At about four o’clock on the afternoon of the following day Lisa betook
herself to Saint Eustache. For the short walk across the square she had
arrayed herself very seriously in a black silk gown and thick woollen
shawl. The handsome Norman, who, from her stall in the fish market,
watched her till she vanished into the church porch, was quite amazed.
“Hallo! So the fat thing’s gone in for priests now, has she?” she
exclaimed, with a sneer. “Well, a little holy water may do her good!”
She was mistaken in her surmises, however, for Lisa was not a devotee.
She did not observe the ordinances of the Church, but said that she did
her best to lead an honest life, and that this was all that was
necessary. At the same time, however, she disliked to hear religion
spoken ill of, and often silenced Gavard, who delighted in scandalous
stories of priests and their doings. Talk of that sort seemed to her
altogether improper. Everyone, in her opinion, should be allowed to
believe as they pleased, and every scruple should be respected.
Besides, the majority of the clergy were most estimable men. She knew
Abbé Roustan, of Saint Eustache—a distinguished priest, a man of shrewd
sense, and one, she thought, whose friendship might be safely relied
upon. And she would wind up by explaining that religion was absolutely
necessary for the people; she looked upon it as a sort of police force
that helped to maintain order, and without which no government would be
possible. When Gavard went too far on this subject and asserted that
the priests ought to be turned into the streets and have their shops
shut up, Lisa, shrugged her shoulders and replied: “A great deal of
good that would do! Why, before a month was over the people would be
murdering one another in the streets, and you would be compelled to
invent another God. That was just what happened in ‘93. You know very
well that I’m not given to mixing with the priests, but for all that I
say that they are necessary, as we couldn’t do without them.”
And so when Lisa happened to enter a church she always manifested the
utmost decorum. She had bought a handsome missal, which she never
opened, for use when she was invited to a funeral or a wedding. She
knelt and rose at the proper times, and made a point of conducting
herself with all propriety. She assumed, indeed, what she considered a
sort of official demeanour, such as all well-to-do folks, tradespeople,
and house-owners ought to observe with regard to religion.
As she entered Saint Eustache that afternoon she let the double doors,
covered with green baize, faded and worn by the frequent touch of pious
hands, close gently behind her. Then she dipped her fingers in the holy
water and crossed herself in the correct fashion. And afterwards, with
hushed footsteps, she made her way to the chapel of Saint Agnes, where
two kneeling women with their faces buried in their hands were waiting,
whilst the blue skirts of a third protruded from the confessional. Lisa
seemed rather put out by the sight of these women, and, addressing a
verger who happened to pass along, wearing a black skullcap and
dragging his feet over the slabs, she inquired: “Is this Monsieur
l’Abbé Roustan’s day for hearing confessions?”
The verger replied that his reverence had only two more penitents
waiting, and that they would not detain him long, so that if Lisa would
take a chair her turn would speedily come. She thanked him, without
telling him that she had not come to confess; and, making up her mind
to wait, she began to pace the church, going as far as the chief
entrance, whence she gazed at the lofty, severe, bare nave stretching
between the brightly coloured aisles. Raising her head a little, she
examined the high altar, which she considered too plain, having no
taste for the cold grandeur of stonework, but preferring the gilding
and gaudy colouring of the side chapels. Those on the side of the Rue
du Jour looked greyish in the light which filtered through their dusty
windows, but on the side of the markets the sunset was lighting up the
stained glass with lovely tints, limpid greens and yellows in
particular, which reminded Lisa of the bottle of liqueurs in front of
Monsieur Lebigre’s mirror. She came back by this side, which seemed to
be warmed by the glow of light, and took a passing interest in the
reliquaries, altar ornaments, and paintings steeped in prismatic
reflections. The church was empty, quivering with the silence that fell
from its vaulted roofing. Here and there a woman’s dress showed like a
dark splotch amidst the vague yellow of the chairs; and a low buzzing
came from the closed confessionals. As Lisa again passed the chapel of
Saint Agnes she saw the blue dress still kneeling at Abbé Roustan’s
feet.
“Why, if I’d wanted to confess I could have said everything in ten
seconds,” she thought, proud of her irreproachable integrity.
Then she went on to the end of the church. Behind the high altar, in
the gloom of a double row of pillars, is the chapel of the Blessed
Virgin, damp and dark and silent. The dim stained windows only show the
flowing crimson and violet robes of saints, which blaze like flames of
mystic love in the solemn, silent adoration of the darkness. It is a
weird, mysterious spot, like some crepuscular nook of paradise solely
illumined by the gleaming stars of two tapers. The four brass lamps
hanging from the roof remain unlighted, and are but faintly seen; on
espying them you think of the golden censers which the angels swing
before the throne of Mary. And kneeling on the chairs between the
pillars there are always women surrendering themselves languorously to
the dim spot’s voluptuous charm.
Lisa stood and gazed tranquilly around her. She did not feel the least
emotion, but considered that it was a mistake not to light the lamps.
Their brightness would have given the place a more cheerful look. The
gloom even struck her as savouring of impropriety. Her face was warmed
by the flames of some candles burning in a candelabrum by her side, and
an old woman armed with a big knife was scraping off the wax which had
trickled down and congealed into pale tears. And amidst the quivering
silence, the mute ecstasy of adoration prevailing in the chapel, Lisa
would distinctly hear the rumbling of the vehicles turning out of the
Rue Montmartre, behind the scarlet and purple saints on the windows,
whilst in the distance the markets roared without a moment’s pause.
