CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

Let me have men about me that are fat: Sleek-headed men, and such as

sleep o’ nights: Yond’ Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks

too much: such men are dangerous. SHAKESPEARE: _Julius Caesar_, act i,

sc. 2.

INTRODUCTION

“THE FAT AND THE THIN,” or, to use the French title, “Le Ventre de

Paris,” is a story of life in and around those vast Central Markets

which form a distinctive feature of modern Paris. Even the reader who

has never crossed the Channel must have heard of the Parisian _Halles_,

for much has been written about them, not only in English books on the

French metropolis, but also in English newspapers, magazines, and

reviews; so that few, I fancy, will commence the perusal of the present

volume without having, at all events, some knowledge of its subject

matter.

The Paris markets form such a world of their own, and teem at certain

hours of the day and night with such exuberance of life, that it was

only natural they should attract the attention of a novelist like M.

Zola, who, to use his own words, delights “in any subject in which vast

masses of people can be shown in motion.” Mr. Sherard tells us[*] that

the idea of “Le Ventre de Paris” first occurred to M. Zola in 1872,

when he used continually to take his friend Paul Alexis for a ramble

through the Halles. I have in my possession, however, an article

written by M. Zola some five or six years before that time, and in this

one can already detect the germ of the present work; just as the motif

of another of M. Zola’s novels, “La Joie de Vivre,” can be traced to a

short story written for a Russian review.

[*] _Emile Zola: a Biographical and Critical Study_, by Robert

Harborough Sherard, pp. 103, 104. London, Chatto & Windus, 1893.

Similar instances are frequently to be found in the writings of English

as well as French novelists, and are, of course, easily explained. A

young man unknown to fame, and unable to procure the publication of a

long novel, often contents himself with embodying some particular idea

in a short sketch or story, which finds its way into one or another

periodical, where it lies buried and forgotten by everybody—excepting

its author. Time goes by, however, the writer achieves some measure of

success, and one day it occurs to him to elaborate and perfect that old

idea of his, only a faint _apercu_ of which, for lack of opportunity,

he had been able to give in the past. With a little research, no doubt,

an interesting essay might be written on these literary resuscitations;

but if one except certain novelists who are so deficient in ideas that

they continue writing and rewriting the same story throughout their

lives, it will, I think, be generally found that the revivals in

question are due to some such reason as that given above.

It should be mentioned that the article of M. Zola’s young days to

which I have referred is not one on market life in particular, but one

on violets. It contains, however, a vigorous, if brief, picture of the

Halles in the small hours of the morning, and is instinct with that

realistic descriptive power of which M. Zola has since given so many

proofs. We hear the rumbling and clattering of the market carts, we see

the piles of red meat, the baskets of silvery fish, the mountains of

vegetables, green and white; in a few paragraphs the whole market world

passes in kaleidoscopic fashion before our eyes by the pale, dancing

light of the gas lamps and the lanterns. Several years after the paper

I speak of was published, when M. Zola began to issue “Le Ventre de

Paris,” M. Tournachon, better known as Nadar, the aeronaut and

photographer, rushed into print to proclaim that the realistic novelist

had simply pilfered his ideas from an account of the Halles which he

(Tournachon) had but lately written. M. Zola, as is so often his wont,

scorned to reply to this charge of plagiarism; but, had he chosen, he

could have promptly settled the matter by producing his own forgotten

article.

At the risk of passing for a literary ghoul, I propose to exhume some

portion of the paper in question, as, so far as translation can avail,

it will show how M. Zola wrote and what he thought in 1867. After the

description of the markets to which I have alluded, there comes the

following passage:—

I was gazing at the preparations for the great daily orgy of Paris when

I espied a throng of people bustling suspiciously in a corner. A few

lanterns threw a yellow light upon this crowd. Children, women, and men

with outstretched hands were fumbling in dark piles which extended

along the footway. I thought that those piles must be remnants of meat

sold for a trifling price, and that all those wretched people were

rushing upon them to feed. I drew near, and discovered my mistake. The

heaps were not heaps of meat, but heaps of violets. All the flowery

poesy of the streets of Paris lay there, on that muddy pavement, amidst

mountains of food. The gardeners of the suburbs had brought their

sweet-scented harvests to the markets and were disposing of them to the

hawkers. From the rough fingers of their peasant growers the violets

were passing to the dirty hands of those who would cry them in the

streets. At winter time it is between four and six o’clock in the

morning that the flowers of Paris are thus sold at the Halles. Whilst

the city sleeps and its butchers are getting all ready for its daily

attack of indigestion, a trade in poetry is plied in dark, dank

corners. When the sun rises the bright red meat will be displayed in

trim, carefully dressed joints, and the violets, mounted on bits of

osier, will gleam softly within their elegant collars of green leaves.

But when they arrive, in the dark night, the bullocks, already ripped

open, discharge black blood, and the trodden flowers lie prone upon the

footways. . . . I noticed just in front of me one large bunch which had

slipped off a neighbouring mound and was almost bathing in the gutter.

I picked it up. Underneath, it was soiled with mud; the greasy, fetid

sewer water had left black stains upon the flowers. And then, gazing at

these exquisite daughters of our gardens and our woods, astray amidst

all the filth of the city, I began to ponder. On what woman’s bosom

would those wretched flowerets open and bloom? Some hawker would dip

them in a pail of water, and of all the bitter odours of the Paris mud

they would retain but a slight pungency, which would remain mingled

with their own sweet perfume. The water would remove their stains, they

would pale somewhat, and become a joy both for the smell and for the

sight. Nevertheless, in the depths of each corolla there would still

remain some particle of mud suggestive of impurity. And I asked myself

how much love and passion was represented by all those heaps of flowers

shivering in the bleak wind. To how many loving ones, and how many

indifferent ones, and how many egotistical ones, would all those

thousands and thousands of violets go! In a few hours’ time they would

be scattered to the four corners of Paris, and for a paltry copper the

passers-by would purchase a glimpse and a whiff of springtide in the

muddy streets.

Imperfect as the rendering may be, I think that the above passage will

show that M. Zola was already possessed of a large amount of his

acknowledged realistic power at the early date I have mentioned. I

should also have liked to quote a rather amusing story of a priggish

Philistine who ate violets with oil and vinegar, strongly peppered, but

considerations of space forbid; so I will pass to another passage,

which is of more interest and importance. Both French and English

critics have often contended that although M. Zola is a married man, he

knows very little of women, as there has virtually never been any

_feminine romance_ in his life. There are those who are aware of the

contrary, but whose tongues are stayed by considerations of delicacy

and respect. Still, as the passage I am now about to reproduce is

signed and acknowledged as fact by M. Zola himself, I see no harm in

slightly raising the veil from a long-past episode in the master’s

life:—

The light was rising, and as I stood there before that footway

transformed into a bed of flowers my strange night-fancies gave place

to recollections at once sweet and sad. I thought of my last excursion

to Fontenay-aux-Roses, with the loved one, the good fairy of my

twentieth year. Springtime was budding into birth, the tender foliage

gleamed in the pale April sunshine. The little pathway skirting the

hill was bordered by large fields of violets. As one passed along, a

strong perfume seemed to penetrate one and make one languid. _She_ was

leaning on my arm, faint with love from the sweet odour of the flowers.

A whiteness hovered over the country-side, little insects buzzed in the

sunshine, deep silence fell from the heavens, and so low was the sound

of our kisses that not a bird in all the hedges showed sign of fear. At

a turn of the path we perceived some old bent women, who with dry,

withered hands were hurriedly gathering violets and throwing them into

large baskets. She who was with me glanced longingly at the flowers,

and I called one of the women. “You want some violets?” said she. “How

much? A pound?”

God of Heaven! She sold her flowers by the pound! We fled in deep

distress. It seemed as though the country-side had been transformed

into a huge grocer’s shop. . . . Then we ascended to the woods of

Verrieres, and there, in the grass, under the soft, fresh foliage, we

found some tiny violets which seemed to be dreadfully afraid, and

contrived to hide themselves with all sorts of artful ruses. During two

long hours I scoured the grass and peered into every nook, and as soon

as ever I found a fresh violet I carried it to her. She bought it of

me, and the price that I exacted was a kiss. . . . And I thought of all

those things, of all that happiness, amidst the hubbub of the markets

of Paris, before those poor dead flowers whose graveyard the footway

had become. I remembered my good fairy, who is now dead and gone, and

the little bouquet of dry violets which I still preserve in a drawer.

When I returned home I counted their withered stems: there were twenty

of them, and over my lips there passed the gentle warmth of my loved

one’s twenty kisses.

And now from violets I must, with a brutality akin to that which M.

Zola himself displays in some of his transitions, pass to very

different things, for some time back a well-known English poet and

essayist wrote of the present work that it was redolent of pork,

onions, and cheese. To one of his sensitive temperament, with a muse

strictly nourished on sugar and water, such gross edibles as pork and

cheese and onions were peculiarly offensive. That humble plant the

onion, employed to flavour wellnigh every savoury dish, can assuredly

need no defence; in most European countries, too, cheese has long been

known as the poor man’s friend; whilst as for pork, apart from all

other considerations, I can claim for it a distinct place in English

literature. A greater essayist by far than the critic to whom I am

referring, a certain Mr. Charles Lamb, of the India House, has left us

an immortal page on the origin of roast pig and crackling. And, when

everything is considered, I should much like to know why novels should

be confined to the aspirations of the soul, and why they should not

also treat of the requirements of our physical nature? From the days of

antiquity we have all known what befell the members when, guided by the

brain, they were foolish enough to revolt against the stomach. The

latter plays a considerable part not only in each individual organism,

but also in the life of the world. Over and over again—I could adduce a

score of historical examples—it has thwarted the mightiest designs of

the human mind. We mortals are much addicted to talking of our minds

and our souls and treating our bodies as mere dross. But I hold—it is a

personal opinion—that in the vast majority of cases the former are

largely governed by the last. I conceive, therefore, that a novel which

takes our daily sustenance as one of its themes has the best of all

_raisons d’être_. A foreign writer of far more consequence and ability

than myself—Signor Edmondo de Amicis—has proclaimed the present book to

be “one of the most original and happiest inventions of French genius,”

and I am strongly inclined to share his opinion.

It should be observed that the work does not merely treat of the

provisioning of a great city. That provisioning is its _scenario_; but

it also embraces a powerful allegory, the prose song of “the eternal

battle between the lean of this world and the fat—a battle in which, as

the author shows, the latter always come off successful. It is, too, in

its way an allegory of the triumph of the fat bourgeois, who lives well

and beds softly, over the gaunt and Ishmael artist—an allegory which M.

Zola has more than once introduced into his pages, another notable

instance thereof being found in ‘Germinal,’ with the fat, well-fed

Gregoires on the one hand, and the starving Maheus on the other.”

From this quotation from Mr. Sherard’s pages it will be gathered that

M. Zola had a distinct social aim in writing this book. Wellnigh the

whole social question may, indeed, be summed up in the words “food and

comfort”; and in a series of novels like “Les Rougon-Macquart,” dealing

firstly with different conditions and grades of society, and, secondly,

with the influence which the Second Empire exercised on France, the

present volume necessarily had its place marked out from the very

first.

Mr. Sherard has told us of all the labour which M. Zola expended on the

preparation of the work, of his multitudinous visits to the Paris

markets, his patient investigation of their organism, and his keen

artistic interest in their manifold phases of life. And bred as I was

in Paris, a partaker as I have been of her exultations and her woes

they have always had for me a strong attraction. My memory goes back to

the earlier years of their existence, and I can well remember many of

the old surroundings which have now disappeared. I can recollect the

last vestiges of the antique _piliers_, built by Francis I, facing the

Rue de la Tonnellerie. Paul Niquet’s, with its “bowel-twisting brandy”

and its crew of drunken ragpickers, was certainly before my time; but I

can readily recall Baratte’s and Bordier’s and all the folly and

prodigality which raged there; I knew, too, several of the noted

thieves’ haunts which took the place of Niquet’s, and which one was

careful never to enter without due precaution. And then, when the

German armies were beleaguering Paris, and two millions of people were

shut off from the world, I often strolled to the Halles to view their

strangely altered aspect. The fish pavilion, of which M. Zola has so

much to say, was bare and deserted. The railway drays, laden with the

comestible treasures of the ocean, no longer thundered through the

covered ways. At the most one found an auction going on in one or

another corner, and a few Seine eels or gudgeons fetching wellnigh

their weight in gold. Then, in the butter and cheese pavilions, one

could only procure some nauseous melted fat, while in the meat

department horse and mule and donkey took the place of beef and veal

and mutton. Mule and donkey were very scarce, and commanded high

prices, but both were of better flavour than horse; mule, indeed, being

quite a delicacy. I also well remember a stall at which dog was sold,

and, hunger knowing no law, I once purchased, cooked, and ate a couple

of canine cutlets which cost me two francs apiece. The flesh was pinky

and very tender, yet I would not willingly make such a repast again.

