet cap, which he had filled with
water.
For nearly eight months Florent lived in the markets, feeling
continual drowsiness. After his seven years of suffering he had
lighted upon such calm quietude, such unbroken regularity of life,
that he was scarcely conscious of existing. He gave himself up to this
jog-trot peacefulness with a dazed sort of feeling, continually
experiencing surprise at finding himself each morning in the same
armchair in the little office. This office with its bare hut-like
appearance had a charm for him. He here found a quiet and secluded
refuge amidst that ceaseless roar of the markets which made him dream
of some surging sea spreading around him, and isolating him from the
world. Gradually, however, a vague nervousness began to prey upon him;
he became discontented, accused himself of faults which he could not
define, and began to rebel against the emptiness which he experienced
more and more acutely in mind and body. Then, too, the evil smells of
the fish market brought him nausea. By degrees he became unhinged, his
vague boredom developing into restless, nervous excitement.
All his days were precisely alike, spent among the same sounds and the
same odours. In the mornings the noisy buzzing of the auction sales
resounded in his ears like a distant echo of bells; and sometimes,
when there was a delay in the arrival of the fish, the auctions
continued till very late. Upon these occasions he remained in the
pavilion till noon, disturbed at every moment by quarrels and
disputes, which he endeavoured to settle with scrupulous justice.
Hours elapsed before he could get free of some miserable matter or
other which was exciting the market. He paced up and down amidst the
crush and uproar of the sales, slowly perambulating the alleys and
occasionally stopping in front of the stalls which fringed the Rue
Rambuteau, and where lay rosy heaps of prawns and baskets of boiled
lobsters with tails tied backwards, while live ones were gradually
dying as they sprawled over the marble slabs. And then he would watch
gentlemen in silk hats and black gloves bargaining with the fish-
wives, and finally going off with boiled lobsters wrapped in paper in
the pockets of their frock-coats.[*] Farther away, at the temporary
stalls, where the commoner sorts of fish were sold, he would recognise
the bareheaded women of the neighbourhood, who always came at the same
hour to make their purchases.
[*] The little fish-basket for the use of customers, so familiar in
London, is not known in Paris.--Translator.
At times he took an interest in some well-dressed lady trailing her
lace petticoats over the damp stones, and escorted by a servant in a
white apron; and he would follow her at a little distance on noticing
how the fish-wives shrugged their shoulders at sight of her air of
disgust. The medley of hampers and baskets and bags, the crowd of
skirts flitting along the damp alleys, occupied his attention until
lunchtime. He took a delight in the dripping water and the fresh
breeze as he passed from the acrid smell of the shell-fish to the
pungent odour of the salted fish. It was always with the latter that
he brought his official round of inspection to a close. The cases of
red herrings, the Nantes sardines on their layers of leaves, and the
rolled cod, exposed for sale under the eyes of stout, faded fish-
wives, brought him thoughts of a voyage necessitating a vast supply of
salted provisions.
In the afternoon the markets became quieter, grew drowsy; and Florent
then shut himself up in his office, made out his reports, and enjoyed
the happiest hours of his day. If he happened to go out and cross the
fish market, he found it almost deserted. There was no longer the
crushing and pushing and uproar of ten o'clock in the morning. The
fish-wives, seated behind their stalls, leant back knitting, while a
few belated purchasers prowled about casting sidelong glances at the
remaining fish, with the thoughtful eyes and compressed lips of women
closely calculating the price of their dinner. At last the twilight
fell, there was a noise of boxes being moved, and the fish was laid
for the night on beds of ice; and then, after witnessing the closing
of the gates, Florent went off, seemingly carrying the fish market
along with him in his clothes and his beard and his hair.
For the first few months this penetrating odour caused him no great
discomfort. The winter was a severe one, the frosts converted the
alleys into slippery mirrors, and the fountains and marble slabs were
fringed with a lacework of ice. In the mornings it was necessary to
place little braziers underneath the taps before a drop of water could
be drawn. The frozen fish had twisted tails; and, dull of hue and hard
to the touch like unpolished metal, gave out a ringing sound akin to
that of pale cast-iron when it snaps. Until February the pavilion
presented a most mournful appearance: it was deserted, and wrapped in
a bristling shroud of ice. But with March came a thaw, with mild
weather and fogs and rain. Then the fish became soft again, and
unpleasant odours mingled with the smell of mud wafted from the
neighbouring streets. These odours were as yet vague, tempered by the
moisture which clung to the ground. But in the blazing June afternoons
a reeking stench arose, and the atmosphere became heavy with a
pestilential haze. The upper windows were then opened, and huge blinds
of grey canvas were drawn beneath the burning sky. Nevertheless, a
fiery rain seemed to be pouring down, heating the market as though it
were a big stove, and there was not a breath of air to waft away the
noxious emanations from the fish. A visible steam went up from the
stalls.
The masses of food amongst which Florent lived now began to cause him
the greatest discomfort. The disgust with which the pork shop had
filled him came back in a still more intolerable fashion. He almost
sickened as he passed these masses of fish, which, despite all the
water lavished upon them, turned bad under a sudden whiff of hot air.
Even when he shut himself up in his office his discomfort continued,
for the abominable odour forced its way through the chinks in the
woodwork of the window and door. When the sky was grey and leaden, the
little room remained quite dark; and then the day was like a long
twilight in the depths of some fetid march. He was often attacked by
fits of nervous excitement, and felt a craving desire to walk; and he
would then descend into the cellars by the broad staircase opening in
the middle of the pavilion. In the pent-up air down below, in the dim
light of the occasional gas jets, he once more found the refreshing
coolness diffused by pure cold water. He would stand in front of the
big tank where the reserve stock of live fish was kept, and listen to
the ceaseless murmur of the four streamlets of water falling from the
four corners of the central urn, and then spreading into a broad
stream and gliding beneath the locked gratings of the basins with a
gentle and continuous flow. This subterranean spring, this stream
murmuring in the gloom, had a tranquillising effect upon him. Of an
evening, too, he delighted in the fine sunsets which threw the
delicate lacework of the market buildings blackly against the red glow
of the heavens. The dancing dust of the last sun rays streamed through
every opening, through every chink of the Venetian shutters, and the
whole was like some luminous transparency on which the slender shafts
of the columns, the elegant curves of the girders, and the geometrical
tracery of the roofs were minutely outlined. Florent feasted his eyes
on this mighty diagram washed in with Indian ink on phosphorescent
vellum, and his mind reverted to his old fancy of a colossal machine
with wheels and levers and beams espied in the crimson glow of the
fires blazing beneath its boilers. At each consecutive hour of the day
the changing play of the light--from the bluish haze of early morning
and the black shadows of noon to the flaring of the sinking sun and
the paling of its fires in the ashy grey of the twilight--revealed the
markets under a new aspect; but on the flaming evenings, when the foul
smells arose and forced their way across the broad yellow beams like
hot puffs of steam, Florent again experienced discomfort, and his
dream changed, and he imagined himself in some gigantic knacker's
boiling-house where the fat of a whole people was being melted down.
The coarseness of the market people, whose words and gestures seemed
to be infected with the evil smell of the place, also made him suffer.
He was very tolerant, and showed no mock modesty; still, these
impudent women often embarrassed him. Madame Francois, whom he had
again met, was the only one with whom he felt at ease. She showed such
pleasure on learning he had found a berth and was quite comfortable
and out of worry, as she put it, that he was quite touched. The
laughter of Lisa, the handsome Norman, and the others disquieted him;
but of Madame Francois he would willingly have made a confidante. She
never laughed mockingly at him; when she did laugh, it was like a
woman rejoicing at another's happiness. She was a brave, plucky
creature, too; hers was a hard business in winter, during the frosts,
and the rainy weather was still more trying. On some mornings Florent
saw her arrive in a pouring deluge which had been slowly, coldly
falling ever since the previous night. Between Nanterre and Paris the
wheels of her cart had sunk up to the axles in mud, and Balthazar was
caked with mire to his belly. His mistress would pity him and
sympathise with him as she wiped him down with some old aprons.
"The poor creatures are very sensitive," said she; "a mere nothing
gives them a cold. Ah, my poor old Balthazar! I really thought that we
had tumbled into the Seine as we crossed the Neuilly bridge, the rain
came down in such a deluge!"
While Balthazar was housed in the inn stable his mistress remained in
the pouring rain to sell her vegetables. The footway was transformed
into a lake of liquid mud. The cabbages, carrots, and turnips were
pelted by the grey water, quite drowned by the muddy torrent that
rushed along the pavement. There was no longer any of that glorious
greenery so apparent on bright mornings. The market gardeners,
cowering in their heavy cloaks beneath the downpour, swore at the
municipality which, after due inquiry, had declared that rain was in
no way injurious to vegetables, and that there was accordingly no
necessity to erect any shelters.