Just as Lisa was leaving the chapel, she saw the younger of the
Mehudins, Claire, the dealer in fresh water fish, come in. The girl
lighted a taper at the candelabrum, and then went to kneel behind a
pillar, her knees pressed upon the hard stones, and her face so pale
beneath her loose fair hair that she seemed a corpse. And believing
herself to be securely screened from observation, she gave way to
violent emotion, and wept hot tears with a passionate outpouring of
prayer which bent her like a rushing wind. Lisa looked on in amazement,
for the Mehudins were not known to be particularly pious; indeed,
Claire was accustomed to speak of religion and priests in such terms as
to horrify one.
“What’s the meaning of this, I wonder?” pondered Lisa, as she again
made her way to the chapel of Saint Agnes. “The hussy must have been
poisoning some one or other.”
Abbé Roustan was at last coming out of his confessional. He was a
handsome man, of some forty years of age, with a smiling, kindly air.
When he recognised Madame Quenu he grasped her hand, called her “dear
lady,” and conducted her to the vestry, where, taking off his surplice,
he told her that he would be entirely at her service in a moment. They
returned, the priest in his cassock, bareheaded, and Lisa strutting
along in her shawl, and paced up and down in front of the side-chapels
adjacent to the Rue du Jour. They conversed together in low tones. The
sunlight was departing from the stained windows, the church was growing
dark, and the retreating footsteps of the last worshippers sounded but
faintly over the flagstones.
Lisa explained her doubts and scruples to Abbé Roustan. There had never
been any question of religion between them; she never confessed, but
merely consulted him in cases of difficulty, because he was shrewd and
discreet, and she preferred him, as she sometimes said, to shady
business men redolent of the galleys. The abbe, on his side, manifested
inexhaustible complaisance. He looked up points of law for her in the
Code, pointed out profitable investments, resolved her moral
difficulties with great tact, recommended tradespeople to her,
invariably having an answer ready however diverse and complicated her
requirements might be. And he supplied all this help in a natural
matter-of-fact way, without ever introducing the Deity into his talk,
or seeking to obtain any advantage either for himself or the cause of
religion. A word of thanks and a smile sufficed him. He seemed glad to
have an opportunity of obliging the handsome Madame Quenu, of whom his
housekeeper often spoke to him in terms of praise, as of a woman who
was highly respected in the neighbourhood.
Their consultation that afternoon was of a peculiarly delicate nature.
Lisa was anxious to know what steps she might legitimately take, as a
woman of honour, with respect to her brother-in-law. Had she a right to
keep a watch upon him, and to do what she could to prevent him from
compromising her husband, her daughter, and herself? And then how far
might she go in circumstances of pressing danger? She did not bluntly
put these questions to the abbe, but asked them with such skilful
circumlocutions that he was able to discuss the matter without entering
into personalities. He brought forward arguments on both sides of the
question, but the conclusion he came to was that a person of integrity
was entitled, indeed bound, to prevent evil, and was justified in using
whatever means might be necessary to ensure the triumph of that which
was right and proper.
“That is my opinion, dear lady,” he said in conclusion. “The question
of means is always a very grave one. It is a snare in which souls of
average virtue often become entangled. But I know your scrupulous
conscience. Deliberate carefully over each step you think of taking,
and if it contains nothing repugnant to you, go on boldly. Pure natures
have the marvelous gift of purifying all that they touch.”
Then, changing his tone of voice, he continued: “Pray give my kind
regards to Monsieur Quenu. I’ll come in to kiss my dear little Pauline
some time when I’m passing. And now good-bye, dear lady; remember that
I’m always at your service.”
Thereupon he returned to the vestry. Lisa, on her way out, was curious
to see if Claire was still praying, but the girl had gone back to her
eels and carp; and in front of the Lady-chapel, which was already
shrouded in darkness, there was now but a litter of chairs overturned
by the ardent vehemence of the woman who had knelt there.
When the handsome Lisa again crossed the square, La Normande, who had
been watching for her exit from the church, recognised her in the
twilight by the rotundity of her skirts.
“Good gracious!” she exclaimed, “she’s been more than an hour in there!
When the priests set about cleansing her of her sins, the choir-boys
have to form in line to pass the buckets of filth and empty them in the
street!”
The next morning Lisa went straight up to Florent’s bedroom and settled
herself there with perfect equanimity. She felt certain that she would
not be disturbed, and, moreover, she had made up her mind to tell a
falsehood and say that she had come to see if the linen was clean,
should Florent by any chance return. Whilst in the shop, however, she
had observed him busily engaged in the fish market. Seating herself in
front of the little table, she pulled out the drawer, placed it upon
her knees, and began to examine its contents, taking the greatest care
to restore them to their original positions.
First of all she came upon the opening chapters of the work on Cayenne;
then upon the drafts of Florent’s various plans and projects, his
schemes for converting the Octroi duties into taxes upon sales, for
reforming the administrative system of the markets, and all the others.