However, peace and plenty at last came round once more, the Halles

regained their old-time aspect, and in the years which followed I more

than once saw the dawn rise slowly over the mounds of cabbages,

carrots, leeks, and pumpkins, even as M. Zola describes in the

following pages. He has, I think, depicted with remarkable accuracy and

artistic skill the many varying effects of colour that are produced as

the climbing sun casts its early beams on the giant larder and its

masses of food—effects of colour which, to quote a famous saying of the

first Napoleon, show that “the markets of Paris are the Louvre of the

people” in more senses than one.

The reader will bear in mind that the period dealt with by the author

in this work is that of 1857-60, when the new Halles Centrales were yet

young, and indeed not altogether complete. Still, although many old

landmarks have long since been swept away, the picture of life in all

essential particulars remained the same. Prior to 1860 the limits of

Paris were the so-called _boulevards exterieurs_, from which a girdle

of suburbs, such as Montmartre, Belleville, Passy, and Montrouge,

extended to the fortifications; and the population of the city was then

only 1,400,000 souls. Some of the figures which will be found scattered

through M. Zola’s work must therefore be taken as applying entirely to

the past.

Nowadays the amount of business transacted at the Halles has very

largely increased, in spite of the multiplication of district markets.

Paris seems to have an insatiable appetite, though, on the other hand,

its cuisine is fast becoming all simplicity. To my thinking, few more

remarkable changes have come over the Parisians of recent years than

this change of diet. One by one great restaurants, formerly renowned

for particular dishes and special wines, have been compelled through

lack of custom to close their doors; and this has not been caused so

much by inability to defray the cost of high feeding as by inability to

indulge in it with impunity in a physical sense. In fact, Paris has

become a city of impaired digestions, which nowadays seek the

simplicity without the heaviness of the old English cuisine; and,

should things continue in their present course, I fancy that Parisians

anxious for high feeding will ultimately have to cross over to our side

of the Channel.

These remarks, I trust, will not be considered out of place in an

introduction to a work which to no small extent treats of the appetite

of Paris. The reader will find that the characters portrayed by M. Zola

are all types of humble life, but I fail to see that their

circumstances should render them any the less interesting. A faithful

portrait of a shopkeeper, a workman, or a workgirl is artistically of

far more value than all the imaginary sketches of impossible dukes and

good and wicked baronets in which so many English novels abound.

Several of M. Zola’s personages seem to me extremely lifelike—Gavard,

indeed, is a _chef-d’oeuvre_ of portraiture: I have known many men like

him; and no one who lived in Paris under the Empire can deny the

accuracy with which the author has delineated his hero Florent, the

dreamy and hapless revolutionary caught in the toils of others. In

those days, too, there was many such a plot as M. Zola describes,

instigated by agents like Logre and Lebigre, and allowed to mature till

the eve of an election or some other important event which rendered its

exposure desirable for the purpose of influencing public opinion. In

fact, in all that relates to the so-called “conspiracy of the markets,”

M. Zola, whilst changing time and place to suit the requirements of his

story, has simply followed historical lines. As for the Quenus, who

play such prominent parts in the narrative, the husband is a weakling

with no soul above his stewpans, whilst his wife, the beautiful Lisa,

in reality wears the breeches and rules the roast. The manner in which

she cures Quenu of his political proclivities, though savouring of

persuasiveness rather than violence, is worthy of the immortal Mrs.

Caudle: Douglas Jerrold might have signed a certain lecture which she

administers to her astounded helpmate. Of Pauline, the Quenus’

daughter, we see but little in the story, but she becomes the heroine

of another of M. Zola’s novels, “La Joie de Vivre,” and instead of

inheriting the egotism of her parents, develops a passionate love and

devotion for others. In a like way Claude Lantier, Florent’s artist

friend and son of Gervaise of the “Assommoir,” figures more

particularly in “L’Oeuvre,” which tells how his painful struggle for

fame resulted in madness and suicide. With reference to the beautiful

Norman and the other fishwives and gossips scattered through the

present volume, and those genuine types of Parisian _gaminerie_, Muche,

Marjolin, and Cadine, I may mention that I have frequently chastened

their language in deference to English susceptibilities, so that the

story, whilst retaining every essential feature, contains nothing to

which exception can reasonably be taken.

E. A. V.

THE FAT AND THE THIN

CHAPTER I

Amidst the deep silence and solitude prevailing in the avenue several

market gardeners’ carts were climbing the slope which led towards

Paris, and the fronts of the houses, asleep behind the dim lines of

elms on either side of the road, echoed back the rhythmical jolting of

the wheels. At the Neuilly bridge a cart full of cabbages and another

full of peas had joined the eight waggons of carrots and turnips coming

down from Nanterre; and the horses, left to themselves, had continued

plodding along with lowered heads, at a regular though lazy pace, which

the ascent of the slope now slackened. The sleeping waggoners, wrapped

in woollen cloaks, striped black and grey, and grasping the reins

slackly in their closed hands, were stretched at full length on their

stomachs atop of the piles of vegetables. Every now and then, a gas

lamp, following some patch of gloom, would light up the hobnails of a

boot, the blue sleeve of a blouse, or the peak of a cap peering out of

the huge florescence of vegetables—red bouquets of carrots, white

bouquets of turnips, and the overflowing greenery of peas and cabbages.

And all along the road, and along the neighbouring roads, in front and

behind, the distant rumbling of vehicles told of the presence of

similar contingents of the great caravan which was travelling onward

through the gloom and deep slumber of that matutinal hour, lulling the

dark city to continued repose with its echoes of passing food.

Madame Francois’s horse, Balthazar, an animal that was far too fat, led

the van. He was plodding on, half asleep and wagging his ears, when

suddenly, on reaching the Rue de Longchamp, he quivered with fear and

came to a dead stop. The horses behind, thus unexpectedly checked, ran

their heads against the backs of the carts in front of them, and the

procession halted amidst a clattering of bolts and chains and the oaths

of the awakened waggoners. Madame Francois, who sat in front of her

vehicle, with her back to a board which kept her vegetables in

position, looked down; but, in the dim light thrown to the left by a

small square lantern, which illuminated little beyond one of

Balthazar’s sheeny flanks, she could distinguish nothing.

“Come, old woman, let’s get on!” cried one of the men, who had raised

himself to a kneeling position amongst his turnips; “it’s only some

drunken sot.”

Madame Francois, however, had bent forward and on her right hand had

caught sight of a black mass, lying almost under the horse’s hoofs, and

blocking the road.

“You wouldn’t have us drive over a man, would you?” said she, jumping

to the ground.

It was indeed a man lying at full length upon the road, with his arms

stretched out and his face in the dust. He seemed to be remarkably

tall, but as withered as a dry branch, and the wonder was that

Balthazar had not broken him in half with a blow from his hoof. Madame

Francois thought that he was dead; but on stooping and taking hold of

one of his hands, she found that it was quite warm.

“Poor fellow!” she murmured softly.

The waggoners, however, were getting impatient.

“Hurry up, there!” said the man kneeling amongst the turnips, in a

hoarse voice. “He’s drunk till he can hold no more, the hog! Shove him

into the gutter.”

Meantime, the man on the road had opened his eyes. He looked at Madame

Francois with a startled air, but did not move. She herself now thought

that he must indeed be drunk.

“You mustn’t stop here,” she said to him, “or you’ll get run over and

killed. Where were you going?”

“I don’t know,” replied the man in a faint voice.

Then, with an effort and an anxious expression, he added: “I was going

to Paris; I fell down, and don’t remember any more.”

Madame Francois could now see him more distinctly, and he was truly a

pitiable object, with his ragged black coat and trousers, through the

rents in which you could espy his scraggy limbs. Underneath a black

cloth cap, which was drawn low over his brows, as though he were afraid

of being recognised, could be seen two large brown eyes, gleaming with

peculiar softness in his otherwise stern and harassed countenance. It

seemed to Madame Francois that he was in far too famished a condition

to have got drunk.

“And what part of Paris were you going to?” she continued.

The man did not reply immediately. This questioning seemed to distress

him. He appeared to be thinking the matter over, but at last said

hesitatingly, “Over yonder, towards the markets.”

He had now, with great difficulty, got to his feet again, and seemed

anxious to resume his journey. But Madame Francois noticed that he

tottered, and clung for support to one of the shafts of her waggon.

“Are you tired?” she asked him.

“Yes, very tired,” he replied.

Then she suddenly assumed a grumpy tone, as though displeased, and,

giving him a push, exclaimed: “Look sharp, then, and climb into my

cart. You’ve made us lose a lot of time. I’m going to the markets, and

I’ll turn you out there with my vegetables.”

Then, as the man seemed inclined to refuse her offer, she pushed him up

with her stout arms, and bundled him down upon the turnips and carrots.

“Come, now, don’t give us any more trouble,” she cried angrily. “You

are quite enough to provoke one, my good fellow. Don’t I tell you that

I’m going to the markets? Sleep away up there. I’ll wake you when we

arrive.”

She herself then clambered into the cart again, and settled herself

with her back against the board, grasping the reins of Balthazar, who

started off drowsily, swaying his ears once more. The other waggons

followed, and the procession resumed its lazy march through the

darkness, whilst the rhythmical jolting of the wheels again awoke the

echoes of the sleepy house fronts, and the waggoners, wrapped in their

cloaks, dozed off afresh. The one who had called to Madame Francois

growled out as he lay down: “As if we’d nothing better to do than pick

up every drunken sot we come across! You’re a scorcher, old woman!”

The waggons rumbled on, and the horses picked their own way, with

drooping heads. The stranger whom Madame Francois had befriended was

lying on his stomach, with his long legs lost amongst the turnips which

filled the back part of the cart, whilst his face was buried amidst the

spreading piles of carrot bunches. With weary, extended arms he

clutched hold of his vegetable couch in fear of being thrown to the

ground by one of the waggon’s jolts, and his eyes were fixed on the two

long lines of gas lamps which stretched away in front of him till they

mingled with a swarm of other lights in the distance atop of the slope.

Far away on the horizon floated a spreading, whitish vapour, showing

where Paris slept amidst the luminous haze of all those flamelets.

“I come from Nanterre, and my name’s Madame Francois,” said the market

gardener presently. “Since my poor man died I go to the markets every

morning myself. It’s a hard life, as you may guess. And who are you?”

“My name’s Florent, I come from a distance,” replied the stranger, with

embarrassment. “Please excuse me, but I’m really so tired that it is

painful to me to talk.”

He was evidently unwilling to say anything more, and so Madame Francois

relapsed into silence, and allowed the reins to fall loosely on the

back of Balthazar, who went his way like an animal acquainted with

every stone of the road.

Meantime, with his eyes still fixed upon the far-spreading glare of

Paris, Florent was pondering over the story which he had refused to

communicate to Madame Francois. After making his escape from Cayenne,

whither he had been transported for his participation in the resistance

to Louis Napoleon’s Coup d’Etat, he had wandered about Dutch Guiana for

a couple of years, burning to return to France, yet dreading the

Imperial police. At last, however, he once more saw before him the

beloved and mighty city which he had so keenly regretted and so

ardently longed for. He would hide himself there, he told himself, and

again lead the quiet, peaceable life that he had lived years ago. The

police would never be any the wiser; and everyone would imagine,

indeed, that he had died over yonder, across the sea. Then he thought

of his arrival at Havre, where he had landed with only some fifteen

francs tied up in a corner of his handkerchief. He had been able to pay

for a seat in the coach as far as Rouen, but from that point he had

been forced to continue his journey on foot, as he had scarcely thirty

sous left of his little store. At Vernon his last copper had gone in

bread. After that he had no clear recollection of anything. He fancied

that he could remember having slept for several hours in a ditch, and

having shown the papers with which he had provided himself to a

gendarme; however, he had only a very confused idea of what had

happened. He had left Vernon without any breakfast, seized every now

and then with hopeless despair and raging pangs which had driven him to

munch the leaves of the hedges as he tramped along. A prey to cramp and

fright, his body bent, his sight dimmed, and his feet sore, he had

continued his weary march, ever drawn onwards in a semi-unconscious

state by a vision of Paris, which, far, far away, beyond the horizon,

seemed to be summoning him and waiting for him.