Those rainy mornings greatly worried Florent, who thought about Madame
Francois. He always managed to slip away and get a word with her. But
he never found her at all low-spirited. She shook herself like a
poodle, saying that she was quite used to such weather, and was not
made of sugar, to melt away beneath a few drops of rain. However, he
made her seek refuge for a few minutes in one of the covered ways, and
frequently even took her to Monsieur Lebigre's, where they had some
hot wine together. While she with her peaceful face beamed on him in
all friendliness, he felt quite delighted with the healthy odour of
the fields which she brought into the midst of the foul market
atmosphere. She exhaled a scent of earth, hay, fresh air, and open
skies.
"You must come to Nanterre, my lad," she said to him, "and look at my
kitchen garden. I have put borders of thyme everywhere. How bad your
villainous Paris does smell!"
Then she went off, dripping. Florent, on his side, felt quite
re-invigorated when he parted from her. He tried, too the effect of
work upon the nervous depression from which he suffered. He was a man
of a very methodical temperament, and sometimes carried out his plans
for the allotment of his time with a strictness that bordered on
mania. He shut himself up two evenings a week in order to write an
exhaustive work on Cayenne. His modest bedroom was excellently
adapted, he thought, to calm his mind and incline him to work. He
lighted his fire, saw that the pomegranate at the foot of the bed was
looking all right, and then seated himself at the little table, and
remained working till midnight. He had pushed the missal and Dream-
book back in the drawer, which was now filling with notes, memoranda,
manuscripts of all kinds. The work on Cayenne made but slow progress,
however, as it was constantly being interrupted by other projects,
plans for enormous undertakings which he sketched out in a few words.
He successively drafted an outline of a complete reform of the
administrative system of the markets, a scheme for transforming the
city dues, levied on produce as it entered Paris, into taxes levied
upon the sales, a new system of victualling the poorer neighbourhoods,
and, lastly, a somewhat vague socialist enactment for the storing in
common warehouses of all the provisions brought to the markets, and
the ensuring of a minimum daily supply to each household in Paris. As
he sat there, with his head bent over his table, and his mind absorbed
in thoughts of all these weighty matters, his gloomy figure cast a
great black shadow on the soft peacefulness of the garret. Sometimes a
chaffinch which he had picked up one snowy day in the market would
mistake the lamplight for the day, and break the silence, which only
the scratching of Florent's pen on his paper disturbed, by a cry.
Florent was fated to revert to politics. He had suffered too much
through them not to make them the dearest occupation of his life.
Under other conditions he might have become a good provincial
schoolmaster, happy in the peaceful life of some little town. But he
had been treated as though he were a wolf, and felt as though he had
been marked out by exile for some great combative task. His nervous
discomfort was the outcome of his long reveries at Cayenne, the
brooding bitterness he had felt at his unmerited sufferings, and the
vows he had secretly sworn to avenge humanity and justice--the former
scourged with a whip, and the latter trodden under foot. Those
colossal markets and their teeming odoriferous masses of food had
hastened the crisis. To Florent they appeared symbolical of some
glutted, digesting beast, of Paris, wallowing in its fat and silently
upholding the Empire. He seemed to be encircled by swelling forms and
sleek, fat faces, which ever and ever protested against his own
martyrlike scragginess and sallow, discontented visage. To him the
markets were like the stomach of the shopkeeping classes, the stomach
of all the folks of average rectitude puffing itself out, rejoicing,
glistening in the sunshine, and declaring that everything was for the
best, since peaceable people had never before grown so beautifully
fat. As these thoughts passed through his mind Florent clenched his
fists, and felt ready for a struggle, more irritated now by the
thought of his exile than he had been when he first returned to
France. Hatred resumed entire possession of him. He often let his pen
drop and became absorbed in dreams. The dying fire cast a bright glow
upon his face; the lamp burned smokily, and the chaffinch fell asleep
again on one leg, with its head tucked under its wing.
Sometimes Auguste, on coming upstairs at eleven o'clock and seeing the
light shining under the door, would knock, before going to bed.
Florent admitted him with some impatience. The assistant sat down in
front of the fire, speaking but little, and never saying why he had
come. His eyes would all the time remain fixed upon the photograph of
himself and Augustine in their Sunday finery. Florent came to the
conclusion that the young man took a pleasure in visiting the room for
the simple reason that it had been occupied by his sweetheart; and one
evening he asked him with a smile if he had guessed rightly.
"Well, perhaps it is so," replied Auguste, very much surprised at the
discovery which he himself now made of the reasons which actuated him.
"I'd really never thought of that before. I came to see you without
knowing why. But if I were to tell Augustine, how she'd laugh!"
Whenever he showed himself at all loquacious, his one eternal theme
was the pork shop which he was going to set up with Augustine at
Plaisance. He seemed so perfectly assured of arranging his life in
accordance with his desires, that Florent grew to feel a sort of
respect for him, mingled with irritation. After all, the young fellow
was very resolute and energetic, in spite of his seeming stupidity. He
made straight for the goal he had in view, and would doubtless reach
it in perfect assurance and happiness. On the evenings of these visits
from the apprentice, Florent could not settle down to work again; he
went off to bed in a discontented mood, and did not recover his
equilibrium till the thought passed through his mind, "Why, that
Auguste is a perfect animal!"
Every month he went to Clamart to see Monsieur Verlaque. These visits
were almost a delight to him. The poor man still lingered on, to the
great astonishment of Gavard, who had not expected him to last for
more than six months. Every time that Florent went to see him Verlaque
would declare that he was feeling better, and was most anxious to
resume his work again. But the days glided by, and he had serious
relapses. Florent would sit by his bedside, chat about the fish
market, and do what he could to enliven him. He deposited on the
pedestal table the fifty francs which he surrendered to him each
month; and the old inspector, though the payment had been agreed upon,
invariably protested, and seemed disinclined to take the money. Then
they would begin to speak of something else, and the coins remained
lying on the table. When Florent went away, Madame Verlaque always
accompanied him to the street door. She was a gentle little woman, of
a very tearful disposition. Her one topic of conversation was the
expense necessitated by her husband's illness, the costliness of
chicken broth, butcher's meat, Bordeaux wine, medicine, and doctors'
fees. Her doleful conversation greatly embarrassed Florent, and on the
first few occasions he did not understand the drift of it. But at
last, as the poor woman seemed always in a state of tears, and kept
saying how happy and comfortable they had been when they had enjoyed
the full salary of eighteen hundred francs a year, he timidly offered
to make her a private allowance, to be kept secret from her husband.
This offer, however, she declined, inconsistently declaring that the
fifty francs were sufficient. But in the course of the month she
frequently wrote to Florent, calling him their saviour. Her
handwriting was small and fine, yet she would contrive to fill three
pages of letter paper with humble, flowing sentences entreating the
loan of ten francs; and this she at last did so regularly that
wellnigh the whole of Florent's hundred and fifty francs found its way
to the Verlaques. The husband was probably unaware of it; however, the
wife gratefully kissed Florent's hands. This charity afforded him the
greatest pleasure, and he concealed it as though it were some
forbidden selfish indulgence.
"That rascal Verlaque is making a fool of you," Gavard would sometimes
say. "He's coddling himself up finely now that you are doing the work
and paying him an income."
At last one day Florent replied:
"Oh, we've arranged matters together. I'm only to give him twenty-five
francs a month in future."
As a matter of fact, Florent had but little need of money. The Quenus
continued to provide him with board and lodging; and the few francs
which he kept by him sufficed to pay for the refreshment he took in
the evening at Monsieur Lebigre's. His life had gradually assumed all
the regularity of clockwork. He worked in his bedroom, continued to
teach little Muche twice a week from eight to nine o'clock, devoted an
evening to Lisa, to avoid offending her, and spent the rest of his
spare time in the little "cabinet" with Gavard and his friends.
When he went to the Mehudins' there was a touch of tutorial stiffness
in his gentle demeanour. He was pleased with the old house in the Rue
Pirouette. On the ground floor he passed through the faint odours
pervading the premises of the purveyor of cooked vegetables. Big pans
of boiled spinach and sorrel stood cooling in the little backyard.
Then he ascended the winding staircase, greasy and dark, with worn and
bulging steps which sloped in a disquieting manner. The Mehudins
occupied the whole of the second floor. Even when they had attained to
comfortable circumstances the old mother had always declined to move
into fresh quarters, despite all the supplications of her daughters,
who dreamt of living in a new house in a fine broad street. But on
this point the old woman was not to be moved; she had lived there, she
said, and meant to die there. She contented herself, moreover, with a
dark little closet, leaving the largest rooms to Claire and La
Normande. The later, with the authority of the elder born, had taken
possession of the room that overlooked the street; it was the best and
largest of the suite. Claire was so much annoyed at her sister's
action in the matter that she refused to occupy the adjoining room,
whose window overlooked the yard, and obstinately insisted on sleeping
on the other side of the landing, in a sort of garret, which she did
not even have whitewashed. However, she had her own key, and so was
independent; directly anything happened to displease her she locked
herself up in her own quarters.