These pages of small writing, which she set herself to read, bored her
extremely, and she was about to restore the drawer to its place,
feeling convinced that Florent concealed the proofs of his wicked
designs elsewhere, and already contemplating a searching visitation of
his mattress, when she discovered a photograph of La Normande in an
envelope. The impression was rather dark. La Normande was standing up
with her right arm resting on a broken column. Decked out with all her
jewels, and attired in a new silk dress, the fish-girl was smiling
impudently, and Lisa, at the sight, forgot all about her
brother-in-law, her fears, and the purpose for which she had come into
the room. She became quite absorbed in her examination of the portrait,
as often happens when one woman scrutinises the photograph of another
at her ease, without fear of being seen. Never before had she so
favourable an opportunity to study her rival. She scrutinised her hair,
her nose, her mouth; held the photograph at a distance, and then
brought it closer again. And, finally, with compressed lips, she read
on the back of it, in a big, ugly scrawl: “Louise, to her friend,
Florent.” This quite scandalised her; to her mind it was a confession,
and she felt a strong impulse to take possession of the photograph, and
keep it as a weapon against her enemy. However, she slowly replaced it
in the envelope on coming to the conclusion that this course would be
wrong, and reflecting that she would always know where to find it
should she want it again.
Then, as she again began turning over the loose sheets of paper, it
occurred to her to look at the back end of the drawer, where Florent
had relegated Augustine’s needles and thread; and there, between the
missal and the Dream-book, she discovered what she sought, some
extremely compromising memoranda, simply screened from observation by a
wrapper of grey paper.
That idea of an insurrection, of the overthrow of the Empire by means
of an armed rising, which Logre had one evening propounded at Monsieur
Lebigre’s, had slowly ripened in Florent’s feverish brain. He soon grew
to see a duty, a mission in it. Therein undoubtedly lay the task to
which his escape from Cayenne and his return to Paris predestined him.
Believing in a call to avenge his leanness upon the city which wallowed
in food while the upholders of right and equity were racked by hunger
in exile, he took upon himself the duties of a justiciary, and dreamt
of rising up, even in the midst of those markets, to sweep away the
reign of gluttony and drunkenness. In a sensitive nature like his, this
idea quickly took root. Everything about him assumed exaggerated
proportions, the wildest fancies possessed him. He imagined that the
markets had been conscious of his arrival, and had seized hold of him
that they might enervate him and poison him with their stenches. Then,
too, Lisa wanted to cast a spell over him, and for two or three days at
a time he would avoid her, as though she were some dissolving agency
which would destroy all his power of will should he approach too
closely. However, these paroxysms of puerile fear, these wild surgings
of his rebellious brain, always ended in thrills of the gentlest
tenderness, with yearnings to love and be loved, which he concealed
with a boyish shame.
It was more especially in the evening that his mind became blurred by
all his wild imaginings. Depressed by his day’s work, but shunning
sleep from a covert fear—the fear of the annihilation it brought with
it—he would remain later than ever at Monsieur Lebigre’s, or at the
Mehudins’; and on his return home he still refrained from going to bed,
and sat up writing and preparing for the great insurrection. By slow
degrees he devised a complete system of organisation. He divided Paris
into twenty sections, one for each arrondissement. Each section would
have a chief, a sort of general, under whose orders there were to be
twenty lieutenants commanding twenty companies of affiliated
associates. Every week, among the chiefs, there would be a
consultation, which was to be held in a different place each time; and,
the better to ensure secrecy and discretion, the associates would only
come in contact with their respective lieutenants, these alone
communicating with the chiefs of the sections. It also occurred to
Florent that it would be as well that the companies should believe
themselves charged with imaginary missions, as a means of putting the
police upon a wrong scent.
As for the employment of the insurrectionary forces, that would be all
simplicity. It would, of course, be necessary to wait till the
companies were quite complete, and then advantage would be taken of the
first public commotion. They would doubtless only have a certain number
of guns used for sporting purposes in their possession, so they would
commence by seizing the police stations and guard-houses, disarming the
soldiers of the line; resorting to violence as little as possible, and
inviting the men to make common cause with the people. Afterwards they
would march upon the Corps Législatif, and thence to the Hôtel de
Ville. This plan, to which Florent returned night after night, as
though it were some dramatic scenario which relieved his over-excited
nervous system, was as yet simply jotted down on scraps of paper, full
of erasures, which showed how the writer had felt his way, and revealed
each successive phase of his scientific yet puerile conception. When
Lisa had glanced through the notes, without understanding some of them,
she remained there trembling with fear; afraid to touch them further
lest they should explode in her hands like live shells.
A last memorandum frightened her more than any of the others. It was a
half sheet of paper on which Florent had sketched the distinguishing
insignia which the chiefs and the lieutenants were to wear. By the side
of these were rough drawings of the standards which the different
companies were to carry; and notes in pencil even described what
colours the banners should assume. The chiefs were to wear red scarves,
and the lieutenants red armlets.
To Lisa this seemed like an immediate realisation of the rising; she
saw all the men with their red badges marching past the pork shop,
firing bullets into her mirrors and marble, and carrying off sausages
and chitterlings from the window. The infamous projects of her
brother-in-law were surely directed against herself—against her own
happiness. She closed the drawer and looked round the room, reflecting
that it was she herself who had provided this man with a home—that he
slept between her sheets and used her furniture. And she was especially
exasperated at his keeping his abominable infernal machine in that
little deal table which she herself had used at Uncle Gradelle’s before
her marriage—a perfectly innocent, rickety little table.