When he at length reached Courbevoie, the night was very dark. Paris,

looking like a patch of star-sprent sky that had fallen upon the black

earth, seemed to him to wear a forbidding aspect, as though angry at

his return. Then he felt very faint, and his legs almost gave way

beneath him as he descended the hill. As he crossed the Neuilly bridge

he sustained himself by clinging to the parapet, and bent over and

looked at the Seine rolling inky waves between its dense, massy banks.

A red lamp on the water seemed to be watching him with a sanguineous

eye. And then he had to climb the hill if he would reach Paris on its

summit yonder. The hundreds of leagues which he had already travelled

were as nothing to it. That bit of a road filled him with despair. He

would never be able, he thought, to reach yonder light crowned summit.

The spacious avenue lay before him with its silence and its darkness,

its lines of tall trees and low houses, its broad grey footwalks,

speckled with the shadows of overhanging branches, and parted

occasionally by the gloomy gaps of side streets. The squat yellow

flames of the gas lamps, standing erect at regular intervals, alone

imparted a little life to the lonely wilderness. And Florent seemed to

make no progress; the avenue appeared to grow ever longer and longer,

to be carrying Paris away into the far depths of the night. At last he

fancied that the gas lamps, with their single eyes, were running off on

either hand, whisking the road away with them; and then, overcome by

vertigo, he stumbled and fell on the roadway like a log.

Now he was lying at ease on his couch of greenery, which seemed to him

soft as a feather bed. He had slightly raised his head so as to keep

his eyes on the luminous haze which was spreading above the dark roofs

which he could divine on the horizon. He was nearing his goal, carried

along towards it, with nothing to do but to yield to the leisurely

jolts of the waggon; and, free from all further fatigue, he now only

suffered from hunger. Hunger, indeed, had once more awoke within him

with frightful and wellnigh intolerable pangs. His limbs seemed to have

fallen asleep; he was only conscious of the existence of his stomach,

horribly cramped and twisted as by a red-hot iron. The fresh odour of

the vegetables, amongst which he was lying, affected him so keenly that

he almost fainted away. He strained himself against that piled-up mass

of food with all his remaining strength, in order to compress his

stomach and silence its groans. And the nine other waggons behind him,

with their mountains of cabbages and peas, their piles of artichokes,

lettuces, celery, and leeks, seemed to him to be slowly overtaking him,

as though to bury him whilst he was thus tortured by hunger beneath an

avalanche of food. Presently the procession halted, and there was a

sound of deep voices. They had reached the barriers, and the municipal

customs officers were examining the waggons. A moment later Florent

entered Paris, in a swoon, lying atop of the carrots, with clenched

teeth.

“Hallow! You up there!” Madame Francois called out sharply.

And as the stranger made no attempt to move, she clambered up and shook

him. Florent rose to a sitting posture. He had slept and no longer felt

the pangs of hunger, but was dizzy and confused.

“You’ll help me to unload, won’t you?” Madame Francois said to him, as

she made him get down.

He helped her. A stout man with a felt hat on his head and a badge in

the top buttonhole of his coat was striking the ground with a stick and

grumbling loudly:

“Come, come, now, make haste! You must get on faster than that! Bring

the waggon a little more forward. How many yards’ standing have you?

Four, isn’t it?”

Then he gave a ticket to Madame Francois, who took some coppers out of

a little canvas bag and handed them to him; whereupon he went off to

vent his impatience and tap the ground with his stick a little further

away. Madame Francois took hold of Balthazar’s bridle and backed him so

as to bring the wheels of the waggon close to the footway. Then, having

marked out her four yards with some wisps of straw, after removing the

back of the cart, she asked Florent to hand her the vegetables bunch by

bunch. She arranged them sort by sort on her standing, setting them out

artistically, the “tops” forming a band of greenery around each pile;

and it was with remarkable rapidity that she completed her show, which,

in the gloom of early morning, looked like some piece of symmetrically

coloured tapestry. When Florent had handed her a huge bunch of parsley,

which he had found at the bottom of the cart, she asked him for still

another service.

“It would be very kind of you,” said she, “if you would look after my

goods while I put the horse and cart up. I’m only going a couple of

yards, to the Golden Compasses, in the Rue Montorgueil.”

Florent told her that she might make herself easy. He preferred to

remain still, for his hunger had revived since he had begun to move

about. He sat down and leaned against a heap of cabbages beside Madame

Francois’s stock. He was all right there, he told himself, and would

not go further afield, but wait. His head felt empty, and he had no

very clear notion as to where he was. At the beginning of September it

is quite dark in the early morning. Around him lighted lanterns were

flitting or standing stationary in the depths of the gloom. He was

sitting on one side of a broad street which he did not recognise; it

stretched far away into the blackness of the night. He could make out

nothing plainly, excepting the stock of which he had been left in

charge. All around him along the market footways rose similar piles of

goods. The middle of the roadway was blocked by huge grey tumbrels, and

from one end of the street to the other a sound of heavy breathing

passed, betokening the presence of horses which the eye could not

distinguish.

Shouts and calls, the noise of falling wood, or of iron chains slipping

to the ground, the heavy thud of loads of vegetables discharged from

the waggons, and the grating of wheels as the carts were backed against

the footways, filled the yet sonorous awakening, whose near approach

could be felt and heard in the throbbing gloom. Glancing over the pile

of cabbages behind him. Florent caught sight of a man wrapped like a

parcel in his cloak, and snoring away with his head upon some baskets

of plums. Nearer to him, on his left, he could distinguish a lad, some

ten years old, slumbering between two heaps of endive, with an angelic

smile on his face. And as yet there seemed to be nothing on that

pavement that was really awake except the lanterns waving from

invisible arms, and flitting and skipping over the sleep of the

vegetables and human beings spread out there in heaps pending the dawn.

However, what surprised Florent was the sight of some huge pavilions on

either side of the street, pavilions with lofty roofs that seemed to

expand and soar out of sight amidst a swarm of gleams. In his weakened

state of mind he fancied he beheld a series of enormous, symmetrically

built palaces, light and airy as crystal, whose fronts sparkled with

countless streaks of light filtering through endless Venetian shutters.

Gleaming between the slender pillar shafts these narrow golden bars

seemed like ladders of light mounting to the gloomy line of the lower

roofs, and then soaring aloft till they reached the jumble of higher

ones, thus describing the open framework of immense square halls, where

in the yellow flare of the gas lights a multitude of vague, grey,

slumbering things was gathered together.

At last Florent turned his head to look about him, distressed at not

knowing where he was, and filled with vague uneasiness by the sight of

that huge and seemingly fragile vision. And now, as he raised his eyes,

he caught sight of the luminous dial and the grey massive pile of Saint

Eustache’s Church. At this he was much astonished. He was close to

Saint Eustache, yet all was novel to him.

However, Madame Francois had come back again, and was engaged in a

heated discussion with a man who carried a sack over his shoulder and

offered to buy her carrots for a sou a bunch.

“Really, now, you are unreasonable, Lacaille!” said she. “You know

quite well that you will sell them again to the Parisians at four and

five sous the bunch. Don’t tell me that you won’t! You may have them

for two sous the bunch, if you like.”

Then, as the man went off, she continued: “Upon my word, I believe some

people think that things grow of their own accord! Let him go and find

carrots at a sou the bunch elsewhere, tipsy scoundrel that he is! He’ll

come back again presently, you’ll see.”

These last remarks were addressed to Florent. And, seating herself by

his side, Madame Francois resumed: “If you’ve been a long time away

from Paris, you perhaps don’t know the new markets. They haven’t been

built for more than five years at the most. That pavilion you see there

beside us is the flower and fruit market. The fish and poultry markets

are farther away, and over there behind us come the vegetables and the

butter and cheese. There are six pavilions on this side, and on the

other side, across the road, there are four more, with the meat and the

tripe stalls. It’s an enormous place, but it’s horribly cold in the

winter. They talk about pulling down the houses near the corn market to

make room for two more pavilions. But perhaps you know all this?”

“No, indeed,” replied Florent; “I’ve been abroad. And what’s the name

of that big street in front of us?”

“Oh, that’s a new street. It’s called the Rue du Pont Neuf. It leads

from the Seine through here to the Rue Montmartre and the Rue

Montorgueil. You would soon have recognized where you were if it had

been daylight.”

Madame Francois paused and rose, for she saw a woman heading down to

examine her turnips. “Ah, is that you, Mother Chantemesse?” she said in

a friendly way.

Florent meanwhile glanced towards the Rue Montorgueil. It was there

that a body of police officers had arrested him on the night of

December 4.[*] He had been walking along the Boulevard Montmartre at

about two o’clock, quietly making his way through the crowd, and

smiling at the number of soldiers that the Elysee had sent into the

streets to awe the people, when the military suddenly began making a

clean sweep of the thoroughfare, shooting folks down at close range

during a quarter of an hour. Jostled and knocked to the ground, Florent

fell at the corner of the Rue Vivienne and knew nothing further of what

happened, for the panic-stricken crowd, in their wild terror of being

shot, trampled over his body. Presently, hearing everything quiet, he

made an attempt to rise; but across him there lay a young woman in a

pink bonnet, whose shawl had slipped aside, allowing her chemisette,

pleated in little tucks, to be seen. Two bullets had pierced the upper

part of her bosom; and when Florent gently removed the poor creature to

free his legs, two streamlets of blood oozed from her wounds on to his

hands. Then he sprang up with a sudden bound, and rushed madly away,

hatless and with his hands still wet with blood. Until evening he

wandered about the streets, with his head swimming, ever seeing the

young woman lying across his legs with her pale face, her blue staring

eyes, her distorted lips, and her expression of astonishment at thus

meeting death so suddenly. He was a shy, timid fellow. Albeit thirty

years old he had never dared to stare women in the face; and now, for

the rest of his life, he was to have that one fixed in his heart and

memory. He felt as though he had lost some loved one of his own.

[*] 1851. Two days after the Coup d’Etat.—Translator.

In the evening, without knowing how he had got there, still dazed and

horrified as he was by the terrible scenes of the afternoon, he had

found himself at a wine shop in the Rue Montorgueil, where several men

were drinking and talking of throwing up barricades. He went away with

them, helped them to tear up a few paving-stones, and seated himself on

the barricade, weary with his long wandering through the streets, and

reflecting that he would fight when the soldiers came up. However, he

had not even a knife with him, and was still bareheaded. Towards eleven

o’clock he dozed off, and in his sleep could see the two holes in the

dead woman’s white chemisette glaring at him like eyes reddened by

tears and blood. When he awoke he found himself in the grasp of four

police officers, who were pummelling him with their fists. The men who

had built the barricade had fled. The police officers treated him with

still greater violence, and indeed almost strangled him when they

noticed that his hands were stained with blood. It was the blood of the

young woman.