As a rule, when Florent arrived the Mehudins were just finishing their
dinner. Muche sprang to his neck, and for a moment the young man
remained seated with the lad chattering between his legs. Then, when
the oilcloth cover had been wiped, the lesson began on a corner of the
table. The beautiful Norman gave Florent a cordial welcome. She
generally began to knit or mend some linen, and would draw her chair
up to the table and work by the light of the same lamp as the others;
and she frequently put down her needle to listen to the lesson, which
filled her with surprise. She soon began to feel warm esteem for this
man who seemed so clever, who, in speaking to the little one, showed
himself as gentle as a woman, and manifested angelic patience in again
and again repeating the same instructions. She no longer considered
him at all plain, but even felt somewhat jealous of beautiful Lisa.
And then she drew her chair still nearer, and gazed at Florent with an
embarrassing smile.
"But you are jogging my elbow, mother, and I can't write," Muche
exclaimed angrily. "There! see what a blot you've made me make! Get
further away, do!"
La Normande now gradually began to say a good many unpleasant things
about beautiful Lisa. She pretended that the latter concealed her real
age, that she laced her stays so tightly that she nearly suffocated
herself, and that if she came down of a morning looking so trim and
neat, without a single hair out of place, it must be because she
looked perfectly hideous when in dishabille. Then La Normande would
raise her arm a little, and say that there was no need for her to wear
any stays to cramp and deform her figure. At these times the lessons
would be interrupted, and Muche gazed with interest at his mother as
she raised her arms. Florent listened to her, and even laughed,
thinking to himself that women were very odd creatures. The rivalry
between the beautiful Norman and beautiful Lisa amused him.
Muche, however, managed to finish his page of writing. Florent, who
was a good penman, set him copies in large hand and round hand on
slips of paper. The words he chose were very long and took up the
whole line, and he evinced a marked partiality for such expressions as
"tyrannically," "liberticide," "unconstitutional," and
"revolutionary." At times also he made the boy copy such sentences as
these: "The day of justice will surely come"; "The suffering of the
just man is the condemnation of the oppressor"; "When the hour
strikes, the guilty shall fall." In preparing these copy slips he was,
indeed, influenced by the ideas which haunted his brain; he would for
the time become quite oblivious of Muche, the beautiful Norman, and
all his surroundings. The lad would have copied Rousseau's "Contrat
Social" had he been told to do so; and thus, drawing each letter in
turn, he filled page after page with lines of "tyrannically" and
"unconstitutional."
As long as the tutor remained there, old Madame Mehudin kept fidgeting
round the table, muttering to herself. She still harboured terrible
rancour against Florent; and asserted that it was folly to make the
lad work in that way at a time when children should be in bed. She
would certainly have turned that "spindle-shanks" out of the house, if
the beautiful Norman, after a stormy scene, had not bluntly told her
that she would go to live elsewhere if she were not allowed to receive
whom she chose. However, the pair began quarrelling again on the
subject every evening.
"You may say what you like," exclaimed the old woman; "but he's got
treacherous eyes. And, besides, I'm always suspicious of those skinny
people. A skinny man's capable of anything. I've never come across a
decent one yet. That one's as flat as a board. And he's got such an
ugly face, too! Though I'm sixty-five and more, I'd precious soon send
him about his business if he came a-courting of me!"
She said this because she had a shrewd idea of how matters were likely
to turn out. And then she went on to speak in laudatory terms of
Monsieur Lebigre, who, indeed, paid the greatest attention to the
beautiful Norman. Apart from the handsome dowry which he imagined she
would bring with her, he considered that she would be a magnificent
acquisition to his counter. The old woman never missed an opportunity
to sound his praises; there was no lankiness, at any rate, about him,
said she; he was stout and strong, with a pair of calves which would
have done honour even to one of the Emperor's footmen.
However, La Normande shrugged her shoulders and snappishly replied:
"What do I care whether he's stout or not? I don't want him or
anybody. And besides, I shall do as I please."
Then, if the old woman became too pointed in her remarks, the other
added: "It's no business of yours, and besides, it isn't true. Hold
your tongue and don't worry me." And thereupon she would go off into
her room, banging the door behind her. Florent, however, had a yet
more bitter enemy than Madame Mehudin in the house. As soon as ever he
arrived there, Claire would get up without a word, take a candle, and
go off to her own room on the other side of the landing; and she could
be heard locking her door in a burst of sullen anger. One evening when
her sister asked the tutor to dinner, she prepared her own food on the
landing, and ate it in her bedroom; and now and again she secluded
herself so closely that nothing was seen of her for a week at a time.
She usually retained her appearance of soft lissomness, but
periodically had a fit of iron rigidity, when her eyes blazed from
under her pale tawny locks like those of a distrustful wild animal.
Old Mother Mehudin, fancying that she might relieve herself in her
company, only made her furious by speaking to her of Florent; and
thereupon the old woman, in her exasperation, told everyone that she
would have gone off and left her daughters to themselves had she not
been afraid of their devouring each other if they remained alone
together.
As Florent went away one evening, he passed in front of Claire's door,
which was standing wide open. He saw the girl look at him, and turn
very red. Her hostile demeanour annoyed him; and it was only the
timidity which he felt in the presence of women that restrained him
from seeking an explanation of her conduct. On this particular evening
he would certainly have addressed her if he had not detected
Mademoiselle Saget's pale face peering over the balustrade of the
upper landing. So he went his way, but had not taken a dozen steps
before Claire's door was closed behind him with such violence as to
shake the whole staircase. It was after this that Mademoiselle Saget,
eager to propagate slander, went about repeating everywhere that
Madame Quenu's cousin was "carrying on" most dreadfully with both the
Mehudin girls.
Florent, however, gave very little thought to these two handsome young
women. His usual manner towards them was that of a man who has but
little success with the sex. Certainly he had come to entertain a
feeling of genuine friendship for La Normande, who really displayed a
very good heart when her impetuous temper did not run away with her.
But he never went any further than this. Moreover, the queenly
proportions of her robust figure filled him with a kind of alarm; and
of an evening, whenever she drew her chair up to the lamp and bent
forward as though to look at Muche's copy-book, he drew in his own
sharp bony elbows and shrunken shoulders as if realising what a
pitiful specimen of humanity he was by the side of that buxom, hardy
creature so full of the life of ripe womanhood. Moreover, there was
another reason why he recoiled from her. The smells of the markets
distressed him; on finishing his duties of an evening he would have
liked to escape from the fishy odour amidst which his days were spent;
but, alas! beautiful though La Normande was, this odour seemed to
adhere to her silky skin. She had tried every sort of aromatic oil,
and bathed freely; but as soon as the freshening influence of the bath
was over her blood again impregnated her skin with the faint odour of
salmon, the musky perfume of smelts, and the pungent scent of herrings
and skate. Her skirts, too, as she moved about, exhaled these fishy
smells, and she walked as though amidst an atmosphere redolent of
slimy seaweed. With her tall, goddess-like figure, her purity of form,
and transparency of complexion she resembled some lovely antique
marble that had rolled about in the depths of the sea and had been
brought to land in some fisherman's net.
Mademoiselle Saget, however, swore by all her gods that Florent was
the young woman's lover. According to her account, indeed, he courted
both the sisters. She had quarrelled with the beautiful Norman about a
ten-sou dab; and ever since this falling-out she had manifested warm
friendship for handsome Lisa. By this means she hoped the sooner to
arrive at a solution of what she called the Quenus' mystery. Florent
still continued to elude her curiosity, and she told her friends that
she felt like a body without a soul, though she was careful not to
reveal what was troubling her so grievously. A young girl infatuated
with a hopeless passion could not have been in more distress than this
terrible old woman at finding herself unable to solve the mystery of
the Quenus' cousin. She was constantly playing the spy on Florent,
following him about, and watching him, in a burning rage at her
failure to satisfy her rampant curiosity. Now that he had begun to
visit the Mehudins she was for ever haunting the stairs and landings.
She soon discovered that handsome Lisa was much annoyed at Florent
visiting "those women," and accordingly she called at the pork shop
every morning with a budget of information. She went in shrivelled and
shrunk by the frosty air, and, resting her hands on the heating-pan to
warm them, remained in front of the counter buying nothing, but
repeating in her shrill voice: "He was with them again yesterday; he
seems to live there now. I heard La Normande call him 'my dear' on the
staircase."
She indulged like this in all sorts of lies in order to remain in the
shop and continue warming her hands for a little longer. On the
morning after the evening when she had heard Claire close her door
behind Florent, she spun out her story for a good half hour, inventing
all sorts of mendacious and abominable particulars.
Lisa, who had assumed a look of contemptuous scorn, said but little,
simply encouraging Mademoiselle Saget's gossip by her silence. At
last, however, she interrupted her. "No, no," she said; "I can't
really listen to all that. Is it possible that there can be such
women?"
Thereupon Mademoiselle Saget told Lisa that unfortunately all women
were not so well conducted as herself. And then she pretended to find
all sorts of excuses for Florent: it wasn't his fault; he was no doubt
a bachelor; these women had very likely inveigled him in their snares.
In this way she hinted questions without openly asking them. But Lisa
preserved silence with respect to her cousin, merely shrugging her
shoulders and compressing her lips. When Mademoiselle Saget at last
went away, the mistress of the shop glanced with disgust at the cover
of the heating-pan, the glistening metal of which had been tarnished
by the impression of the old woman's little hands.