For a while she stood thinking what she should do. In the first place,
it was useless to say anything to Quenu. For a moment it occurred to
her to provoke an explanation with Florent, but she dismissed that
idea, fearing lest he would only go and perpetrate his crime elsewhere,
and maliciously make a point of compromising them. Then gradually
growing somewhat calmer, she came to the conclusion that her best plan
would be to keep a careful watch over her brother-in-law. It would be
time enough to take further steps at the first sign of danger. She
already had quite sufficient evidence to send him back to the galleys.
On returning to the shop again, she found Augustine in a state of great
excitement. Little Pauline had disappeared more than half an hour
before, and to Lisa’s anxious questions the young woman could only
reply: “I don’t know where she can have got to, madame. She was on the
pavement there with a little boy. I was watching them, and then I had
to cut some ham for a gentleman, and I never saw them again.”
“I’ll wager it was Muche!” cried Lisa. “Ah, the young scoundrel!”
It was, indeed, Muche who had enticed Pauline away. The little girl,
who was wearing a new blue-striped frock that day for the first time,
had been anxious to exhibit it, and had accordingly taken her stand
outside the shop, manifesting great propriety of bearing, and
compressing her lips with the grave expression of a little woman of six
who is afraid of soiling her clothes. Her short and stiffly-starched
petticoats stood out like the skirts of a ballet girl, allowing a full
view of her tightly stretched white stockings and little sky-blue
boots. Her pinafore, which hung low about her neck, was finished off at
the shoulders with an edging of embroidery, below which appeared her
pretty little arms, bare and rosy. She had small turquoise rings in her
ears, a cross at her neck, a blue velvet ribbon in her well-brushed
hair; and she displayed all her mother’s plumpness and softness—the
gracefulness, indeed, of a new doll.
Muche had caught sight of her from the market, where he was amusing
himself by dropping little dead fishes into the gutter, following them
along the kerb as the water carried them away, and declaring that they
were swimming. However, the sight of Pauline standing in front of the
shop and looking so smart and pretty made him cross over to her,
capless as he was, with his blouse ragged, his trousers slipping down,
and his whole appearance suggestive of a seven-year-old street-arab.
His mother had certainly forbidden him to play any more with “that fat
booby of a girl who was stuffed by her parents till she almost burst”;
so he stood hesitating for a moment, but at last came up to Pauline,
and wanted to feel her pretty striped frock. The little girl, who had
at first felt flattered, then put on a prim air and stepped back,
exclaiming in a tone of displeasure: “Leave me alone. Mother says I’m
not to have anything to do with you.”
This brought a laugh to the lips of Muche, who was a wily, enterprising
young scamp.
“What a little flat you are!” he retorted. “What does it matter what
your mother says? Let’s go and play at shoving each other, eh?”
He doubtless nourished some wicked idea of dirtying the neat little
girl; but she, on seeing him prepare to give her a push in the back,
retreated as though about to return inside the shop. Muche thereupon
adopted a flattering tone like a born cajoler.
“You silly! I didn’t mean it,” said he. “How nice you look like that!
Is that little cross your mother’s?”
Pauline perked herself up, and replied that it was her own, whereupon
Muche gently led her to the corner of the Rue Pirouette, touching her
skirts the while and expressing his astonishment at their wonderful
stiffness. All this pleased the little girl immensely. She had been
very much vexed at not receiving any notice while she was exhibiting
herself outside the shop. However, in spite of all Muche’s
blandishments, she still refused to leave the footway.
“You stupid fatty!” thereupon exclaimed the youngster, relapsing into
coarseness. “I’ll squat you down in the gutter if you don’t look out,
Miss Fine-airs!”
The girl was dreadfully alarmed. Muche had caught hold of her by the
hand; but, recognising his mistake in policy, he again put on a
wheedling air, and began to fumble in his pocket.
“I’ve got a sou,” said he.
The sight of the coin had a soothing effect upon Pauline. The boy held
up the sou with the tips of his fingers, and the temptation to follow
it proved so great that the girl at last stepped down into the roadway.
Muche’s diplomacy was eminently successful.
“What do you like best?” he asked.
Pauline gave no immediate answer. She could not make up her mind; there
were so many things that she liked. Muche, however, ran over a whole
list of dainties—liquorice, molasses, gum-balls, and powdered sugar.
The powdered sugar made the girl ponder. One dipped one’s fingers into
it and sucked them; it was very nice. For a while she gravely
considered the matter. Then, at last making up her mind, she said:
“No, I like the mixed screws the best.”
Muche thereupon took hold of her arm, and she unresistingly allowed him
to lead her away. They crossed the Rue Rambuteau, followed the broad
footway skirting the markets, and went as far as a grocer’s shop in the
Rue de la Cossonnerie which was celebrated for its mixed screws. These
mixed screws are small screws of paper in which grocers put up all
sorts of damaged odds and ends, broken sugar-plums, fragments of
crystallised chestnuts—all the doubtful residuum of their jars of
sweets. Muche showed himself very gallant, allowed Pauline to choose
the screw—a blue one—paid his sou, and did not attempt to dispossess
her of the sweets. Outside, on the footway, she emptied the
miscellaneous collection of scraps into both pockets of her pinafore;
and they were such little pockets that they were quite filled. Then in
delight she began to munch the fragments one by one, wetting her
fingers to catch the fine sugary dust, with such effect that she melted
the scraps of sweets, and the pockets of her pinafore soon showed two
brownish stains. Muche laughed slily to himself. He had his arm about
the girl’s waist, and rumpled her frock at his ease whilst leading her
round the corner of the Rue Pierre Lescot, in the direction of the
Place des Innocents.