Florent raised his eyes to the luminous dial of Saint Eustache with his

mind so full of these recollections that he did not notice the position

of the pointers. It was, however, nearly four o’clock. The markets were

as yet wrapped in sleep. Madame Francois was still talking to old

Madame Chantemesse, both standing and arguing about the price of

turnips, and Florent now called to mind how narrowly he had escaped

being shot over yonder by the wall of Saint Eustache. A detachment of

gendarmes had just blown out the brains of five unhappy fellows caught

at a barricade in the Rue Greneta. The five corpses were lying on the

footway, at a spot where he thought he could now distinguish a heap of

rosy radishes. He himself had escaped being shot merely because the

policemen only carried swords. They took him to a neighbouring police

station and gave the officer in charge a scrap of paper, on which were

these words written in pencil: “Taken with blood-stained hands. Very

dangerous.” Then he had been dragged from station to station till the

morning came. The scrap of paper accompanied him wherever he went. He

was manacled and guarded as though he were a raving madman. At the

station in the Rue de la Lingerie some tipsy soldiers wanted to shoot

him; and they had already lighted a lantern with that object when the

order arrived for the prisoners to be taken to the depot of the

Prefecture of Police. Two days afterwards he found himself in a

casemate of the fort of Bicêtre. Ever since then he had been suffering

from hunger. He had felt hungry in the casemate, and the pangs of

hunger had never since left him. A hundred men were pent in the depths

of that cellar-like dungeon, where, scarce able to breathe, they

devoured the few mouthfuls of bread that were thrown to them, like so

many captive wild beasts.

When Florent was brought before an investigating magistrate, without

anyone to defend him, and without any evidence being adduced, he was

accused of belonging to a secret society; and when he swore that this

was untrue, the magistrate produced the scrap of paper from amongst the

documents before him: “Taken with blood-stained hands. Very dangerous.”

That was quite sufficient. He was condemned to transportation. Six

weeks afterwards, one January night, a gaoler awoke him and locked him

up in a courtyard with more than four hundred other prisoners. An hour

later this first detachment started for the pontoons and exile,

handcuffed and guarded by a double file of gendarmes with loaded

muskets. They crossed the Austerlitz bridge, followed the line of the

boulevards, and so reached the terminus of the Western Railway line. It

was a joyous carnival night. The windows of the restaurants on the

boulevards glittered with lights. At the top of the Rue Vivienne, just

at the spot where he ever saw the young woman lying dead—that unknown

young woman whose image he always bore with him—he now beheld a large

carriage in which a party of masked women, with bare shoulders and

laughing voices, were venting their impatience at being detained, and

expressing their horror of that endless procession of convicts. The

whole of the way from Paris to Havre the prisoners never received a

mouthful of bread or a drink of water. The officials had forgotten to

give them their rations before starting, and it was not till thirty-six

hours afterwards, when they had been stowed away in the hold of the

frigate _Canada_, that they at last broke their fast.

No, Florent had never again been free from hunger. He recalled all the

past to mind, but could not recollect a single hour of satiety. He had

become dry and withered; his stomach seemed to have shrunk; his skin

clung to his bones. And now that he was back in Paris once more, he

found it fat and sleek and flourishing, teeming with food in the midst

of the darkness. He had returned to it on a couch of vegetables; he

lingered in its midst encompassed by unknown masses of food which still

and ever increased and disquieted him. Had that happy carnival night

continued throughout those seven years, then? Once again he saw the

glittering windows on the boulevards, the laughing women, the

luxurious, greedy city which he had quitted on that far-away January

night; and it seemed to him that everything had expanded and increased

in harmony with those huge markets, whose gigantic breathing, still

heavy from the indigestion of the previous day, he now began to hear.

Old Mother Chantemesse had by this time made up her mind to buy a dozen

bunches of turnips. She put them in her apron, which she held closely

pressed to her person, thus making herself look yet more corpulent than

she was; and for some time longer she lingered there, still gossiping

in a drawling voice. When at last she went away, Madame Francois again

sat down by the side of Florent.

“Poor old Mother Chantemesse!” she said; “she must be at least

seventy-two. I can remember her buying turnips of my father when I was

a mere chit. And she hasn’t a relation in the world; no one but a young

hussy whom she picked up I don’t know where and who does nothing but

bring her trouble. Still, she manages to live, selling things by the

ha’p’orth and clearing her couple of francs profit a day. For my own

part, I’m sure that I could never spend my days on the foot-pavement in

this horrid Paris! And she hasn’t even any relations here!”

“You have some relations in Paris, I suppose?” she asked presently,

seeing that Florent seemed disinclined to talk.

Florent did not appear to hear her. A feeling of distrust came back to

him. His head was teeming with old stories of the police, stories of

spies prowling about at every street corner, and of women selling the

secrets which they managed to worm out of the unhappy fellows they

deluded. Madame Francois was sitting close beside him and certainly

looked perfectly straightforward and honest, with her big calm face,

above which was bound a black and yellow handkerchief. She seemed about

five and thirty years of age, and was somewhat stoutly built, with a

certain hardy beauty due to her life in the fresh air. A pair of black

eyes, which beamed with kindly tenderness, softened the more masculine

characteristics of her person. She certainly was inquisitive, but her

curiosity was probably well meant.

“I’ve a nephew in Paris,” she continued, without seeming at all

offended by Florent’s silence. “He’s turned out badly though, and has

enlisted. It’s a pleasant thing to have somewhere to go to and stay at,

isn’t it? I dare say there’s a big surprise in store for your relations

when they see you. But it’s always a pleasure to welcome one of one’s

own people back again, isn’t it?”

She kept her eyes fixed upon him while she spoke, doubtless

compassionating his extreme scragginess; fancying, too, that there was

a “gentleman” inside those old black rags, and so not daring to slip a

piece of silver into his hand. At last, however, she timidly murmured:

“All the same, if you should happen just at present to be in want of

anything——”

But Florent checked her with uneasy pride. He told her that he had

everything he required, and had a place to go to. She seemed quite

pleased to hear this, and, as though to tranquillise herself concerning

him, repeated several times: “Well, well, in that case you’ve only got

to wait till daylight.”

A large bell at the corner of the fruit market, just over Florent’s

head, now began to ring. The slow regular peals seemed to gradually

dissipate the slumber that yet lingered all around. Carts were still

arriving, and the shouts of the waggoners, the cracking of their whips,

and the grinding of the paving-stones beneath the iron-bound wheels and

the horses’ shoes sounded with an increasing din. The carts could now

only advance by a series of spasmodic jolts, and stretched in a long

line, one behind the other, till they were lost to sight in the distant

darkness, whence a confused roar ascended.

Unloading was in progress all along the Rue du Pont Neuf, the vehicles

being drawn up close to the edge of the footways, while their teams

stood motionless in close order as at a horse fair. Florent felt

interested in one enormous tumbrel which was piled up with magnificent

cabbages, and had only been backed to the kerb with the greatest

difficulty. Its load towered above the lofty gas lamp whose bright

light fell full upon the broad leaves which looked like pieces of dark

green velvet, scalloped and goffered. A young peasant girl, some

sixteen years old, in a blue linen jacket and cap, had climbed on to

the tumbrel, where, buried in the cabbages to her shoulders, she took

them one by one and threw them to somebody concealed in the shade

below. Every now and then the girl would slip and vanish, overwhelmed

by an avalanche of the vegetables, but her rosy nose soon reappeared

amidst the teeming greenery, and she broke into a laugh while the

cabbages again flew down between Florent and the gas lamp. He counted

them mechanically as they fell. When the cart was emptied he felt

worried.

The piles of vegetables on the pavement now extended to the verge of

the roadway. Between the heaps, the market gardeners left narrow paths

to enable people to pass along. The whole of the wide footway was

covered from end to end with dark mounds. As yet, in the sudden dancing

gleams of light from the lanterns, you only just espied the luxuriant

fulness of the bundles of artichokes, the delicate green of the

lettuces, the rosy coral of the carrots, and dull ivory of the turnips.

And these gleams of rich colour flitted along the heaps, according as

the lanterns came and went. The footway was now becoming populated: a

crowd of people had awakened, and was moving hither and thither amidst

the vegetables, stopping at times, and chattering and shouting. In the

distance a loud voice could be heard crying, “Endive! who’s got

endive?” The gates of the pavilion devoted to the sale of ordinary

vegetables had just been opened; and the retail dealers who had stalls

there, with white caps on their heads, fichus knotted over their black

jackets, and skirts pinned up to keep them from getting soiled, now

began to secure their stock for the day, depositing their purchases in

some huge porters’ baskets placed upon the ground. Between the roadway

and the pavilion these baskets were to be seen coming and going on all

sides, knocking against the crowded heads of the bystanders, who

resented the pushing with coarse expressions, whilst all around was a

clamour of voices growing hoarse by prolonged wrangling over a sou or

two. Florent was astonished by the calmness of the female market

gardeners, with bandanas and bronzed faces, displayed amidst all this

garrulous bargaining of the markets.

Behind him, on the footway of the Rue Rambuteau, fruit was being sold.

Hampers and low baskets covered with canvas or straw stood there in

long lines, a strong odour of over-ripe mirabelle plums was wafted

hither and thither. At last a subdued and gentle voice, which he had

heard for some time past, induced him to turn his head, and he saw a

charming darksome little woman sitting on the ground and bargaining.

“Come now, Marcel,” said she, “you’ll take a hundred sous, won’t you?”

The man to whom she was speaking was closely wrapped in his cloak and

made no reply; however, after a silence of five minutes or more, the

young woman returned to the charge.

“Come now, Marcel; a hundred sous for that basket there, and four

francs for the other one; that’ll make nine francs altogether.”

Then came another interval.

“Well, tell me what you will take.”

“Ten francs. You know that well enough already; I told you so before.

But what have you done with your Jules this morning, La Sarriette?”

The young woman began to laugh as she took a handful of small change

out of her pocket.

“Oh,” she replied, “Jules is still in bed. He says that men were not

intended to work.”

She paid for the two baskets, and carried them into the fruit pavilion,

which had just been opened. The market buildings still retained their

gloom-wrapped aspect of airy fragility, streaked with the thousand

lines of light that gleamed from the venetian shutters. People were

beginning to pass along the broad covered streets intersecting the

pavilions, but the more distant buildings still remained deserted

amidst the increasing buzz of life on the footways. By Saint Eustache

the bakers and wine sellers were taking down their shutters, and the

ruddy shops, with their gas lights flaring, showed like gaps of fire in

the gloom in which the grey house-fronts were yet steeped. Florent

noticed a baker’s shop on the left-hand side of the Rue Montorgueil,

replete and golden with its last baking, and fancied he could scent the

pleasant smell of the hot bread. It was now half past four.

Madame Francois by this time had disposed of nearly all her stock. She

had only a few bunches of carrots left when Lacaille once more made his

appearance with his sack.

“Well,” said he, “will you take a sou now?”

“I knew I should see you again,” the good woman quietly answered.

“You’d better take all I have left. There are seventeen bunches.”

“That makes seventeen sous.”

“No; thirty-four.”

At last they agreed to fix the price at twenty-five sous. Madame

Francois was anxious to be off.

“He’d been keeping his eye upon me all the time,” she said to Florent,

when Lacaille had gone off with the carrots in his sack. “That old

rogue runs things down all over the markets, and he often waits till

the last peal of the bell before spending four sous in purchase. Oh,

these Paris folk! They’ll wrangle and argue for an hour to save half a

sou, and then go off and empty their purses at the wine shop.”

Whenever Madame Francois talked of Paris she always spoke in a tone of

disdain, and referred to the city as though it were some ridiculous,

contemptible, far-away place, in which she only condescended to set

foot at nighttime.

“There!” she continued, sitting down again, beside Florent, on some

vegetables belonging to a neighbour, “I can get away now.”

Florent bent his head. He had just committed a theft. When Lacaille

went off he had caught sight of a carrot lying on the ground, and

having picked it up he was holding it tightly in his right hand. Behind

him were some bundles of celery and bunches of parsley were diffusing

pungent odours which painfully affected him.

“Well, I’m off now!” said Madame Francois.

However, she felt interested in this stranger, and could divine that he

was suffering there on that foot-pavement, from which he had never

stirred. She made him fresh offers of assistance, but he again refused

them, with a still more bitter show of pride. He even got up and

remained standing to prove that he was quite strong again. Then, as

Madame Francois turned her head away, he put the carrot to his mouth.

But he had to remove it for a moment, in spite of the terrible longing

which he felt to dig his teeth into it; for Madame Francois turned

round again and looking him full in the face, began to question him

with her good-natured womanly curiosity. Florent, to avoid speaking,

merely answered by nods and shakes of the head. Then, slowly and

gently, he began to eat the carrot.

The worthy woman was at last on the point of going off, when a powerful

voice exclaimed close beside her, “Good morning, Madame Francois.”