"Augustine," she cried, "bring a duster, and wipe the cover of the
heating-pan. It's quite filthy!"
The rivalry between the beautiful Lisa and the beautiful Norman now
became formidable. The beautiful Norman flattered herself that she had
carried a lover off from her enemy; and the beautiful Lisa was
indignant with the hussy who, by luring the sly cousin to her home,
would surely end by compromising them all. The natural temperament of
each woman manifested itself in the hostilities which ensued. The one
remained calm and scornful, like a lady who holds up her skirts to
keep them from being soiled by the mud; while the other, much less
subject to shame, displayed insolent gaiety and swaggered along the
footways with the airs of a duellist seeking a cause of quarrel. Each
of their skirmishes would be the talk of the fish market for the whole
day. When the beautiful Norman saw the beautiful Lisa standing at the
door of her shop, she would go out of her way in order to pass her,
and brush against her with her apron; and then the angry glances of
the two rivals crossed like rapiers, with the rapid flash and thrust
of pointed steel. When the beautiful Lisa, on the other hand, went to
the fish market, she assumed an expression of disgust on approaching
the beautiful Norman's stall. And then she proceeded to purchase some
big fish--a turbot or a salmon--of a neighbouring dealer, spreading
her money out on the marble slab as she did so, for she had noticed
that this seemed to have a painful effect upon the "hussy," who ceased
laughing at the sight. To hear the two rivals speak, anyone would have
supposed that the fish and pork they sold were quite unfit for food.
However, their principal engagements took place when the beautiful
Norman was seated at her stall and the beautiful Lisa at her counter,
and they glowered blackly at each other across the Rue Rambuteau. They
sat in state in their big white aprons, decked out with showy toilets
and jewels, and the battle between them would commence early in the
morning.
"Hallo, the fat woman's got up!" the beautiful Norman would exclaim.
"She ties herself up as tightly as her sausages! Ah, she's got
Saturday's collar on again, and she's still wearing that poplin
dress!"
At the same moment, on the opposite side of the street, beautiful Lisa
was saying to her shop girl: "Just look at that creature staring at us
over yonder, Augustine! She's getting quite deformed by the life she
leads. Do you see her earrings? She's wearing those big drops of hers,
isn't she? It makes one feel ashamed to see a girl like that with
brilliants."
All complaisance, Augustine echoed her mistress's words.
When either of them was able to display a new ornament it was like
scoring a victory--the other one almost choked with spleen. Every day
they would scrutinise and count each other's customers, and manifest
the greatest annoyance if they thought that the "big thing over the
way" was doing the better business. Then they spied out what each had
for lunch. Each knew what the other ate, and even watched to see how
she digested it. In the afternoon, while the one sat amidst her cooked
meats and the other amidst her fish, they posed and gave themselves
airs, as though they were queens of beauty. It was then that the
victory of the day was decided. The beautiful Norman embroidered,
selecting the most delicate and difficult work, and this aroused
Lisa's exasperation.
"Ah!" she said, speaking of her rival, "she had far better mend her
boy's stockings. He's running about quite barefooted. Just look at
that fine lady, with her red hands stinking of fish!"
For her part, Lisa usually knitted.
"She's still at that same sock," La Normande would say, as she watched
her. "She eats so much that she goes to sleep over her work. I pity
her poor husband if he's waiting for those socks to keep his feet
warm!"
They would sit glowering at each other with this implacable hostility
until evening, taking note of every customer, and displaying such keen
eyesight that they detected the smallest details of each other's dress
and person when other women declared that they could see nothing at
such a distance. Mademoiselle Saget expressed the highest admiration
for Madame Quenu's wonderful sight when she one day detected a scratch
on the fish-girl's left cheek. With eyes like those, said the old
maid, one might even see through a door. However, the victory often
remained undecided when night fell; sometimes one or other of the
rivals was temporarily crushed, but she took her revenge on the
morrow. Several people of the neighbourhood actually laid wagers on
these contests, some backing the beautiful Lisa and others the
beautiful Norman.
At last they ended by forbidding their children to speak to one
another. Pauline and Muche had formerly been good friends,
notwithstanding the girl's stiff petticoats and lady-like demeanour,
and the lad's tattered appearance, coarse language, and rough manners.
They had at times played together at horses on the broad footway in
front of the fish market, Pauline always being the horse and Muche the
driver. One day, however, when the boy came in all simplicity to seek
his playmate, Lisa turned him out of the house, declaring that he was
a dirty little street arab.
"One can't tell what may happen with children who have been so
shockingly brought up," she observed.
"Yes, indeed; you are quite right," replied Mademoiselle Saget, who
happened to be present.
When Muche, who was barely seven years old, came in tears to his
mother to tell her of what had happened, La Normande broke out into a
terrible passion. At the first moment she felt a strong inclination to
rush over to the Quenu-Gradelles' and smash everything in their shop.
But eventually she contented herself with giving Muche a whipping.
"If ever I catch you going there again," she cried, boiling over with
anger, "you'll get it hot from me, I can tell you!"
Florent, however, was the real victim of the two women. It was he, in
truth, who had set them by the ears, and it was on his account that
they were fighting each other. Ever since he had appeared upon the
scene things had been going from bad to worse. He compromised and
disturbed and embittered all these people, who had previously lived in
such sleek peace and harmony. The beautiful Norman felt inclined to
claw him when he lingered too long with the Quenus, and it was chiefly
from an impulse of hostile rivalry that she desired to win him to
herself. The beautiful Lisa, on her side, maintained a cold judicial
bearing, and although extremely annoyed, forced herself to silence
whenever she saw Florent leaving the pork shop to go to the Rue
Pirouette.
Still, there was now much less cordiality than formerly round the
Quenus' dinner-table in the evening. The clean, prim dining-room
seemed to have assumed an aspect of chilling severity. Florent divined
a reproach, a sort of condemnation in the bright oak, the polished
lamp, and the new matting. He scarcely dared to eat for fear of
letting crumbs fall on the floor or soiling his plate. There was a
guileless simplicity about him which prevented him from seeing how the
land really lay. He still praised Lisa's affectionate kindliness on
all sides; and outwardly, indeed, she did continue to treat him with
all gentleness.
"It is very strange," she said to him one day with a smile, as though
she were joking; "although you don't eat at all badly now, you don't
get fatter. Your food doesn't seem to do you any good."
At this Quenu laughed aloud, and tapping his brother's stomach,
protested that the whole contents of the pork shop might pass through
it without depositing a layer of fat as thick as a two-sou piece.
However, Lisa's insistence on this particular subject was instinct
with that same suspicious dislike for fleshless men which Madame
Mehudin manifested more outspokenly; and behind it all there was
likewise a veiled allusion to the disorderly life which she imagined
Florent was leading. She never, however, spoke a word to him about La
Normande. Quenu had attempted a joke on the subject one evening, but
Lisa had received it so icily that the good man had not ventured to
refer to the matter again. They would remain seated at table for a few
moments after dessert, and Florent, who had noticed his sister-in-
law's vexation if ever he went off too soon, tried to find something
to talk about. On these occasions Lisa would be near him, and
certainly he did not suffer in her presence from that fishy smell
which assailed him when he was in the company of La Normande. The
mistress of the pork shop, on the contrary, exhaled an odour of fat
and rich meats. Moreover, not a thrill of life stirred her tight-
fitting bodice; she was all massiveness and all sedateness. Gavard
once said to Florent in confidence that Madame Quenu was no doubt
handsome, but that for his part he did not admire such armour-plated
women.
Lisa avoided talking to Quenu of Florent. She habitually prided
herself on her patience, and considered, too, that it would not be
proper to cause any unpleasantness between the brothers, unless some
peremptory reason for her interference should arise. As she said, she
could put up with a good deal, but, of course, she must not be tried
too far. She had now reached the period of courteous tolerance,
wearing an expressionless face, affecting perfect indifference and
strict politeness, and carefully avoiding everything which might seem
to hint that Florent was boarding and lodging with them without their
receiving the slightest payment from him. Not, indeed, that she would
have accepted any payment from him, she was above all that; still he
might, at any rate, she thought, have lunched away from the house.
"We never seem to be alone now," she remarked to Quenu one day. "If
there is anything we want to say to one another we have to wait till
we go upstairs at night."
And then, one night when they were in bed, she said to him: "Your
brother earns a hundred and fifty francs a month, doesn't he? Well,
it's strange he can't put a trifle by to buy himself some more linen.
I've been obliged to give him three more of your old shirts."
"Oh, that doesn't matter," Quenu replied. "Florent's not hard to
please; and we must let him keep his money for himself."
"Oh, yes, of course," said Lisa, without pressing the matter further.
"I didn't mention it for that reason. Whether he spends his money well
or ill, it isn't our business."
In her own mind she felt quite sure that he wasted his salary at the
Mehudins'.
