CHAPTER II

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

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

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

On his return to Paris he gave up all thought of continuing to attend
the Law School, and postponed every ambitious project. He obtained a
few pupils, and established himself with little Quenu in the Rue Royer
Collard, at the corner of the Rue Saint Jacques, in a big room which
he furnished with two iron bedsteads, a wardrobe, a table, and four
chairs. He now had a child to look after, and this assumed paternity
was very pleasing to him. During the earlier days he attempted to give
the lad some lessons when he returned home in the evening, but Quenu
was an unwilling pupil. He was dull of understanding, and refused to
learn, bursting into tears and regretfully recalling the time when his
mother had allowed him to run wild in the streets. Florent thereupon
stopped his lessons in despair, and to console the lad promised him a
holiday of indefinite length. As an excuse for his own weakness he
repeated that he had not brought his brother to Paris to distress him.
To see him grow up in happiness became his chief desire. He quite
worshipped the boy, was charmed with his merry laughter, and felt
infinite joy in seeing him about him, healthy and vigorous, and
without a care. Florent for his part remained very slim and lean in
his threadbare coat, and his face began to turn yellow amidst all the
drudgery and worry of teaching; but Quenu grew up plump and merry, a
little dense, indeed, and scarce able to read or write, but endowed
with high spirits which nothing could ruffle, and which filled the big
gloomy room in the Rue Royer Collard with gaiety.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[*] See M. Zola's novel, /The Fortune of the Rougons/.--Translator

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

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

"Good night, Mademoiselle Lisa."

"Good night, Monsieur Quenu."

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

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

"Good night, Mademoiselle Lisa."

"Good night, Monsieur Quenu."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[*] See M. Zola's novel, /Money/.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She showed him the figures on the sheet of paper.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes, Madame Lisa."

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

"Yes, Madame Lisa."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The old she-goat!" growled Gavard.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then she left the shop and ran across the road.

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

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

"I have my reasons," Florent replied.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The inspectorship."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[*] Gervaise, the heroine of the /Assommoir/.

"All the same, I would rather have been a working man," continued
Claude. "Look at the carpenters, for instance. They are very happy
folks, the carpenters. They have a table to make, say; well, they make
it, and then go off to bed, happy at having finished the table, and
perfectly satisfied with themselves. Now I, on the other hand,
scarcely get any sleep at nights. All those co