The speaker was a slim young man, with big bones and a big head. His

face was bearded, and he had a very delicate nose and narrow sparkling

eyes. He wore on his head a rusty, battered, black felt hat, and was

buttoned up in an immense overcoat, which had once been of a soft

chestnut hue, but which rain had discoloured and streaked with long

greenish stains. Somewhat bent, and quivering with a nervous

restlessness which was doubtless habitual with him, he stood there in a

pair of heavy laced shoes, and the shortness of his trousers allowed a

glimpse of his coarse blue hose.

“Good morning, Monsieur Claude,” the market gardener replied

cheerfully. “I expected you, you know, last Monday, and, as you didn’t

come, I’ve taken care of your canvas for you. I’ve hung it up on a nail

in my room.”

“You are really very kind, Madame Francois. I’ll go to finish that

study of mine one of these days. I wasn’t able to go on Monday. Has

your big plum tree still got all its leaves?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“I wanted to know, because I mean to put it in a corner of the picture.

It will come in nicely by the side of the fowl house. I have been

thinking about it all the week. What lovely vegetables are in the

market this morning! I came down very early, expecting a fine sunrise

effect upon all these heaps of cabbages.”

With a wave of the arm he indicated the footway.

“Well, well, I must be off now,” said Madame Francois. “Good-bye for

the present. We shall meet again soon, I hope, Monsieur Claude.”

However, as she turned to go, she introduced Florent to the young

artist.

“This gentleman, it seems, has just come from a distance,” said she.

“He feels quite lost in your scampish Paris. I dare say you might be of

service to him.”

Then she at last took her departure, feeling pleased at having left the

two men together. Claude looked at Florent with a feeling of interest.

That tall, slight, wavy figure seemed to him original. Madame

Francois’s hasty presentation was in his eyes quite sufficient, and he

addressed Florent with the easy familiarity of a lounger accustomed to

all sorts of chance encounters.

“I’ll accompany you,” he said; “which way are you going?”

Florent felt ill at ease; he was not wont to unbosom himself so

readily. However, ever since his arrival in Paris, a question had been

trembling on his lips, and now he ventured to ask it, with the evident

fear of receiving an unfavourable reply.

“Is the Rue Pirouette still in existence?”

“Oh, yes,” answered the artist. “A very curious corner of old Paris is

the Rue Pirouette. It twists and turns like a dancing girl, and the

houses bulge out like pot-bellied gluttons. I’ve made an etching of it

that isn’t half bad. I’ll show it to you when you come to see me. Is it

to the Rue Pirouette that you want to go?”

Florent, who felt easier and more cheerful now that he knew the street

still existed, declared that he did not want to go there; in fact, he

did not want to go anywhere in particular. All his distrust awoke into

fresh life at Claude’s insistence.

“Oh! never mind,” said the artist, “let’s go to the Rue Pirouette all

the same. It has such a fine colour at night time. Come along; it’s

only a couple of yards away.”

Florent felt constrained to follow him, and the two men walked off,

side by side, stepping over the hampers and vegetables like a couple of

old friends. On the footway of the Rue Rambuteau there were some

immense heaps of cauliflowers, symmetrically piled up like so many

cannonballs. The soft-white flowers spread out like huge roses in the

midst of their thick green leaves, and the piles had something of the

appearance of bridal bouquets ranged in a row in colossal flower

stands. Claude stopped in front of them, venting cries of admiration.

Then, on turning into the Rue Pirouette, which was just opposite, he

pointed out each house to his companion, and explained his views

concerning it. There was only a single gas lamp, burning in a corner.

The buildings, which had settled down and swollen, threw their

pent-houses forward in such wise as to justify Claude’s allusion to

pot-bellied gluttons, whilst their gables receded, and on either side

they clung to their neighbours for support. Three or four, however,

standing in gloomy recesses, appeared to be on the point of toppling

forward. The solitary gas lamp illumined one which was snowy with a

fresh coat of whitewash, suggesting some flabby broken-down old

dowager, powdered and bedaubed in the hope of appearing young. Then the

others stretched away into the darkness, bruised, dented, and cracked,

greeny with the fall of water from their roofs, and displaying such an

extraordinary variety of attitudes and tints that Claude could not

refrain from laughing as he contemplated them.

Florent, however, came to stand at the corner of the rue de Mondetour,

in front of the last house but one on the left. Here the three floors,

each with two shutterless windows, having little white curtains closely

drawn, seemed wrapped in sleep; but, up above, a light could be seen

flitting behind the curtains of a tiny gable casement. However, the

sight of the shop beneath the pent-house seemed to fill Florent with

the deepest emotion. It was kept by a dealer in cooked vegetables, and

was just being opened. At its far end some metal pans were glittering,

while on several earthen ones in the window there was a display of

cooked spinach and endive, reduced to a paste and arranged in conical

mounds from which customers were served with shovel-like carvers of

white metal, only the handles of which were visible. This sight seemed

to rivet Florent to the ground with surprise. He evidently could not

recognize the place. He read the name of the shopkeeper, Godeboeuf,

which was painted on a red sign board up above, and remained quite

overcome by consternation. His arms dangling beside him, he began to

examine the cooked spinach, with the despairing air of one on whom some

supreme misfortune falls.

However, the gable casement was now opened, and a little old woman

leaned out of it, and looked first at the sky and then at the markets

in the distance.

“Ah, Mademoiselle Saget is an early riser,” exclaimed Claude, who had

just raised his head. And, turning to his companion, he added: “I once

had an aunt living in that house. It’s a regular hive of tittle-tattle!

Ah, the Mehudins are stirring now, I see. There’s a light on the second

floor.”

Florent would have liked to question his companion, but the latter’s

long discoloured overcoat give him a disquieting appearance. So without

a word Florent followed him, whilst he went on talking about the

Mehudins. These Mehudins were fish-girls, it seemed; the older one was

a magnificent creature, while the younger one, who sold fresh-water

fish, reminded Claude of one of Murillo’s virgins, whenever he saw her

standing with her fair face amidst her carps and eels.

From this Claude went on to remark with asperity that Murillo painted

like an ignoramus. But all at once he stopped short in the middle of

the street.

“Come!” he exclaimed, “tell me where it is that you want to go.”

“I don’t want to go anywhere just at present,” replied Florent in

confusion. “Let’s go wherever you like.”

Just as they were leaving the Rue Pirouette, some one called to Claude

from a wine shop at the corner of the street. The young man went in,

dragging Florent with him. The shutters had been taken down on one side

only, and the gas was still burning in the sleepy atmosphere of the

shop. A forgotten napkin and some cards that had been used in the

previous evening’s play were still lying on the tables; and the fresh

breeze that streamed in through the open doorway freshened the close,

warm vinous air. The landlord, Monsieur Lebigre, was serving his

customers. He wore a sleeved waistcoat, and his fat regular features,

fringed by an untidy beard, were still pale with sleep. Standing in

front of the counter, groups of men, with heavy, tired eyes, were

drinking, coughing, and spitting, whilst trying to rouse themselves by

the aid of white wine and brandy. Amongst them Florent recognised

Lacaille, whose sack now overflowed with various sorts of vegetables.

He was taking his third dram with a friend, who was telling him a long

story about the purchase of a hamper of potatoes.[*] When he had

emptied his glass, he went to chat with Monsieur Lebigre in a little

glazed compartment at the end of the room, where the gas had not yet

been lighted.

[*] At the Paris central markets potatoes are sold by the hamper, not

by the sack as in England.—Translator.

“What will you take?” Claude asked of Florent.

He had on entering grasped the hand of the person who had called out to

him. This was a market porter,[*] a well-built young man of two and

twenty at the most. His cheeks and chin were clean-shaven, but he wore

a small moustache, and looked a sprightly, strapping fellow with his

broad-brimmed hat covered with chalk, and his wool-worked neck-piece,

the straps falling from which tightened his short blue blouse. Claude,

who called him Alexandre, patted his arms, and asked him when they were

going to Charentonneau again. Then they talked about a grand excursion

they had made together in a boat on the Marne, when they had eaten a

rabbit for supper in the evening.

[*] _Fort_ is the French term, literally “a strong man,” as every

market porter needs to be.—Translator.

“Well, what will you take?” Claude again asked Florent.

The latter looked at the counter in great embarrassment. At one end of

it some stoneware pots, encircled with brass bands and containing punch

and hot wine, were standing over the short blue flames of a gas stove.

Florent at last confessed that a glass of something warm would be

welcome. Monsieur Lebigre thereupon served them with three glasses of

punch. In a basket near the pots were some smoking hot rolls which had

only just arrived. However, as neither of the others took one, Florent

likewise refrained, and drank his punch. He felt it slipping down into

his empty stomach, like a steam of molten lead. It was Alexandre who

paid for the “shout.”

“He’s a fine fellow, that Alexandre!” said Claude, when he and Florent

found themselves alone again on the footway of the Rue Rambuteau. “He’s

a very amusing companion to take into the country. He’s fond of showing

his strength. And then he’s so magnificently built! I have seen him

stripped. Ah, if I could only get him to pose for me in the nude out in

the open air! Well, we’ll go and take a turn through the markets now,

if you like.”

Florent followed, yielding entirely to his new friend’s guidance. A

bright glow at the far end of the Rue Rambuteau announced the break of

day. The far-spreading voice of the markets was become more sonorous,

and every now and then the peals of a bell ringing in some distant

pavilion mingled with the swelling, rising clamour. Claude and Florent

entered one of the covered streets between the fish and poultry

pavilions. Florent raised his eyes and looked at the lofty vault

overhead, the inner timbers of which glistened amidst a black lacework

of iron supports. As he turned into the great central thoroughfare he

pictured himself in some strange town, with its various districts and

suburbs, promenades and streets, squares and cross-roads, all suddenly

placed under shelter on a rainy day by the whim of some gigantic power.

The deep gloom brooding in the hollows of the roofs multiplied, as it

were, the forest of pillars, and infinitely increased the number of the

delicate ribs, railed galleries, and transparent shutters. And over the

phantom city and far away into the depths of the shade, a teeming,

flowering vegetation of luxuriant metal-work, with spindle-shaped stems

and twining knotted branches, covered the vast expanse as with the

foliage of some ancient forest. Several departments of the markets

still slumbered behind their closed iron gates. The butter and poultry

pavilions displayed rows of little trellised stalls and long alleys,

which lines of gas lights showed to be deserted. The fish market,

however, had just been opened, and women were flitting to and fro

amongst the white slabs littered with shadowy hampers and cloths. Among

the vegetables and fruit and flowers the noise and bustle were

gradually increasing. The whole place was by degree waking up, from the

popular quarter where the cabbages are piled at four o’clock in the

morning, to the lazy and wealthy district which only hangs up its

pullets and pheasants when the hands of the clock point to eight.

The great covered alleys were now teeming with life. All along the

footways on both sides of the road there were still many market

gardeners, with other small growers from the environs of Paris, who

displayed baskets containing their “gatherings” of the previous

evening—bundles of vegetables and clusters of fruit. Whilst the crowd

incessantly paced hither and thither, vehicles barred the road; and

Florent, in order to pass them, had to press against some dingy sacks,

like coal-sacks in appearance, and so numerous and heavy that the

axle-trees of the vans bent beneath them. They were quite damp, and

exhaled a fresh odour of seaweed. From a rent low down in the side of

one of them a black stream of big mussels was trickling.

Florent and Claude had now to pause at every step. The fish was

arriving and one after another the drays of the railway companies drove

up laden with wooden cages full of the hampers and baskets that had

come by train from the sea coast. And to get out of the way of the fish

drays, which became more and more numerous and disquieting, the artist

and Florent rushed amongst the wheels of the drays laden with butter

and eggs and cheese, huge yellow vehicles bearing coloured lanterns,

and drawn by four horses. The market porters carried the cases of eggs,

and baskets of cheese and butter, into the auction pavilion, where

clerks were making entries in note books by the light of the gas.