Only on one occasion did she break through her habitual calmness of
demeanour, the quiet reserve which was the result of both natural
temperament and preconceived design. The beautiful Norman had made
Florent a present of a magnificent salmon. Feeling very much
embarrassed with the fish, and not daring to refuse it, he brought it
to Lisa.
"You can make a pasty of it," he said ingenuously.
Lisa looked at him sternly with whitening lips. Then, striving to
restrain her anger, she exclaimed: "Do you think that we are short of
food? Thank God, we've got quite enough to eat here! Take it back!"
"Well, at any rate, cook it for me," replied Florent, amazed by her
anger; "I'll eat it myself."
At this she burst out furiously.
"The house isn't an inn! Tell those who gave you the fish to cook it
for you! I won't have my pans tainted and infected! Take it back
again! Do you hear?"
If he had not gone away with it, she would certainly have seized it
and hurled it into the street. Florent took it to Monsieur Lebigre's,
where Rose was ordered to make a pasty of it; and one evening the
pasty was eaten in the little "cabinet," Gavard, who was present,
"standing" some oysters for the occasion. Florent now gradually came
more and more frequently to Monsieur Lebigre's, till at last he was
constantly to be met in the little private room. He there found an
atmosphere of heated excitement in which his political feverishness
could pulsate freely. At times, now, when he shut himself up in his
garret to work, the quiet simplicity of the little room irritated him,
his theoretical search for liberty proved quite insufficient, and it
became necessary that he should go downstairs, sally out, and seek
satisfaction in the trenchant axioms of Charvet and the wild outbursts
of Logre. During the first few evenings the clamour and chatter had
made him feel ill at ease; he was then quite conscious of their utter
emptiness, but he felt a need of drowning his thoughts, of goading
himself on to some extreme resolution which might calm his mental
disquietude. The atmosphere of the little room, reeking with the odour
of spirits and warm with tobacco smoke, intoxicated him and filled him
with peculiar beatitude, prompting a kind of self-surrender which made
him willing to acquiesce in the wildest ideas. He grew attached to
those he met there, and looked for them and awaited their coming with
a pleasure which increased with habit. Robine's mild, bearded
countenance, Clemence's serious profile, Charvet's fleshless pallor,
Logre's hump, Gavard, Alexandre, and Lacaille, all entered into his
life, and assumed a larger and larger place in it. He took quite a
sensual enjoyment in these meetings. When his fingers closed round the
brass knob on the door of the little cabinet it seemed to be animated
with life, to warm him, and turn of its own accord. Had he grasped the
supple wrist of a woman he could not have felt a more thrilling
emotion.
To tell the truth, very serious things took place in that little room.
One evening, Logre, after indulging in wilder outbursts than usual,
banged his fist upon the table, declaring that if they were men they
would make a clean sweep of the Government. And he added that it was
necessary they should come to an understanding without further delay,
if they desired to be fully prepared when the time for action arrived.
Then they all bent their heads together, discussed the matter in lower
tones, and decided to form a little "group," which should be ready for
whatever might happen. From that day forward Gavard flattered himself
that he was a member of a secret society, and was engaged in a
conspiracy. The little circle received no new members, but Logre
promised to put it into communication with other associations with
which he was acquainted; and then, as soon as they held all Paris in
their grasp, they would rise and make the Tuileries' people dance. A
series of endless discussions, renewed during several months, then
began--discussions on questions of organisation, on questions of ways
and means, on questions of strategy, and of the form of the future
Government. As soon as Rose had brought Clemence's grog, Charvet's and
Robine's beer, the coffee for Logre, Gavard, and Florent, and the
liqueur glasses of brandy for Lacaille and Alexandre, the door of the
cabinet was carefully fastened, and the debate began.
Charvet and Florent were naturally those whose utterances were
listened to with the greatest attention. Gavard had not been able to
keep his tongue from wagging, but had gradually related the whole
story of Cayenne; and Florent found himself surrounded by a halo of
martyrdom. His words were received as though they were the expression
of indisputable dogmas. One evening, however, the poultry dealer,
vexed at hearing his friend, who happened to be absent, attacked,
exclaimed: "Don't say anything against Florent; he's been to Cayenne!"
Charvet was rather annoyed by the advantage which this circumstance
gave to Florent. "Cayenne, Cayenne," he muttered between his teeth.
"Ah, well, they were not so badly off there, after all."
Then he attempted to prove that exile was a mere nothing, and that
real suffering consisted in remaining in one's oppressed country,
gagged in presence of triumphant despotism. And besides, he urged, it
wasn't his fault that he hadn't been arrested on the Second of
December. Next, however, he hinted that those who had allowed
themselves to be captured were imbeciles. His secret jealousy made him
a systematic opponent of Florent; and the general discussions always
ended in a duel between these two, who, while their companions
listened in silence, would speak against one another for hours at a
time, without either of them allowing that he was beaten.
One of the favourite subjects of discussion was that of the
reorganisation of the country which would have to be effected on the
morrow of their victory.
"We are the conquerors, are we not?" began Gavard.
And, triumph being taken for granted, everyone offered his opinion.
There were two rival parties. Charvet, who was a disciple of Hebert,
was supported by Logre and Robine; while Florent, who was always
absorbed in humanitarian dreams, and called himself a Socialist, was
backed by Alexandre and Lacaille. As for Gavard, he felt no repugnance
for violent action; but, as he was often twitted about his fortune
with no end of sarcastic witticisms which annoyed him, he declared
himself a Communist.
"We must make a clean sweep of everything," Charvet would curtly say,
as though he were delivering a blow with a cleaver. "The trunk is
rotten, and it must come down."
"Yes! yes!" cried Logre, standing up that he might look taller, and
making the partition shake with the excited motion of his hump.
"Everything will be levelled to the ground; take my word for it. After
that we shall see what to do."
Robine signified approval by wagging his beard. His silence seemed
instinct with delight whenever violent revolutionary propositions were
made. His eyes assumed a soft ecstatic expression at the mention of
the guillotine. He half closed them, as though he could see the
machine, and was filled with pleasant emotion at the sight; and next
he would gently rub his chin against the knob of his stick, with a
subdued purr of satisfaction.
"All the same," said Florent, in whose voice a vague touch of sadness
lingered, "if you cut down the tree it will be necessary to preserve
some seed. For my part, I think that the tree ought to be preserved,
so that we may graft new life on it. The political revolution, you
know, has already taken place; to-day we have got to think of the
labourer, the working man. Our movement must be altogether a social
one. I defy you to reject the claims of the people. They are weary of
waiting, and are determined to have their share of happiness."
These words aroused Alexandre's enthusiasm. With a beaming, radiant
face he declared that this was true, that the people were weary of
waiting.
"And we will have our share," added Lacaille, with a more menacing
expression. "All the revolutions that have taken place have been for
the good of the middle classes. We've had quite enough of that sort of
thing, and the next one shall be for our benefit."
From this moment disagreement set in. Gavard offered to make a
division of his property, but Logre declined, asserting that he cared
nothing for money. Then Charvet gradually overcame the tumult, till at
last he alone was heard speaking.
"The selfishness of the different classes does more than anything else
to uphold tyranny," said he. "It is wrong of the people to display
egotism. If they assist us they shall have their share. But why should
I fight for the working man if the working man won't fight for me?
Moreover, that is not the question at present. Ten years of
revolutionary dictatorship will be necessary to accustom a nation like
France to the fitting enjoyment of liberty."
"All the more so as the working man is not ripe for it, and requires
to be directed," said Clemence bluntly.
She but seldom spoke. This tall, serious looking girl, alone among so
many men, listened to all the political chatter with a learnedly
critical air. She leaned back against the partition, and every now and
then sipped her grog whilst gazing at the speakers with frowning brows
or inflated nostrils, thus silently signifying her approval or
disapproval, and making it quite clear that she held decided opinions
upon the most complicated matters. At times she would roll a
cigarette, and puff slender whiffs of smoke from the corners of her
mouth, whilst lending increased attention to what was being debated.
It was as though she were presiding over the discussion, and would
award the prize to the victor when it was finished. She certainly
considered that it became her, as a woman, to display some reserve in
her opinions, and to remain calm whilst the men grew more and more
excited. Now and then, however, in the heat of the debate, she would
let a word or a phrase escape her and "clench the matter" even for
Charvet himself, as Gavard said. In her heart she believed herself the
superior of all these fellows. The only one of them for whom she felt
any respect was Robine, and she would thoughtfully contemplate his
silent bearing.
Neither Florent nor any of the others paid any special attention to
Clemence. They treated her just as though she were a man, shaking
hands with her so roughly as almost to dislocate her arms. One evening
Florent witnessed the periodical settlement of accounts between her
and Charvet. She had just received her pay, and Charvet wanted to
borrow ten francs from her; but she first of all insisted that they
must reckon up how matters stood between them. They lived together in
a voluntary partnership, each having complete control of his or her
earnings, and strictly paying his or her expenses. By so doing, said
they, they were under no obligations to one another, but retained
entire freedom. Rent, food, washing, and amusements, were all noted
down and added up. That evening, when the accounts had been verified,
Clemence proved to Charvet that he already owed her five francs. Then
she handed him the other ten which he wished to borrow, and exclaimed:
"Recollect that you now owe me fifteen. I shall expect you to repay me
on the fifth, when you get paid for teaching little Lehudier."