“You’ll come and play now, won’t you?” he asked. “That’s nice what
you’ve got in your pockets, ain’t it? You see that I didn’t want to do
you any harm, you big silly!”
Thereupon he plunged his own fingers into her pockets, and they entered
the square together. To this spot, no doubt, he had all along intended
to lure his victim. He did the honours of the square as though it were
his own private property, and indeed it was a favourite haunt of his,
where he often larked about for whole afternoons. Pauline had never
before strayed so far from home, and would have wept like an abducted
damsel had it not been that her pockets were full of sweets. The
fountain in the middle of the flowered lawn was sending sheets of water
down its tiers of basins, whilst, between the pilasters above, Jean
Goujon’s nymphs, looking very white beside the dingy grey stonework,
inclined their urns and displayed their nude graces in the grimy air of
the Saint Denis quarter. The two children walked round the fountain,
watching the water fall into the basins, and taking an interest in the
grass, with thoughts, no doubt, of crossing the central lawn, or
gliding into the clumps of holly and rhododendrons that bordered the
railings of the square. Little Muche, however, who had now effectually
rumpled the back of the pretty frock, said with his sly smile:
“Let’s play at throwing sand at each other, eh?”
Pauline had no will of her own left; and they began to throw the sand
at each other, keeping their eyes closed meanwhile. The sand made its
way in at the neck of the girl’s low bodice, and trickled down into her
stockings and boots. Muche was delighted to see the white pinafore
become quite yellow. But he doubtless considered that it was still far
too clean.
“Let’s go and plant trees, shall we?” he exclaimed suddenly. “I know
how to make such pretty gardens.”
“Really, gardens!” murmured Pauline full of admiration.
Then, as the keeper of the square happened to be absent, Muche told her
to make some holes in one of the borders; and dropping on her knees in
the middle of the soft mould, and leaning forward till she lay at full
length on her stomach, she dug her pretty little arms into the ground.
He, meantime, began to hunt for scraps of wood, and broke off branches.
These were the garden-trees which he planted in the holes that Pauline
made. He invariably complained, however, that the holes were not deep
enough, and rated the girl as though she were an idle workman and he an
indignant master. When she at last got up, she was black from head to
foot. Her hair was full of mould, her face was smeared with it, she
looked such a sight with her arms as black as a coalheaver’s that Muche
clapped his hands with glee, and exclaimed: “Now we must water the
trees. They won’t grow, you know, if we don’t water them.”
That was the finishing stroke. They went outside the square, scooped
the gutter-water up in the palms of their hands, and then ran back to
pour it over the bits of wood. On the way, Pauline, who was so fat that
she couldn’t run properly, let the water trickle between her fingers on
to her frock, so that by the time of her sixth journey she looked as if
she had been rolled in the gutter. Muche chuckled with delight on
beholding her dreadful condition. He made her sit down beside him under
a rhododendron near the garden they had made, and told her that the
trees were already beginning to grow. He had taken hold of her hand and
called her his little wife.
“You’re not sorry now that you came, are you,” he asked, “instead of
mooning about on the pavement, where there was nothing to do? I know
all sorts of fun we can have in the streets; you must come with me
again. You will, won’t you? But you mustn’t say anything to your
mother, mind. If you say a word to her, I’ll pull your hair the next
time I come past your shop.”
Pauline consented to everything; and then, as a last attention, Muche
filled both pockets of her pinafore with mould. However, all the sweets
were finished, and the girl began to get uneasy, and ceased playing.
Muche thereupon started pinching her, and she burst into tears, sobbing
that she wanted to go away. But at this the lad only grinned, and
played the bully, threatening that he would not take her home at all.
Then she grew terribly alarmed, and sobbed and gasped like a maiden in
the power of a libertine. Muche would certainly have ended by punching
her in order to stop her row, had not a shrill voice, the voice of
Mademoiselle Saget, exclaimed, close by: “Why, I declare it’s Pauline!
Leave her alone, you wicked young scoundrel!”
Then the old maid took the girl by the hand, with endless expressions
of amazement at the pitiful condition of her clothes. Muche showed no
alarm, but followed them, chuckling to himself, and declaring that it
was Pauline who had wanted to come with him, and had tumbled down.
Mademoiselle Saget was a regular frequenter of the Square des
Innocents. Every afternoon she would spend a good hour there to keep
herself well posted in the gossip of the common people. On either side
there is a long crescent of benches placed end to end; and on these the
poor folks who stifle in the hovels of the neighbouring narrow streets
assemble in crowds. There are withered, chilly-looking old women in
tumbled caps, and young ones in loose jackets and carelessly fastened
skirts, with bare heads and tired, faded faces, eloquent of the
wretchedness of their lives. There are some men also: tidy old buffers,
porters in greasy jackets, and equivocal-looking individuals in black
silk hats, while the foot-path is overrun by a swarm of youngsters
dragging toy carts without wheels about, filling pails with sand, and
screaming and fighting; a dreadful crew, with ragged clothes and dirty
noses, teeming in the sunshine like vermin.