Claude was quite charmed with all this uproar, and forgot everything to

gaze at some effect of light, some group of blouses, or the picturesque

unloading of a cart. At last they extricated themselves from the crowd,

and as they continued on their way along the main artery they presently

found themselves amidst an exquisite perfume which seemed to be

following them. They were in the cut-flower market. All over the

footways, to the right and left, women were seated in front of large

rectangular baskets full of bunches of roses, violets, dahlias, and

marguerites. At times the clumps darkened and looked like splotches of

blood, at others they brightened into silvery greys of the softest

tones. A lighted candle, standing near one basket, set amidst the

general blackness quite a melody of colour—the bright variegations of

marguerites, the blood-red crimson of dahlias, the bluey purple of

violets, and the warm flesh tints of roses. And nothing could have been

sweeter or more suggestive of springtide than this soft breath of

perfume encountered on the footway, on emerging from the sharp odours

of the fish market and the pestilential smell of the butter and the

cheese.

Claude and Florent turned round and strolled about, loitering among the

flowers. They halted with some curiosity before several women who were

selling bunches of fern and bundles of vine-leaves, neatly tied up in

packets of five and twenty. Then they turned down another covered

alley, which was almost deserted, and where their footsteps echoed as

though they had been walking through a church. Here they found a little

cart, scarcely larger than a wheelbarrow, to which was harnessed a

diminutive donkey, who, no doubt, felt bored, for at sight of them he

began braying with such prolonged and sonorous force that the vast

roofing of the markets fairly trembled. Then the horses began to neigh

in reply, there was a sound of pawing and tramping, a distant uproar,

which swelled, rolled along, then died away.

Meantime, in the Rue Berger in front of them, Claude and Florent

perceived a number of bare, frontless, salesmen’s shops, where, by the

light of flaring gas jets, they could distinguish piles of hampers and

fruit, enclosed by three dirty walls which were covered with addition

sums in pencil. And the two wanderers were still standing there,

contemplating this scene, when they noticed a well-dressed woman

huddled up in a cab which looked quite lost and forlorn in the block of

carts as it stealthily made its way onwards.

“There’s Cinderella coming back without her slippers,” remarked Claude

with a smile.

They began chatting together as they went back towards the markets.

Claude whistled as he strolled along with his hands in his pockets, and

expatiated on his love for this mountain of food which rises every

morning in the very centre of Paris. He prowled about the footways

night after night, dreaming of colossal still-life subjects, paintings

of an extraordinary character. He had even started on one, having his

friend Marjolin and that jade Cadine to pose for him; but it was hard

work to paint those confounded vegetables and fruit and fish and

meat—they were all so beautiful! Florent listened to the artist’s

enthusiastic talk with a void and hunger-aching stomach. It did not

seem to occur to Claude that all those things were intended to be

eaten. Their charm for him lay in their colour. Suddenly, however, he

ceased speaking and, with a gesture that was habitual to him, tightened

the long red sash which he wore under his green-stained coat.

And then with a sly expression he resumed:

“Besides, I breakfast here, through my eyes, at any rate, and that’s

better than getting nothing at all. Sometimes, when I’ve forgotten to

dine on the previous day, I treat myself to a perfect fit of

indigestion in the morning by watching the carts arrive here laden with

all sorts of good things. On such mornings as those I love my

vegetables more than ever. Ah! the exasperating part, the rank

injustice of it all, is that those rascally Philistines really eat

these things!”

Then he went on to tell Florent of a supper to which a friend had

treated him at Baratte’s on a day of affluence. They had partaken of

oysters, fish, and game. But Baratte’s had sadly fallen, and all the

carnival life of the old Marché des Innocents was now buried. In place

thereof they had those huge central markets, that colossus of ironwork,

that new and wonderful town. Fools might say what they liked; it was

the embodiment of the spirit of the times. Florent, however, could not

at first make out whether he was condemning the picturesqueness of

Baratte’s or its good cheer.

But Claude next began to inveigh against romanticism. He preferred his

piles of vegetables, he said, to the rags of the middle ages; and he

ended by reproaching himself with guilty weakness in making an etching

of the Rue Pirouette. All those grimy old places ought to be levelled

to the ground, he declared, and modern houses ought to be built in

their stead.

“There!” he exclaimed, coming to a halt, “look at the corner of the

footway yonder! Isn’t that a picture readymade, ever so much more human

and natural than all their confounded consumptive daubs?”

Along the covered way women were now selling hot soup and coffee. At

one corner of the foot-pavement a large circle of customers clustered

round a vendor of cabbage soup. The bright tin caldron, full of broth,

was steaming over a little low stove, through the holes of which came

the pale glow of the embers. From a napkin-lined basket the woman took

some thin slices of bread and dropped them into yellow cups; then with

a ladle she filled the cups with liquor. Around her were saleswomen

neatly dressed, market gardeners in blouses, porters with coats soiled

by the loads they had carried, poor ragged vagabonds—in fact, all the

early hungry ones of the markets, eating, and scalding their mouths,

and drawing back their chins to avoid soiling them with the drippings

from their spoons. The delighted artist blinked, and sought a point of

view so as to get a good ensemble of the picture. That cabbage soup,

however, exhaled a very strong odour. Florent, for his part, turned his

head away, distressed by the sight of the full cups which the customers

emptied in silence, glancing around them the while like suspicious

animals. As the woman began serving a fresh customer, Claude himself

was affected by the odorous steam of the soup, which was wafted full in

his face.

He again tightened his sash, half amused and half annoyed. Then

resuming his walk, and alluding to the punch paid for by Alexandre, he

said to Florent in a low voice:

“It’s very odd, but have you ever noticed that although a man can

always find somebody to treat him to something to drink, he can never

find a soul who will stand him anything to eat?”

The dawn was now rising. The houses on the Boulevard de Sebastopol at

the end of the Rue de la Cossonnerie were still black; but above the

sharp line of their slate roofs a patch of pale blue sky, circumscribed

by the arch-pieces of the covered way, showed like a gleaming

half-moon. Claude, who had been bending over some grated openings on a

level with the ground, through which a glimpse could be obtained of

deep cellars where gas lights glimmered, now glanced up into the air

between the lofty pillars, as though scanning the dark roofs which

fringed the clear sky. Then he halted again, with his eyes fixed on one

of the light iron ladders which connect the superposed market roofs and

give access from one to the other. Florent asked him what he was

seeking there.

“I’m looking for that scamp of a Marjolin,” replied the artist. “He’s

sure to be in some guttering up there, unless, indeed, he’s been

spending the night in the poultry cellars. I want him to give me a

sitting.”

Then he went on to relate how a market saleswoman had found his friend

Marjolin one morning in a pile of cabbages, and how Marjolin had grown

up in all liberty on the surrounding footways. When an attempt had been

made to send him to school he had fallen ill, and it had been necessary

to bring him back to the markets. He knew every nook and corner of

them, and loved them with a filial affection, leading the agile life of

a squirrel in that forest of ironwork. He and Cadine, the hussy whom

Mother Chantemesse had picked up one night in the old Market of the

Innocents, made a pretty couple—he, a splendid foolish fellow, as

glowing as a Rubens, with a ruddy down on his skin which attracted the

sunlight; and she, slight and sly, with a comical phiz under her tangle

of black curly hair.

Whilst talking Claude quickened his steps, and soon brought his

companion back to Saint Eustache again. Florent, whose legs were once

more giving way, dropped upon a bench near the omnibus office. The

morning air was freshening. At the far end of the Rue Rambuteau rosy

gleams were streaking the milky sky, which higher up was slashed by

broad grey rifts. Such was the sweet balsamic scent of this dawn, that

Florent for a moment fancied himself in the open country, on the brow

of a hill. But behind the bench Claude pointed out to him the many

aromatic herbs and bulbs on sale. All along the footway skirting the

tripe market there were, so to say, fields of thyme and lavender,

garlic and shallots; and round the young plane-trees on the pavement

the vendors had twined long branches of laurel, forming trophies of

greenery. The strong scent of the laurel leaves prevailed over every

other odour.

At present the luminous dial of Saint Eustache was paling as a

night-light does when surprised by the dawn. The gas jets in the wine

shops in the neighbouring streets went out one by one, like stars

extinguished by the brightness. And Florent gazed at the vast markets

now gradually emerging from the gloom, from the dreamland in which he

had beheld them, stretching out their ranges of open palaces.

Greenish-grey in hue, they looked more solid now, and even more

colossal with their prodigious masting of columns upholding an endless

expanse of roofs. They rose up in geometrically shaped masses; and when

all the inner lights had been extinguished and the square uniform

buildings were steeped in the rising dawn, they seemed typical of some

gigantic modern machine, some engine, some caldron for the supply of a

whole people, some colossal belly, bolted and riveted, built up of wood

and glass and iron, and endowed with all the elegance and power of some

mechanical motive appliance working there with flaring furnaces, and

wild, bewildering revolutions of wheels.

Claude, however, had enthusiastically sprung on to the bench, and stood

upon it. He compelled his companion to admire the effect of the dawn

rising over the vegetables. There was a perfect sea of these extending

between the two clusters of pavilions from Saint Eustache to the Rue

des Halles. And in the two open spaces at either end the flood of

greenery rose to even greater height, and quite submerged the

pavements. The dawn appeared slowly, softly grey in hue, and spreading

a light water-colour tint over everything. These surging piles akin to

hurrying waves, this river of verdure rushing along the roadway like an

autumn torrent, assumed delicate shadowy tints—tender violet,

blush-rose, and greeny yellow, all the soft, light hues which at

sunrise make the sky look like a canopy of shot silk. And by degrees,

as the fires of dawn rose higher and higher at the far end of the Rue

Rambuteau, the mass of vegetation grew brighter and brighter, emerging

more and more distinctly from the bluey gloom that clung to the ground.

Salad herbs, cabbage-lettuce, endive, and succory, with rich soil still

clinging to their roots, exposed their swelling hearts; bundles of

spinach, bundles of sorrel, clusters of artichokes, piles of peas and

beans, mounds of cos-lettuce, tied round with straws, sounded every

note in the whole gamut of greenery, from the sheeny lacquer-like green

of the pods to the deep-toned green of the foliage; a continuous gamut

with ascending and descending scales which died away in the variegated

tones of the heads of celery and bundles of leeks. But the highest and

most sonorous notes still came from the patches of bright carrots and

snowy turnips, strewn in prodigious quantities all along the markets

and lighting them up with the medley of their two colours.

At the crossway in the Rue des Halles cabbages were piled up in

mountains; there were white ones, hard and compact as metal balls,

curly savoys, whose great leaves made them look like basins of green

bronze, and red cabbages, which the dawn seemed to transform into

superb masses of bloom with the hue of wine-lees, splotched with dark

purple and carmine. At the other side of the markets, at the crossway

near Saint Eustache, the end of the Rue Rambuteau was blocked by a

barricade of orange-hued pumpkins, sprawling with swelling bellies in

two superposed rows. And here and there gleamed the glistening ruddy

brown of a hamper of onions, the blood-red crimson of a heap of

tomatoes, the quiet yellow of a display of marrows, and the sombre

violet of the fruit of the eggplant; while numerous fat black radishes

still left patches of gloom amidst the quivering brilliance of the

general awakening.

Claude clapped his hands at the sight. He declared that those

“blackguard vegetables” were wild, mad, sublime! He stoutly maintained

that they were not yet dead, but, gathered in the previous evening,

waited for the morning sun to bid him good-bye from the flag-stones of

the market. He could observe their vitality, he declared, see their

leaves stir and open as though their roots were yet firmly and warmly

embedded in well-manured soil. And here, in the markets, he added, he

heard the death-rattle of all the kitchen gardens of the environs of

Paris.

A crowd of white caps, loose black jackets, and blue blouses was

swarming in the narrow paths between the various piles. The big baskets

of the market porters passed along slowly, above the heads of the

throng. Retail dealers, costermongers, and greengrocers were making

their purchases in haste. Corporals and nuns clustered round the

mountains of cabbages, and college cooks prowled about inquisitively,

on the look-out for good bargains. The unloading was still going on;

heavy tumbrels, discharging their contents as though these were so many

paving-stones, added more and more waves to the sea of greenery which

was now beating against the opposite footways. And from the far end of

the Rue du Pont Neuf fresh rows of carts were still and ever arriving.

“What a fine sight it is!” exclaimed Claude in an ecstasy of

enthusiasm.