When Rose was summoned to receive payment for the "drinks," each
produced the few coppers required to discharge his or her liability.
Charvet laughingly called Clemence an aristocrat because she drank
grog. She wanted to humiliate him, said he, and make him feel that he
earned less than she did, which, as it happened, was the fact. Beneath
his laugh, however, there was a feeling of bitterness that the girl
should be better circumstanced than himself, for, in spite of his
theory of the equality of the sexes, this lowered him.
Although the discussions in the little room had virtually no result,
they served to exercise the speakers' lungs. A tremendous hubbub
proceeded from the sanctum, and the panes of frosted glass vibrated
like drum-skins. Sometimes the uproar became so great that Rose, while
languidly serving some blouse-wearing customer in the shop, would turn
her head uneasily.
"Why, they're surely fighting together in there," the customer would
say, as he put his glass down on the zinc-covered counter, and wiped
his mouth with the back of his hand.
"Oh, there's no fear of that," Monsieur Lebigre tranquilly replied.
"It's only some gentlemen talking together."
Monsieur Lebigre, indeed, although very strict with his other
customers, allowed the politicians to shout as loudly as they pleased,
and never made the least remark on the subject. He would sit for hours
together on the bench behind the counter, with his big head lolling
drowsily against the mirror, whilst he watched Rose uncorking the
bottles and giving a wipe here and there with her duster. And in spite
of the somniferous effects of the wine fumes and the warm streaming
gaslight, he would keep his ears open to the sounds proceeding from
the little room. At times, when the voices grew noisier than usual, he
got up from his seat and went to lean against the partition; and
occasionally he even pushed the door open, and went inside and sat
down there for a few minutes, giving Gavard a friendly slap on the
thigh. And then he would nod approval of everything that was said. The
poultry dealer asserted that although friend Lebigre hadn't the stuff
of an orator in him, they might safely reckon on him when the "shindy"
came.
One morning, however, at the markets, when a tremendous row broke out
between Rose and one of the fish-wives, through the former
accidentally knocking over a basket of herrings, Florent heard Rose's
employer spoken of as a "dirty spy" in the pay of the police. And
after he had succeeded in restoring peace, all sorts of stories about
Monsieur Lebigre were poured into his ears. Yes, the wine seller was
in the pay of the police, the fish-wives said; all the neighbourhood
knew it. Before Mademoiselle Saget had begun to deal with him she had
once met him entering the Prefecture to make his report. It was
asserted, too, that he was a money-monger, a usurer, and lent petty
sums by the day to costermongers, and let out barrows to them,
exacting a scandalous rate of interest in return. Florent was greatly
disturbed by all this, and felt it his duty to repeat it that evening
to his fellow politicians. The latter, however, only shrugged their
shoulders, and laughed at his uneasiness.
"Poor Florent!" Charvet exclaimed sarcastically; "he imagines the
whole police force is on his track, just because he happens to have
been sent to Cayenne!"
Gavard gave his word of honour that Lebigre was perfectly staunch and
true, while Logre, for his part, manifested extreme irritation. He
fumed and declared that it would be quite impossible for them to get
on if everyone was to be accused of being a police spy; for his own
part, he would rather stay at home, and have nothing more to do with
politics. Why, hadn't people even dared to say that he, Logre himself,
who had fought in '48 and '51, and had twice narrowly escaped
transportation, was a spy as well? As he shouted this out, he thrust
his jaws forward, and glared at the others as though he would have
liked to ram the conviction that he had nothing to do with the police
down their throats. At the sight of his furious glances his companions
made gestures of protestation. However, Lacaille, on hearing Monsieur
Lebigre accused of usury, silently lowered his head.
The incident was forgotten in the discussions which ensued. Since
Logre had suggested a conspiracy, Monsieur Lebigre had grasped the
hands of the frequenters of the little room with more vigor than ever.
Their custom, to tell the truth, was of but small value to him, for
they never ordered more than one "drink" apiece. They drained the last
drops just as they rose to leave, having been careful to allow a
little to remain in their glasses, even during their most heated
arguments. In this wise the one "shout" lasted throughout the evening.
They shivered as they turned out into the cold dampness of the night,
and for a moment or two remained standing on the footway with dazzled
eyes and buzzing ears, as though surprised by the dark silence of the
street. Rose, meanwhile, fastened the shutters behind them. Then,
quite exhausted, at a loss for another word they shook hands,
separated, and went their different ways, still mentally continuing
the discussion of the evening, and regretting that they could not ram
their particular theories down each other's throats. Robine walked
away, with his bent back bobbing up and down, in the direction of the
Rue Rambuteau; whilst Charvet and Clemence went off through the
markets on their return to the Luxembourg quarter, their heels
sounding on the flag-stones in military fashion, whilst they still
discussed some question of politics or philosophy, walking along side
by side, but never arm-in-arm.
The conspiracy ripened very slowly. At the commencement of the summer
the plotters had got no further than agreeing that it was necessary a
stroke should be attempted. Florent, who had at first looked upon the
whole business with a kind of distrust, had now, however, come to
believe in the possibility of a revolutionary movement. He took up the
matter seriously; making notes, and preparing plans in writing, while
the others still did nothing but talk. For his part, he began to
concentrate his whole life in the one persistent idea which made his
brain throb night after night; and this to such a degree that he at
last took his brother Quenu with him to Monsieur Lebigre's, as though
such a course were quite natural. Certainly he had no thought of doing
anything improper. He still looked upon Quenu as in some degree his
pupil, and may even have considered it his duty to start him on the
proper path. Quenu was an absolute novice in politics, but after
spending five or six evenings in the little room he found himself
quite in accord with the others. When Lisa was not present he
manifested much docility, a sort of respect for his brother's
opinions. But the greatest charm of the affair for him was really the
mild dissipation of leaving his shop and shutting himself up in the
little room where the others shouted so loudly, and where Clemence's
presence, in his opinion, gave a tinge of rakishness and romance to
the proceedings. He now made all haste with his chitterlings in order
that he might get away as early as possible, anxious to lose not a
single word of the discussions, which seemed to him to be very
brilliant, though he was not always able to follow them. The beautiful
Lisa did not fail to notice his hurry to be gone, but as yet she
refrained from saying anything. When Florent took him off, she simply
went to the door-step, and watched them enter Monsieur Lebigre's, her
face paling somewhat, and a severe expression coming into her eyes.
One evening, as Mademoiselle Saget was peering out of her garret
casement, she recognised Quenu's shadow on the frosted glass of the
"cabinet" window facing the Rue Pirouette. She had found her casement
an excellent post of observation, as it overlooked that milky
transparency, on which the gaslight threw silhouettes of the
politicians, with noses suddenly appearing and disappearing, gaping
jaws abruptly springing into sight and then vanishing, and huge arms,
apparently destitute of bodies, waving hither and thither. This
extraordinary jumble of detached limbs, these silent but frantic
profiles, bore witness to the heated discussions that went on in the
little room, and kept the old maid peering from behind her muslin
curtains until the transparency turned black. She shrewdly suspected
some "bit of trickery," as she phrased it. By continual watching she
had come to recognise the different shadows by their hands and hair
and clothes. As she gazed upon the chaos of clenched fists, angry
heads, and swaying shoulders, which seemed to have become detached
from their trunks and to roll about one atop of the other, she would
exclaim unhesitatingly, "Ah, there's that big booby of a cousin;
there's that miserly old Gavard; and there's the hunchback; and
there's that maypole of a Clemence!" Then, when the action of the
shadow-play became more pronounced, and they all seemed to have lost
control over themselves, she felt an irresistible impulse to go
downstairs to try to find out what was happening. Thus she now made a
point of buying her black-currant syrup at nights, pretending that she
felt out-of-sorts in the morning, and was obliged to take a sip as
soon as ever she was out of bed. On the evening when she noticed
Quenu's massive head shadowed on the transparency in close proximity
to Charvet's fist, she made her appearance at Monsieur Lebigre's in a
breathless condition. To gain more time, she made Rose rinse out her
little bottle for her; however, she was about to return to her room
when she heard the pork butcher exclaim with a sort of childish
candour:
"No, indeed, we'll stand for it no longer! We'll make a clean sweep of
all those humbugging Deputies and Ministers! Yes, we'll send the whole
lot packing."
Eight o'clock had scarcely struck on the following morning when
Mademoiselle Saget was already at the pork shop. She found Madame
Lecoeur and La Sarriette there, dipping their noses into the heating-
pan, and buying hot sausages for breakfast. As the old maid had
managed to draw them into her quarrel with La Normande with respect to
the ten-sou dab, they had at once made friends again with Lisa, and
they now had nothing but contempt for the handsome fish-girl, and
assailed her and her sister as good-for-nothing hussies, whose only
aim was to fleece men of their money. This opinion had been inspired
by the assertions of Mademoiselle Saget, who had declared to Madame
Lecoeur that Florent had induced one of the two girls to coquette with
Gavard, and that the four of them had indulged in the wildest
dissipation at Barratte's--of course, at the poultry dealer's expense.