Mademoiselle Saget was so slight and thin that she always managed to
insinuate herself into a place on one of the benches. She listened to
what was being said, and started a conversation with her neighbour,
some sallow-faced workingman’s wife, who sat mending linen, from time
to time producing handkerchiefs and stockings riddled with holes from a
little basket patched up with string. Moreover, Mademoiselle Saget had
plenty of acquaintances here. Amidst the excruciating squalling of the
children, and the ceaseless rumble of the traffic in the Rue Saint
Denis, she took part in no end of gossip, everlasting tales about the
tradesmen of the neighbourhood, the grocers, the butchers, and the
bakers, enough, indeed, to fill the columns of a local paper, and the
whole envenomed by refusals of credit and covert envy, such as is
always harboured by the poor. From these wretched creatures she also
obtained the most disgusting revelations, the gossip of low
lodging-houses and doorkeepers’ black-holes, all the filthy scandal of
the neighbourhood, which tickled her inquisitive appetite like hot
spice.
As she sat with her face turned towards the markets, she had
immediately in front of her the square and its three blocks of houses,
into the windows of which her eyes tried to pry. She seemed to
gradually rise and traverse the successive floors right up to the
garret skylights. She stared at the curtains; based an entire drama on
the appearance of a head between two shutters; and, by simply gazing at
the facades, ended by knowing the history of all the dwellers in these
houses. The Baratte Restaurant, with its wine shop, its gilt
wrought-iron _marquise_, forming a sort of terrace whence peeped the
foliage of a few plants in flower-pots, and its four low storeys, all
painted and decorated, had an especial interest for her. She gazed at
its yellow columns standing out against a background of tender blue, at
the whole of its imitation temple-front daubed on the facade of a
decrepit, tumble-down house, crowned at the summit by a parapet of
painted zinc. Behind the red-striped window-blinds she espied visions
of nice little lunches, delicate suppers, and uproarious, unlimited
orgies. And she did not hesitate to invent lies about the place. It was
there, she declared, that Florent came to gorge with those two hussies,
the Mehudins, on whom he lavished his money.
However, Pauline cried yet louder than before when the old maid took
hold of her hand. Mademoiselle Saget at first led her towards the gate
of the square; but before she got there she seemed to change her mind;
for she sat down at the end of a bench and tried to pacify the child.
“Come, now, give over crying, or the policeman will lock you up,” she
said to Pauline. “I’ll take you home safely. You know me, don’t you?
I’m a good friend. Come, come, let me see how prettily you can smile.”
The child, however, was choking with sobs and wanted to go away.
Mademoiselle Saget thereupon quietly allowed her to continue weeping,
reserving further remarks till she should have finished. The poor
little creature was shivering all over; her petticoats and stockings
were wet through, and as she wiped her tears away with her dirty hands
she plastered the whole of her face with earth to the very tips of her
ears. When at last she became a little calmer the old maid resumed in a
caressing tone: “Your mamma isn’t unkind, is she? She’s very fond of
you, isn’t she?”
“Oh, yes, indeed,” replied Pauline, still sobbing.
“And your papa, he’s good to you, too, isn’t he? He doesn’t flog you,
or quarrel with your mother, does he? What do they talk about when they
go to bed?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m asleep then.”
“Do they talk about your cousin Florent?”
“I don’t know.”
Mademoiselle Saget thereupon assumed a severe expression, and got up as
if about to go away.
“I’m afraid you are a little story-teller,” she said. “Don’t you know
that it’s very wicked to tell stories? I shall go away and leave you,
if you tell me lies, and then Muche will come back and pinch you.”
Pauline began to cry again at the threat of being abandoned. “Be quiet,
be quiet, you wicked little imp!” cried the old maid shaking her.
“There, there, now, I won’t go away. I’ll buy you a stick of
barley-sugar; yes, a stick of barley-sugar! So you don’t love your
cousin Florent, eh?”
“No, mamma says he isn’t good.”
“Ah, then, so you see your mother does say something.”
“One night when I was in bed with Mouton—I sleep with Mouton sometimes,
you know—I heard her say to father, ‘Your brother has only escaped from
the galleys to take us all back with him there.’”
Mademoiselle Saget gave vent to a faint cry, and sprang to her feet,
quivering all over. A ray of light had just broken upon her. Then
without a word she caught hold of Pauline’s hand and made her run till
they reached the pork shop, her lips meanwhile compressed by an inward
smile, and her eyes glistening with keen delight. At the corner of the
Rue Pirouette, Muche, who had so far followed them, amused at seeing
the girl running along in her muddy stockings, prudently disappeared.
Lisa was now in a state of terrible alarm; and when she saw her
daughter so bedraggled and limp, her consternation was such that she
turned the child round and round, without even thinking of beating her.
“She has been with little Muche,” said the old maid, in her malicious
voice. “I took her away at once, and I’ve brought her home. I found
them together in the square. I don’t know what they’ve been up to; but
that young vagabond is capable of anything.”
Lisa could not find a word to say; and she did not know where to take
hold of her daughter, so great was her disgust at the sight of the
child’s muddy boots, soiled stockings, torn skirts, and filthy face and
hands. The blue velvet ribbon, the earrings, and the necklet were all
concealed beneath a crust of mud. But what put the finishing touch to
Lisa’s exasperation was the discovery of the two pockets filled with
mould. She stooped and emptied them, regardless of the pink and white
flooring of the shop. And as she dragged Pauline away, she could only
gasp: “Come along, you filthy thing!”