Florent was suffering keenly. He fancied that all this was some

supernatural temptation, and, unwilling to look at the markets any

longer, turned towards Saint Eustache, a side view of which he obtained

from the spot where he now stood. With its roses, and broad arched

windows, its bell-turret, and roofs of slate, it looked as though

painted in sepia against the blue of the sky. He fixed his eyes at last

on the sombre depths of the Rue Montorgueil, where fragments of gaudy

sign boards showed conspicuously, and on the corner of the Rue

Montmartre, where there were balconies gleaming with letters of gold.

And when he again glanced at the cross-roads, his gaze was solicited by

other sign boards, on which such inscriptions as “Druggist and

Chemist,” “Flour and Grain” appeared in big red and black capital

letters upon faded backgrounds. Near these corners, houses with narrow

windows were now awakening, setting amidst the newness and airiness of

the Rue du Pont Neuf a few of the yellow ancient facades of olden

Paris. Standing at the empty windows of the great drapery shop at the

corner of the Rue Rambuteau a number of spruce-looking counter-jumpers

in their shirt sleeves, with snowy-white wristbands and tight-fitting

pantaloons, were “dressing” their goods. Farther away, in the windows

of the severe looking, barrack-like Guillot establishment, biscuits in

gilt wrappers and fancy cakes on glass stands were tastefully set out.

All the shops were now open; and workmen in white blouses, with tools

under their arms, were hurrying along the road.

Claude had not yet got down from the bench. He was standing on tiptoe

in order to see the farther down the streets. Suddenly, in the midst of

the crowd which he overlooked, he caught sight of a fair head with long

wavy locks, followed by a little black one covered with curly tumbled

hair.

“Hallo, Marjolin! Hallo, Cadine!” he shouted; and then, as his voice

was drowned by the general uproar, he jumped to the ground and started

off. But all at once, recollecting that he had left Florent behind him,

he hastily came back. “I live at the end of the Impasse des

Bourdonnais,” he said rapidly. “My name’s written in chalk on the door,

Claude Lantier. Come and see the etching of the Rue Pirouette.”

Then he vanished. He was quite ignorant of Florent’s name, and, after

favouring him with his views on art, parted from him as he had met him,

at the roadside.

Florent was now alone, and at first this pleased him. Ever since Madame

Francoise had picked him up in the Avenue de Neuilly he had been coming

and going in a state of pain fraught somnolence which had quite

prevented him from forming any definite ideas of his surroundings. Now

at last he was at liberty to do what he liked, and he tried to shake

himself free from that intolerable vision of teeming food by which he

was pursued. But his head still felt empty and dizzy, and all that he

could find within him was a kind of vague fear. The day was now growing

quite bright, and he could be distinctly seen. He looked down at his

wretched shabby coat and trousers. He buttoned the first, dusted the

latter, and strove to make a bit of a toilet, fearing lest those black

rags of his should proclaim aloud whence he had come. He was seated in

the middle of the bench, by the side of some wandering vagabonds who

had settled themselves there while waiting for the sunrise. The

neighbourhood of the markets is a favourite spot with vagrants in the

small hours of the morning. However, two constables, still in night

uniform, with cloaks and _kepis_, paced up and down the footway side by

side, their hands resting behind their backs; and every time they

passed the bench they glanced at the game which they scented there.

Florent felt sure that they recognised him, and were consulting

together about arresting him. At this thought his anguish of mind

became extreme. He felt a wild desire to get up and run away; but he

did not dare to do so, and was quite at a loss as to how he might take

himself off. The repeated glances of the constables, their cold,

deliberate scrutiny caused him the keenest torture. At length he rose

from the bench, making a great effort to restrain himself from rushing

off as quickly as his long legs could carry him; and succeeded in

walking quietly away, though his shoulders quivered in the fear he felt

of suddenly feeling the rough hands of the constables clutching at his

collar from behind.

He had now only one thought, one desire, which was to get away from the

markets as quickly as possible. He would wait and make his

investigations later on, when the footways should be clear. The three

streets which met here—the Rue Montmartre, Rue Montorgueil, and Rue

Turbigo—filled him with uneasiness. They were blocked by vehicles of

all kinds, and their footways were crowded with vegetables. Florent

went straight along as far as the Rue Pierre Lescot, but there the

cress and the potato markets seemed to him insuperable obstacles. So he

resolved to take the Rue Rambuteau. On reaching the Boulevard de

Sebastopol, however, he came across such a block of vans and carts and

waggonettes that he turned back and proceeded along the Rue Saint

Denis. Then he got amongst the vegetables once more. Retail dealers had

just set up their stalls, formed of planks resting on tall hampers; and

the deluge of cabbages and carrots and turnips began all over again.

The markets were overflowing. Florent tried to make his escape from

this pursuing flood which ever overtook him in his flight. He tried the

Rue de la Cossonnerie, the Rue Berger, the Square des Innocents, the

Rue de la Ferronnerie, and the Rue des Halles. And at last he came to a

standstill, quite discouraged and scared at finding himself unable to

escape from the infernal circle of vegetables, which now seemed to

dance around him, twining clinging verdure about his legs.

The everlasting stream of carts and horses stretched away as far as the

Rue de Rivoli and the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville. Huge vans were

carrying away supplies for all the greengrocers and fruiterers of an

entire district; _chars-a-bancs_ were starting for the suburbs with

straining, groaning sides. In the Rue de Pont Neuf Florent got

completely bewildered. He stumbled upon a crowd of hand-carts, in which

numerous costermongers were arranging their purchases. Amongst them he

recognised Lacaille, who went off along the Rue Saint Honoré, pushing a

barrow of carrots and cauliflowers before him. Florent followed him, in

the hope that he would guide him out of the mob. The pavement was now

quite slippery, although the weather was dry, and the litter of

artichoke stalks, turnip tops, and leaves of all kinds made walking

somewhat dangerous. Florent stumbled at almost every step. He lost

sight of Lacaille in the Rue Vauvilliers, and on approaching the corn

market he again found the streets barricaded with vehicles. Then he

made no further attempt to struggle; he was once more in the clutch of

the markets, and their stream of life bore him back. Slowly retracing

his steps, he presently found himself by Saint Eustache again.

He now heard the loud continuous rumbling of the waggons that were

setting out from the markets. Paris was doling out the daily food of

its two million inhabitants. These markets were like some huge central

organ beating with giant force, and sending the blood of life through

every vein of the city. The uproar was akin to that of colossal jaws—a

mighty sound to which each phase of the provisioning contributed, from

the whip-cracking of the larger retail dealers as they started off for

the district markets to the dragging pit-a-pat of the old shoes worn by

the poor women who hawked their lettuces in baskets from door to door.

Florent turned into a covered way on the left, intersecting the group

of four pavilions whose deep silent gloom he had remarked during the

night. He hoped that he might there find a refuge, discover some corner

in which he could hide himself. But these pavilions were now as busy,

as lively as the others. Florent walked on to the end of the street.

Drays were driving up at a quick trot, crowding the market with cages

full of live poultry, and square hampers in which dead birds were

stowed in deep layers. On the other side of the way were other drays

from which porters were removing freshly killed calves, wrapped in

canvas, and laid at full length in baskets, whence only the four

bleeding stumps of their legs protruded. There were also whole sheep,

and sides and quarters of beef. Butchers in long white aprons marked

the meat with a stamp, carried it off, weighted it, and hung it up on

hooks in the auction room. Florent, with his face close to the grating,

stood gazing at the rows of hanging carcasses, at the ruddy sheep and

oxen and paler calves, all streaked with yellow fat and sinews, and

with bellies yawning open. Then he passed along the sidewalk where the

tripe market was held, amidst the pallid calves’ feet and heads, the

rolled tripe neatly packed in boxes, the brains delicately set out in

flat baskets, the sanguineous livers, and purplish kidneys. He checked

his steps in front of some long two-wheeled carts, covered with round

awnings, and containing sides of pork hung on each side of the vehicle

over a bed of straw. Seen from the back end, the interiors of the carts

looked like recesses of some tabernacle, like some taper-lighted

chapel, such was the glow of all the bare flesh they contained. And on

the beds of straw were lines of tin cans, full of the blood that had

trickled from the pigs. Thereupon Florent was attacked by a sort of

rage. The insipid odour of the meat, the pungent smell of the tripe

exasperated him. He made his way out of the covered road, preferring to

return once more to the footwalk of the Rue de Pont Neuf.

He was enduring perfect agony. The shiver of early morning came upon

him; his teeth chattered, and he was afraid of falling to the ground

and finding himself unable to rise again. He looked about, but could

see no vacant place on any bench. Had he found one he would have

dropped asleep there, even at the risk of being awakened by the police.

Then, as giddiness nearly blinded him, he leaned for support against a

tree, with his eyes closed and his ears ringing. The raw carrot, which

he had swallowed almost without chewing, was torturing his stomach, and

the glass of punch which he had drunk seemed to have intoxicated him.

He was indeed intoxicated with misery, weariness, and hunger. Again he

felt a burning fire in the pit of the stomach, to which he every now

and then carried his hands, as though he were trying to stop up a hole

through which all his life was oozing away. As he stood there he

fancied that the foot-pavement rocked beneath him; and thinking that he

might perhaps lessen his sufferings by walking, he went straight on

through the vegetables again. He lost himself among them. He went along

a narrow footway, turned down another, was forced to retrace his steps,

bungled in doing so, and once more found himself amidst piles of

greenery. Some heaps were so high that people seemed to be walking

between walls of bundles and bunches. Only their heads slightly

overtopped these ramparts, and passed along showing whitely or blackly

according to the colour of their hats or caps; whilst the huge swinging

baskets, carried aloft on a level with the greenery, looked like osier

boats floating on a stagnant, mossy lake.

Florent stumbled against a thousand obstacles—against porters taking up

their burdens, and saleswomen disputing in rough tones. He slipped over

the thick bed of waste leaves and stumps which covered the footway, and

was almost suffocated by the powerful odour of crushed verdure. At last

he halted in a sort of confused stupor, and surrendered to the pushing

of some and the insults of others; and then he became a mere waif, a

piece of wreckage tossed about on the surface of that surging sea.

He was fast losing all self-respect, and would willingly have begged.

The recollection of his foolish pride during the night exasperated him.

If he had accepted Madame Francois’s charity, if he had not felt such

idiotic fear of Claude, he would not now have been stranded there

groaning in the midst of these cabbages. And he was especially angry

with himself for not having questioned the artist when they were in the

Rue Pirouette. Now, alas! he was alone and deserted, liable to die in

the streets like a homeless dog.

For the last time he raised his eyes and looked at the markets. At

present they were glittering in the sun. A broad ray was pouring

through the covered road from the far end, cleaving the massy pavilions

with an arcade of light, whilst fiery beams rained down upon the far

expanse of roofs. The huge iron framework grew less distinct, assumed a

bluey hue, became nothing but a shadowy silhouette outlined against the

flaming flare of the sunrise. But up above a pane of glass took fire,

drops of light trickled down the broad sloping zinc plates to the

gutterings; and then, below, a tumultuous city appeared amidst a haze

of dancing golden dust. The general awakening had spread, from the

first start of the market gardeners snoring in their cloaks, to the

brisk rolling of the food-laden railway drays. And the whole city was

opening its iron gates, the footways were humming, the pavilions

roaring with life. Shouts and cries of all kinds rent the air; it was

as though the strain, which Florent had heard gathering force in the

gloom ever since four in the morning, had now attained its fullest

volume. To the right and left, on all sides indeed, the sharp cries

accompanying the auction sales sounded shrilly like flutes amidst the

sonorous bass roar of the crowd. It was the fish, the butter, the

poultry, and the meat being sold.

The pealing of bells passed through the air, imparting a quiver to the

buzzing of the opening markets. Around Florent the sun was setting the

vegetables aflame. He no longer perceived any of those soft

water-colour tints which had predominated in the pale light of early

morning. The swelling hearts of the lettuces were now gleaming

brightly, the scales of greenery showed forth with wondrous vigour, the

carrots glowed blood-red, the turnips shone as if incandescent in the

triumphant radiance of the sun.

On Florent’s left some waggons were discharging fresh loads of

cabbages. He turned his eyes, and away in the distance saw carts yet

streaming out of the Rue Turbigo. The tide was still and ever rising.