From the effects of this impudent story Madame Lecoeur had not yet
recovered; she wore a doleful appearance, and her eyes were quite
yellow with spleen.
That morning, however, it was for Madame Quenu that the old maid had a
shock in store. She looked round the counter, and then in her most
gentle voice remarked:
"I saw Monsieur Quenu last night. They seem to enjoy themselves
immensely in that little room at Lebigre's, if one may judge from the
noise they make."
Lisa had turned her head towards the street, listening very
attentively, but apparently unwilling to show it. The old maid paused,
hoping that one of the others would question her; and then, in a lower
tone, she added: "They had a woman with them. Oh, I don't mean
Monsieur Quenu, of course! I didn't say that; I don't know--"
"It must be Clemence," interrupted La Sarriette; "a big scraggy
creature who gives herself all sorts of airs just because she went to
boarding school. She lives with a threadbare usher. I've seen them
together; they always look as though they were taking each other off
to the police station."
"Oh, yes; I know," replied the old maid, who, indeed, knew everything
about Charvet and Clemence, and whose only purpose was to alarm Lisa.
The mistress of the pork shop, however, never flinched. She seemed to
be absorbed in watching something of great interest in the market
yonder. Accordingly the old maid had recourse to stronger measures. "I
think," said she, addressing herself to Madame Lecoeur, "that you
ought to advise your brother-in-law to be careful. Last night they
were shouting out the most shocking things in that little room. Men
really seem to lose their heads over politics. If anyone had heard
them, it might have been a very serious matter for them."
"Oh! Gavard will go his own way," sighed Madame Lecoeur. "It only
wanted this to fill my cup. I shall die of anxiety, I am sure, if he
ever gets arrested."
As she spoke, a gleam shot from her dim eyes. La Sarriette, however,
laughed and wagged her little face, bright with the freshness of the
morning air.
"You should hear what Jules says of those who speak against the
Empire," she remarked. "They ought all to be thrown into the Seine, he
told me; for it seems there isn't a single respectable person amongst
them."
"Oh! there's no harm done, of course, so long as only people like
myself hear their foolish talk," resumed Mademoiselle Saget. "I'd
rather cut my hand off, you know, than make mischief. Last night now,
for instance, Monsieur Quenu was saying----"
She again paused. Lisa had started slightly.
"Monsieur Quenu was saying that the Ministers and Deputies and all who
are in power ought to be shot."
At this Lisa turned sharply, her face quite white and her hands
clenched beneath her apron.
"Quenu said that?" she curtly asked.
"Yes, indeed, and several other similar things that I can't recollect
now. I heard him myself. But don't distress yourself like that, Madame
Quenu. You know very well that I sha'n't breathe a word. I'm quite old
enough to know what might harm a man if it came out. Oh, no; it will
go no further."
Lisa had recovered her equanimity. She took a pride in the happy
peacefulness of her home; she would not acknowledge that there had
ever been the slightest difference between herself and her husband.
And so now she shrugged her shoulders and said with a smile: "Oh, it's
all a pack of foolish nonsense."
When the three others were in the street together they agreed that
handsome Lisa had pulled a very doleful face; and they were
unanimously of opinion that the mysterious goings-on of the cousin,
the Mehudins, Gavard, and the Quenus would end in trouble. Madame
Lecoeur inquired what was done to the people who got arrested "for
politics," but on this point Mademoiselle Saget could not enlighten
her; she only knew that they were never seen again--no, never. And
this induced La Sarriette to suggest that perhaps they were thrown
into the Seine, as Jules had said they ought to be.
Lisa avoided all reference to the subject at breakfast and dinner that
day; and even in the evening, when Florent and Quenu went off together
to Monsieur Lebigre's, there was no unwonted severity in her glance.
On that particular evening, however, the question of framing a
constitution for the future came under discussion, and it was one
o'clock in the morning before the politicians could tear themselves
away from the little room. The shutters had already been fastened, and
they were obliged to leave by a small door, passing out one at a time
with bent backs. Quenu returned home with an uneasy conscience. He
opened the three or four doors on his way to bed as gently as
possible, walking on tip-toe and stretching out his hands as he passed
through the sitting-room, to avoid a collision with any of the
furniture. The whole house seemed to be asleep. When he reached the
bedroom, he was annoyed to find that Lisa had not extinguished the
candle, which was burning with a tall, mournful flame in the midst of
the deep silence. As Quenu took off his shoes, and put them down in a
corner, the time-piece struck half past one with such a clear, ringing
sound that he turned in alarm, almost frightened to move, and gazing
with an expression of angry reproach at the shining gilded Gutenberg
standing there, with his finger on a book. Lisa's head was buried in
her pillow, and Quenu could only see her back; but he divined that she
was merely feigning sleep, and her conduct in turning her back upon
him was so instinct with reproach that he felt sorely ill at ease. At
last he slipped beneath the bed-clothes, blew out the candle, and lay
perfectly still. He could have sworn that his wife was awake, though
she did not speak to him; and presently he fell asleep, feeling
intensely miserable, and lacking the courage to say good night.
He slept till late, and when he awoke he found himself sprawling in
the middle of the bed with the eider-down quilt up to his chin, whilst
Lisa sat in front of the secretaire, arranging some papers. His
slumber had been so heavy that he had not heard her rise. However, he
now took courage, and spoke to her from the depths of the alcove: "Why
didn't you wake me? What are you doing there?"
"I'm sorting the papers in these drawers," she replied in her usual
tone of voice.
Quenu felt relieved. But Lisa added: "One never knows what may happen.
If the police were to come--"
"What! the police?"
"Yes, indeed, the police; for you're mixing yourself up with politics
now."
At this Quenu sat up in bed, quite dazed and confounded by such a
violent and unexpected attack.
"I mix myself up with politics! I mix myself up with politics!" he
repeated. "It's no concern of the police. I've nothing to do with any
compromising matters."
"No," replied Lisa, shrugging her shoulders; "you merely talk about
shooting everybody."
"I! I!"
"Yes. And you bawl it out in a public-house! Mademoiselle Saget heard
you. All the neighbourhood knows by this time that you are a Red
Republican!"
Quenu fell back in bed again. He was not perfectly awake as yet.
Lisa's words resounded in his ears as though he already heard the
heavy tramp of gendarmes at the bedroom door. He looked at her as she
sat there, with her hair already arranged, her figure tightly
imprisoned in her stays, her whole appearance the same as it was on
any other morning; and he felt more astonished than ever that she
should be so neat and prim under such extraordinary circumstances.
"I leave you absolutely free, you know," she continued, as she went on
arranging the papers. "I don't want to wear the breeches, as the
saying goes. You are the master, and you are at liberty to endanger
your position, compromise our credit, and ruin our business."
Then, as Quenu tried to protest, she silenced him with a gesture. "No,
no; don't say anything," she continued. "This is no quarrel, and I am
not even asking an explanation from you. But if you had consulted me,
and we had talked the matter over together, I might have intervened.
Ah! it's a great mistake to imagine that women understand nothing
about politics. Shall I tell you what my politics are?"
She had risen from her seat whilst speaking, and was now walking to
and fro between the bed and the window, wiping as she went some specks
of dust from the bright mahogany of the mirrored wardrobe and the
dressing-table.
"My politics are the politics of honest folks," said she. "I'm
grateful to the Government when business is prosperous, when I can eat
my meals in peace and comfort, and can sleep at nights without being
awakened by the firing of guns. There were pretty times in '48, were
there not? You remember our uncle Gradelle, the worthy man, showing us
his books for that year? He lost more than six thousand francs. Now
that we have got the Empire, however, everything prospers. We sell our
goods readily enough. You can't deny it. Well, then, what is it that
you want? How will you be better off when you have shot everybody?"
She took her stand in front of the little night-table, crossed her
arms over her breast, and fixed her eyes upon Quenu, who had shuffled
himself beneath the bed-clothes, almost out of sight. He attempted to
explain what it was that his friends wanted, but he got quite confused
in his endeavours to summarise Florent's and Charvet's political and
social systems; and could only talk about the disregard shown to
principles, the accession of the democracy to power, and the
regeneration of society, in such a strange tangled way that Lisa
shrugged her shoulders, quite unable to understand him. At last,
however, he extricated himself from his difficulties by declaring that
the Empire was the reign of licentiousness, swindling finance, and
highway robbery. And, recalling an expression of Logre's he added: "We
are the prey of a band of adventurers, who are pillaging, violating,
and assassinating France. We'll have no more of them."
Lisa, however, still shrugged her shoulders.
"Well, and is that all you have got to say?" she asked with perfect
coolness. "What has all that got to do with me? Even supposing it were
true, what then? Have I ever advised you to practise dishonest
courses? Have I ever prompted you to dishonour your acceptances, or
cheat your customers, or pile up money by fraudulent practices?