Quite enlivened by this scene, Mademoiselle Saget now hurriedly made
her way across the Rue Rambuteau. Her little feet scarcely touched the
ground; her joy seemed to carry her along like a breeze which fanned
her with a caressing touch. She had at last found out what she had so
much wanted to know! For nearly a year she had been consumed by
curiosity, and now at a single stroke she had gained complete power
over Florent! This was unhoped-for contentment, positive salvation, for
she felt that Florent would have brought her to the tomb had she failed
much longer in satisfying her curiosity about him. At present she was
complete mistress of the whole neighbourhood of the markets. There was
no longer any gap in her information. She could have narrated the
secret history of every street, shop by shop. And thus, as she entered
the fruit market, she fairly gasped with delight, in a perfect
transport of pleasure.
“Hallo, Mademoiselle Saget,” cried La Sarriette from her stall, “what
are you smiling to yourself like that about? Have you won the grand
prize in the lottery?”
“No, no. Ah, my dear, if you only knew!”
Standing there amidst her fruit, La Sarriette, in her picturesque
disarray, looked charming. Frizzy hair fell over her brow like vine
branches. Her bare arms and neck, indeed all the rosy flesh she showed,
bloomed with the freshness of peach and cherry. She had playfully hung
some cherries on her ears, black cherries which dangled against her
cheeks when she stooped, shaking with merry laughter. She was eating
currants, and her merriment arose from the way in which she was
smearing her face with them. Her lips were bright red, glistening with
the juice of the fruit, as though they had been painted and perfumed
with some seraglio face-paint. A perfume of plum exhaled from her gown,
while from the kerchief carelessly fastened across her breast came an
odour of strawberries.
Fruits of all kinds were piled around her in her narrow stall. On the
shelves at the back were rows of melons, so-called “cantaloups”
swarming with wart-like knots, “maraichers” whose skin was covered with
grey lace-like netting, and “culs-de-singe” displaying smooth bare
bumps. In front was an array of choice fruits, carefully arranged in
baskets, and showing like smooth round cheeks seeking to hide
themselves, or glimpses of sweet childish faces, half veiled by leaves.
Especially was this the case with the peaches, the blushing peaches of
Montreuil, with skin as delicate and clear as that of northern maidens,
and the yellow, sun-burnt peaches from the south, brown like the
damsels of Provence. The apricots, on their beds of moss, gleamed with
the hue of amber or with that sunset glow which so warmly colours the
necks of brunettes at the nape, just under the little wavy curls which
fall below the chignon. The cherries, ranged one by one, resembled the
short lips of smiling Chinese girls; the Montmorencies suggested the
dumpy mouths of buxom women; the English ones were longer and
graver-looking; the common black ones seemed as though they had been
bruised and crushed by kisses; while the white-hearts, with their
patches of rose and white, appeared to smile with mingled merriment and
vexation. Then piles of apples and pears, built up with architectural
symmetry, often in pyramids, displayed the ruddy glow of budding
breasts and the gleaming sheen of shoulders, quite a show of nudity,
lurking modestly behind a screen of fern-leaves. There were all sorts
of varieties—little red ones so tiny that they seemed to be yet in the
cradle, shapeless “rambours” for baking, “calvilles” in light yellow
gowns, sanguineous-looking “Canadas,” blotched “chataignier” apples,
fair freckled rennets and dusky russets. Then came the pears—the
“blanquettes,” the “British queens,” the “Beurres,” the “messirejeans,”
and the “duchesses”—some dumpy, some long and tapering, some with
slender necks, and others with thick-set shoulders, their green and
yellow bellies picked out at times with a splotch of carmine. By the
side of these the transparent plums resembled tender, chlorotic
virgins; the greengages and the Orleans plums paled as with modest
innocence, while the mirabelles lay like golden beads of a rosary
forgotten in a box amongst sticks of vanilla. And the strawberries
exhaled a sweet perfume—a perfume of youth—especially those little ones
which are gathered in the woods, and which are far more aromatic than
the large ones grown in gardens, for these breathe an insipid odour
suggestive of the watering-pot. Raspberries added their fragrance to
the pure scent. The currants—red, white, and black—smiled with a
knowing air; whilst the heavy clusters of grapes, laden with
intoxication, lay languorously at the edges of their wicker baskets,
over the sides of which dangled some of the berries, scorched by the
hot caresses of the voluptuous sun.
It was there that La Sarriette lived in an orchard, as it were, in an
atmosphere of sweet, intoxicating scents. The cheaper fruits—the
cherries, plums, and strawberries—were piled up in front of her in
paper-lined baskets, and the juice coming from their bruised ripeness
stained the stall-front, and steamed, with a strong perfume, in the
heat. She would feel quite giddy on those blazing July afternoons when
the melons enveloped her with a powerful, vaporous odour of musk; and
then with her loosened kerchief, fresh as she was with the springtide
of life, she brought sudden temptation to all who saw her. It was
she—it was her arms and necks which gave that semblance of amorous
vitality to her fruit. On the stall next to her an old woman, a hideous
old drunkard, displayed nothing but wrinkled apples, pears as flabby as
herself, and cadaverous apricots of a witch-like sallowness. La
Sarriette’s stall, however, spoke of love and passion. The cherries
looked like the red kisses of her bright lips; the silky peaches were
not more delicate than her neck; to the plums she seemed to have lent
the skin from her brow and chin; while some of her own crimson blood
coursed through the veins of the currants. All the scents of the avenue
of flowers behind her stall were but insipid beside the aroma of
vitality which exhaled from her open baskets and falling kerchief.