He had felt it about his ankles, then on a level with his stomach, and

now it was threatening to drown him altogether. Blinded and submerged,

his ears buzzing, his stomach overpowered by all that he had seen, he

asked for mercy; and wild grief took possession of him at the thought

of dying there of starvation in the very heart of glutted Paris, amidst

the effulgent awakening of her markets. Big hot tears started from his

eyes.

Walking on, he had now reached one of the larger alleys. Two women, one

short and old, the other tall and withered, passed him, talking

together as they made their way towards the pavilions.

“So you’ve come to do your marketing, Mademoiselle Saget?” said the

tall withered woman.

“Well, yes, Madame Lecœur, if you can give it such a name as marketing.

I’m a lone woman, you know, and live on next to nothing. I should have

liked a small cauliflower, but everything is so dear. How is butter

selling to-day?”

“At thirty-four sous. I have some which is first rate. Will you come

and look at it?”

“Well, I don’t know if I shall want any to-day; I’ve still a little

lard left.”

Making a supreme effort, Florent followed these two women. He

recollected having heard Claude name the old one—Mademoiselle

Saget—when they were in the Rue Pirouette; and he made up his mind to

question her when she should have parted from her tall withered

acquaintance.

“And how’s your niece?” Mademoiselle Saget now asked.

“Oh, La Sarriette does as she likes,” Madame Lecœur replied in a bitter

tone. “She’s chosen to set up for herself and her affairs no longer

concern me. When her lovers have beggared her, she needn’t come to me

for any bread.”

“And you were so good to her, too! She ought to do well this year;

fruit is yielding big profits. And your brother-in-law, how is he?”

“Oh, he——”

Madame Lecœur bit her lips, and seemed disinclined to say anything

more.

“Still the same as ever, I suppose?” continued Mademoiselle Saget.

“He’s a very worthy man. Still, I once heard it said that he spent his

money in such a way that—”

“But does anyone know how he spends his money?” interrupted Madame

Lecœur, with much asperity. “He’s a miserly niggard, a scurvy fellow,

that’s what I say! Do you know, mademoiselle, he’d see me die of

starvation rather than lend me five francs! He knows quite well that

there’s nothing to be made out of butter this season, any more than out

of cheese and eggs; whereas he can sell as much poultry as ever he

chooses. But not once, I assure you, not once has he offered to help

me. I am too proud, as you know, to accept any assistance from him;

still it would have pleased me to have had it offered.”

“Ah, by the way, there he is, your brother-in-law!” suddenly exclaimed

Mademoiselle Saget, lowering her voice.

The two women turned and gazed at a man who was crossing the road to

enter the covered way close by.

“I’m in a hurry,” murmured Madame Lecœur. “I left my stall without

anyone to look after it; and, besides, I don’t want to speak to him.”

However, Florent also had mechanically turned round and glanced at the

individual referred to. This was a short, squarely-built man, with a

cheery look and grey, close-cut brush-like hair. Under each arm he was

carrying a fat goose, whose head hung down and flapped against his

legs. And then all at once Florent made a gesture of delight.

Forgetting his fatigue, he ran after the man, and, overtaking him,

tapped him on the shoulder.

“Gavard!” he exclaimed.

The other raised his head and stared with surprise at Florent’s tall

black figure, which he did not at first recognise. Then all at once:

“What! is it you?” he cried, as if overcome with amazement. “Is it

really you?”

He all but let his geese fall, and seemed unable to master his

surprise. On catching sight, however, of his sister-in-law and

Mademoiselle Saget, who were watching the meeting at a distance, he

began to walk on again.

“Come along; don’t let us stop here,” he said. “There are too many eyes

and tongues about.”

When they were in the covered way they began to chat. Florent related

how he had gone to the Rue Pirouette, at which Gavard seemed much

amused and laughed heartily. Then he told Florent that his brother

Quenu had moved from that street and had reopened his pork shop close

by, in the Rue Rambuteau, just in front of the markets. And afterwards

he was again highly amused to hear that Florent had been wandering

about all that morning with Claude Lantier, an odd kind of fish, who,

strangely enough, said he, was Madame Quenu’s nephew. Thus chatting,

Gavard was on the point of taking Florent straight to the pork shop,

but, on hearing that he had returned to France with false papers, he

suddenly assumed all sorts of solemn and mysterious airs, and insisted

upon walking some fifteen paces in front of him, to avoid attracting

attention. After passing through the poultry pavilion, where he hung

his geese up in his stall, he began to cross the Rue Rambuteau, still

followed by Florent; and then, halting in the middle of the road, he

glanced significantly towards a large and well-appointed pork shop.

The sun was obliquely enfilading the Rue Rambuteau, lighting up the

fronts of the houses, in the midst of which the Rue Pirouette formed a

dark gap. At the other end the great pile of Saint Eustache glittered

brightly in the sunlight like some huge reliquary. And right through

the crowd, from the distant crossway, an army of street-sweepers was

advancing in file down the road, the brooms swishing rhythmically,

while scavengers provided with forks pitched the collected refuse into

tumbrels, which at intervals of a score of paces halted with a noise

like the chattering of broken pots. However, all Florent’s attention

was concentrated on the pork shop, open and radiant in the rising sun.

It stood very near the corner of the Rue Pirouette and provided quite a

feast for the eyes. Its aspect was bright and smiling, touches of

brilliant colour showing conspicuously amidst all the snowy marble. The

sign board, on which the name of QUENU-GRADELLE glittered in fat gilt

letters encircled by leaves and branches painted on a soft-hued

background, was protected by a sheet of glass. On two panels, one on

each side of the shop-front, and both, like the board above, covered

with glass, were paintings representing various chubby little cupids

playing amidst boars’ heads, pork chops and strings of sausages; and

these latter still-life subjects, embellished with scrolls and bows,

had been painted in such soft tones that the uncooked pork which they

represented had the pinkiness of raspberry jam. Within this pleasing

framework arose the window display, arranged upon a bed of fine

blue-paper shavings. Here and there fern-leaves, tastefully disposed,

changed the plates which they encircled into bouquets fringed with

foliage. There was a wealth of rich, luscious, melting things. Down

below, quite close to the window, jars of preserved sausage-meat were

interspersed with pots of mustard. Above these were some small, plump,

boned hams. Golden with their dressings of toasted bread-crumbs, and

adorned at the knuckles with green rosettes. Next came the larger

dishes, some containing preserved Strasburg tongues, enclosed in

bladders coloured a bright red and varnished, so that they looked quite

sanguineous beside the pale sausages and trotters; then there were

black-puddings coiled like harmless snakes, healthy looking

chitterlings piled up two by two; Lyons sausages in little silver copes

that made them look like choristers; hot pies, with little banner-like

tickets stuck in them; big hams, and great glazed joints of veal and

pork, whose jelly was as limpid as sugar-candy. In the rear were other

dishes and earthen pans in which meat, minced and sliced, slumbered

beneath lakes of melted fat. And betwixt the various plates and dishes,

jars and bottle of sauce, cullis, stock and preserved truffles, pans of

_foie gras_ and boxes of sardines and tunny-fish were strewn over the

bed of paper shavings. A box of creamy cheeses, and one of edible

snails, the apertures of whose shells were dressed with butter and

parsley, had been placed carelessly at either corner. Finally, from a

bar overhead strings of sausages and saveloys of various sizes hung

down symmetrically like cords and tassels; while in the rear fragments

of intestinal membranes showed like lacework, like some _guipure_ of

white flesh. And on the highest tier in this sanctuary of gluttony,

amidst the membranes and between two bouquets of purple gladioli, the

window stand was crowned by a small square aquarium, ornamented with

rock-work, and containing a couple of gold-fish, which were continually

swimming round it.

Florent’s whole body thrilled at the sight. Then he perceived a woman

standing in the sunlight at the door of the shop. With her prosperous,

happy look in the midst of all those inviting things she added to the

cherry aspect of the place. She was a fine woman and quite blocked the

doorway. Still, she was not over stout, but simply buxom, with the full

ripeness of her thirty years. She had only just risen, yet her glossy

hair was already brushed smooth and arranged in little flat bands over

her temples, giving her an appearance of extreme neatness. She had the

fine skin, the pinky-white complexion common to those whose life is

spent in an atmosphere of raw meat and fat. There was a touch of

gravity about her demeanour, her movements were calm and slow; what

mirth or pleasure she felt she expressed by her eyes, her lips

retaining all their seriousness. A collar of starched linen encircled

her neck, white sleevelets reached to her elbows, and a white apron

fell even over the tips of her shoes, so that you saw but little of her

black cashmere dress, which clung tightly to her well-rounded shoulders

and swelling bosom. The sun rays poured hotly upon all the whiteness

she displayed. However, although her bluish-black hair, her rosy face,

and bright sleeves and apron were steeped in the glow of light, she

never once blinked, but enjoyed her morning bath of sunshine with

blissful tranquillity, her soft eyes smiling the while at the flow and

riot of the markets. She had the appearance of a very worthy woman.

“That is your brother’s wife, your sister-in-law, Lisa,” Gavard said to

Florent.

He had saluted her with a slight inclination of the head. Then he

darted along the house passage, continuing to take the most minute

precautions, and unwilling to let Florent enter the premises through

the shop, though there was no one there. It was evident that he felt

great pleasure in dabbling in what he considered to be a compromising

business.

“Wait here,” he said, “while I go to see whether your brother is alone.

You can come in when I clap my hands.”

Thereupon he opened a door at the end of the passage. But as soon as

Florent heard his brother’s voice behind it, he sprang inside at a

bound. Quenu, who was much attached to him, threw his arms round his

neck, and they kissed each other like children.

“Ah! dash it all! Is it really you, my dear fellow?” stammered the pork

butcher. “I never expected to see you again. I felt sure you were dead!

Why, only yesterday I was saying to Lisa, ‘That poor fellow, Florent!’”

However, he stopped short, and popping his head into the shop, called

out, “Lisa! Lisa!” Then turning towards a little girl who had crept

into a corner, he added, “Pauline, go and find your mother.”

The little one did not stir, however. She was an extremely fine child,

five years of age, with a plump chubby face, bearing a strong

resemblance to that of the pork butcher’s wife. In her arms she was

holding a huge yellow cat, which had cheerfully surrendered itself to

her embrace, with its legs dangling downwards; and she now squeezed it

tightly with her little arms, as if she were afraid that yonder

shabby-looking gentleman might rob her of it.

Lisa, however, leisurely made her appearance.

“Here is my brother Florent!” exclaimed Quenu.

Lisa addressed him as “Monsieur,” and gave him a kindly welcome. She

scanned him quietly from head to foot, without evincing any

disagreeable surprise. Merely a faint pout appeared for a moment on her

lips. Then, standing by, she began to smile at her husband’s

demonstrations of affection. Quenu, however, at last recovered his

calmness, and noticing Florent’s fleshless, poverty-stricken

appearance, exclaimed: “Ah, my poor fellow, you haven’t improved in

your looks since you were over yonder. For my part, I’ve grown fat; but

what would you have!”

He had indeed grown fat, too fat for his thirty years. He seemed to be

bursting through his shirt and apron, through all the snowy-white linen

in which he was swathed like a huge doll. With advancing years his

clean-shaven face had become elongated, assuming a faint resemblance to

the snout of one of those pigs amidst whose flesh his hands worked and

lived the whole day through. Florent scarcely recognised him. He had

now seated himself, and his glance turned from his brother to handsome

Lisa and little Pauline. They were all brimful of health, squarely

built, sleek, in prime condition; and in their turn they looked at

Florent with the uneasy astonishment which corpulent people feel at the

sight of a scraggy person. The very cat, whose skin was distended by

fat, dilated its yellow eyes and scrutinised him with an air of

distrust.

“You’ll wait till we have breakfast, won’t you?” asked Quenu. “We have

it early, at ten o’clock.”

A penetrating odour of cookery pervaded the place; and Florent looked

back upon the terrible night which he had just spent, his arrival

amongst the vegetables, his agony in the midst of the markets, the

endless avalanches of food from which he had just escaped. And then in

a low tone and with a gentle smile he responded:

“No; I’m really very hungry, you see.”