Really, you'll end by making me quite angry! We are honest folks, and
we don't pillage or assassinate anybody. That's quite sufficient. What
other folks do is no concern of ours. If they choose to be rogues it's
their affair."
She looked quite majestic and triumphant; and again pacing the room,
drawing herself up to her full height, she resumed: "A pretty notion
it is that people are to let their business go to rack and ruin just
to please those who are penniless. For my part, I'm in favour of
making hay while the sun shines, and supporting a Government which
promotes trade. If it does do dishonourable things, I prefer to know
nothing about them. I know that I myself commit none, and that no one
in the neighbourhood can point a finger at me. It's only fools who go
tilting at windmills. At the time of the last elections, you remember,
Gavard said that the Emperor's candidate had been bankrupt, and was
mixed up in all sorts of scandalous matters. Well, perhaps that was
true, I don't deny it; but all the same, you acted wisely in voting
for him, for all that was not in question; you were not asked to lend
the man any money or to transact any business with him, but merely to
show the Government that you were pleased with the prosperity of the
pork trade."
At this moment Quenu called to mind a sentence of Charvet's, asserting
that "the bloated bourgeois, the sleek shopkeepers, who backed up that
Government of universal gormandising, ought to be hurled into the
sewers before all others, for it was owing to them and their
gluttonous egotism that tyranny had succeeded in mastering and preying
upon the nation." He was trying to complete this piece of eloquence
when Lisa, carried off by her indignation, cut him short.
"Don't talk such stuff! My conscience doesn't reproach me with
anything. I don't owe a copper to anybody; I'm not mixed up in any
dishonest business; I buy and sell good sound stuff; and I charge no
more than others do. What you say may perhaps apply to people like our
cousins, the Saccards. They pretend to be even ignorant that I am in
Paris; but I am prouder than they are, and I don't care a rap for
their millions. It's said that Saccard speculates in condemned
buildings, and cheats and robs everybody. I'm not surprised to hear
it, for he was always that way inclined. He loves money just for the
sake of wallowing in it, and then tossing it out of his windows, like
the imbecile he is. I can understand people attacking men of his
stamp, who pile up excessive fortunes. For my part, if you care to
know it, I have but a bad opinion of Saccard. But we--we who live so
quietly and peaceably, who will need at least fifteen years to put by
sufficient money to make ourselves comfortably independent, we who
have no reason to meddle in politics, and whose only aim is to bring
up our daughter respectably, and to see that our business prospers--
why you must be joking to talk such stuff about us. We are honest
folks!"
She came and sat down on the edge of the bed. Quenu was already much
shaken in his opinions.
"Listen to me, now," she resumed in a more serious voice. "You surely
don't want to see your own shop pillaged, your cellar emptied, and
your money taken from you? If these men who meet at Monsieur Lebigre's
should prove triumphant, do you think that you would then lie as
comfortably in your bed as you do now? And on going down into the
kitchen, do you imagine that you would set about making your
galantines as peacefully as you will presently? No, no, indeed! So why
do you talk about overthrowing a Government which protects you, and
enables you to put money by? You have a wife and a daughter, and your
first duty is towards them. You would be in fault if you imperilled
their happiness. It is only those who have neither home nor hearth,
who have nothing to lose, who want to be shooting people. Surely you
don't want to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for /them/! So stay
quietly at home, you foolish fellow, sleep comfortably, eat well, make
money, keep an easy conscience, and leave France to free herself of
the Empire if the Empire annoys her. France can get on very well
without /you/."
She laughed her bright melodious laugh as she finished; and Quenu was
now altogether convinced. Yes, she was right, after all; and she
looked so charming, he thought, as she sat there on the edge of the
bed, so trim, although it was so early, so bright, and so fresh in the
dazzling whiteness of her linen. As he listened to her his eyes fell
on their portraits hanging on either side of the fireplace. Yes, they
were certainly honest folks; they had such a respectable, well-to-do
air in their black clothes and their gilded frames! The bedroom, too,
looked as though it belonged to people of some account in the world.
The lace squares seemed to give a dignified appearance to the chairs;
and the carpet, the curtains, and the vases decorated with painted
landscapes--all spoke of their exertions to get on in the world and
their taste for comfort. Thereupon he plunged yet further beneath the
eider-down quilt, which kept him in a state of pleasant warmth. He
began to feel that he had risked losing all these things at Monsieur
Lebigre's--his huge bed, his cosy room, and his business, on which his
thoughts now dwelt with tender remorse. And from Lisa, from the
furniture, from all his cosy surroundings, he derived a sense of
comfort which thrilled him with a delightful, overpowering charm.
"You foolish fellow!" said his wife, seeing that he was now quite
conquered. "A pretty business it was that you'd embarked upon; but
you'd have had to reckon with Pauline and me, I can tell you! And now
don't bother your head any more about the Government. To begin with,
all Governments are alike, and if we didn't have this one, we should
have another. A Government is necessary. But the one thing is to be
able to live on, to spend one's savings in peace and comfort when one
grows old, and to know that one has gained one's means honestly."
Quenu nodded his head in acquiescence, and tried to commence a
justification of his conduct.
"It was Gavard--," he began.
But Lisa's face again assumed a serious expression, and she
interrupted him sharply.
"No, it was not Gavard. I know very well who it was; and it would be a
great deal better if he would look after his own safety before
compromising that of others."
"Is it Florent you mean?" Quenu timidly inquired after a pause.
Lisa did not immediately reply. She got up and went back to the
secretaire, as if trying to restrain herself.
"Yes, it is Florent," she said presently, in incisive tones. "You know
how patient I am. I would bear almost anything rather than come
between you and your brother. The tie of relationship is a sacred
thing. But the cup is filled to overflowing now. Since your brother
came here things have been constantly getting worse and worse. But
now, I won't say anything more; it is better that I shouldn't."
There was another pause. Then, as her husband gazed up at the ceiling
with an air of embarrassment, she continued, with increased violence:
"Really, he seems to ignore all that we have done for him. We have put
ourselves to great inconvenience for his sake; we have given him
Augustine's bedroom, and the poor girl sleeps without a murmur in a
stuffy little closet where she can scarcely breathe. We board and
lodge him and give him every attention--but no, he takes it all quite
as a matter of course. He is earning money, but what he does with it
nobody knows; or, rather, one knows only too well."
"But there's his share of the inheritance, you know," Quenu ventured
to say, pained at hearing his brother attacked.
Lisa suddenly stiffened herself as though she were stunned, and her
anger vanished.
"Yes, you are right; there is his share of the inheritance. Here is
the statement of it, in this drawer. But he refused to take it; you
remember, you were present, and heard him. That only proves that he is
a brainless, worthless fellow. If he had had an idea in his head, he
would have made something out of that money by now. For my own part, I
should be very glad to get rid of it; it would be a relief to us. I
have told him so twice, but he won't listen to me. You ought to
persuade him to take it. Talk to him about it, will you?"
Quenu growled something in reply; and Lisa refrained from pressing the
point further, being of opinion that she had done all that could be
expected of her.
"He is not like other men," she resumed. "He's not a comfortable sort
of person to have in the house. I shouldn't have said this if we
hadn't got talking on the subject. I don't busy myself about his
conduct, though it's setting the whole neighbourhood gossiping about
us. Let him eat and sleep here, and put us about, if he likes; we can
get over that; but what I won't tolerate is that he should involve us
in his politics. If he tries to lead you off again, or compromises us
in the least degree, I shall turn him out of the house without the
least hesitation. I warn you, and now you understand!"
Florent was doomed. Lisa was making a great effort to restrain
herself, to prevent the animosity which had long been rankling in her
heart from flowing forth. But Florent and his ways jarred against her
every instinct; he wounded her, frightened her, and made her quite
miserable.
"A man who has made such a discreditable career," she murmured, "who
has never been able to get a roof of his own over his head! I can very
well understand his partiality for bullets! He can go and stand in
their way if he chooses; but let him leave honest folks to their
families! And then, he isn't pleasant to have about one! He reeks of
fish in the evening at dinner! It prevents me from eating. He himself
never lets a mouthful go past him, though it's little better he seems
to be for it all! He can't even grow decently stout, the wretched
fellow, to such a degree do his bad instincts prey on him!"
She had stepped up to the window whilst speaking, and now saw Florent
crossing the Rue Rambuteau on his way to the fish market. There was a
very large arrival of fish that morning; the tray-like baskets were
covered with rippling silver, and the auction rooms roared with the
hubbub of their sales. Lisa kept her eyes on the bony shoulders of her
brother-in-law as he made his way into the pungent smells of the
market, stooping beneath the sickening sensation which they brought
him; and the glance with which she followed his steps was that of a
woman bent on combat and resolved to be victorious.
When she turned round again, Quenu was getting up. As he sat on the
edge of the bed in his night-shirt, still warm from the pleasant heat
of the eider-down quilt and with his feet resting on the soft fluffy
rug below him, he looked quite pale, quite distressed at the
misunderstanding between his wife and his brother. Lisa, however, gave
him one of her sweetest smiles, and he felt deeply touched when she
handed him his socks. _