That day she was quite intoxicated by the scent of a large arrival of
mirabelle plums, which filled the market. She could plainly see that
Mademoiselle Saget had learnt some great piece of news, and she wished
to make her talk. But the old maid stamped impatiently whilst she
repeated: “No, no; I’ve no time. I’m in a great hurry to see Madame
Lecœur. I’ve just learnt something and no mistake. You can come with
me, if you like.”
As a matter of fact, she had simply gone through the fruit market for
the purpose of enticing La Sarriette to go with her. The girl could not
refuse temptation. Monsieur Jules, clean-shaven and as fresh as a
cherub, was seated there, swaying to and fro on his chair.
“Just look after the stall for a minute, will you?” La Sarriette said
to him. “I’ll be back directly.”
Jules, however, got up and called after her, in a thick voice: “Not I;
no fear! I’m off! I’m not going to wait an hour for you, as I did the
other day. And, besides, those cursed plums of yours quite make my head
ache.”
Then he calmly strolled off, with his hands in his pockets, and the
stall was left to look after itself. Mademoiselle Saget went so fast
that La Sarriette had to run. In the butter pavilion a neighbour of
Madame Lecœur’s told them that she was below in the cellar; and so,
whilst La Sarriette went down to find her, the old maid installed
herself amidst the cheeses.
The cellar under the butter market is a very gloomy spot. The rows of
storerooms are protected by a very fine wire meshing, as a safeguard
against fire; and the gas jets, which are very few and far between,
glimmer like yellow splotches destitute of radiance in the heavy,
malordorous atmosphere beneath the low vault. Madame Lecœur, however,
was at work on her butter at one of the tables placed parallel with the
Rue Berger, and here a pale light filtered through the vent-holes. The
tables, which are continually sluiced with a flood of water from the
taps, are as white as though they were quite new. With her back turned
to the pump in the rear, Madame Lecœur was kneading her butter in a
kind of oak box. She took some of different sorts which lay beside her,
and mixed the varieties together, correcting one by another, just as is
done in the blending of wines. Bent almost double, and showing sharp,
bony shoulders, and arms bared to the elbows, as scraggy and knotted as
pea-rods, she dug her fists into the greasy paste in front of her,
which was assuming a whitish and chalky appearance. It was trying work,
and she heaved a sigh at each fresh effort.
“Mademoiselle Saget wants to speak to you, aunt,” said La Sarriette.
Madame Lecœur stopped her work, and pulled her cap over her hair with
her greasy fingers, seemingly quite careless of staining it. “I’ve
nearly finished. Ask her to wait a moment,” she said.
“She’s got something very particular to tell you,” continued La
Sarriette.
“I won’t be more than a minute, my dear.”
Then she again plunged her arms into the butter, which buried them up
to the elbows. Previously softened in warm water, it covered Madame
Lecœur’s parchment-like skin as with an oily film, and threw the big
purple veins that streaked her flesh into strong relief. La Sarriette
was quite disgusted by the sight of those hideous arms working so
frantically amidst the melting mass. However, she could recall the time
when her own pretty little hands had manipulated the butter for whole
afternoons at a time. It had even been a sort of almond-paste to her, a
cosmetic which had kept her skin white and her nails delicately pink;
and even now her slender fingers retained the suppleness it had endowed
them with.
“I don’t think that butter of yours will be very good, aunt,” she
continued, after a pause. “Some of the sorts seem much too strong.”
“I’m quite aware of that,” replied Madame Lecœur, between a couple of
groans. “But what can I do? I must use everything up. There are some
folks who insist upon having butter cheap, and so cheap butter must be
made for them. Oh! it’s always quite good enough for those who buy it.”
La Sarriette reflected that she would hardly care to eat butter which
had been worked by her aunt’s arms. Then she glanced at a little jar
full of a sort of reddish dye. “Your colouring is too pale,” she said.
This colouring-matter—“raucourt,” as the Parisians call it is used to
give the butter a fine yellow tint. The butter women imagine that its
composition is known only to themselves, and keep it very secret.
However, it is merely made from anotta;[*] though a composition of
carrots and marigold is at times substituted for it.
[*] Anotta, which is obtained from the pulp surrounding the seeds of
the _Bixa Orellana_, is used for a good many purposes besides the
colouring of butter and cheese. It frequently enters into the
composition of chocolate, and is employed to dye nankeen. Police court
proceedings have also shown that it is well known to the London
milkmen, who are in the habit of adding water to their merchandise.
—Translator.
“Come, do be quick!” La Sarriette now exclaimed, for she was getting
impatient, and was, moreover, no longer accustomed to the malodorous
atmosphere of the cellar. “Mademoiselle Saget will be going. I fancy
she’s got something very important to tell you abut my uncle Gavard.”
On hearing this, Madame Lecœur abruptly ceased working. She at once
abandoned both butter and dye, and did not even wait to wipe her arms.
With a slight tap of her hand she settled her cap on her head again,
and made her way up the steps, at her niece’s heels, anxiously
repeating: “Do you really think that she’ll have gone away?”
She was reassured, however, on catching sight of Mademoiselle Saget
amidst the cheeses. The old maid had taken good care not to go away
before Madame Lecœur’s arrival. The three women seated themselves at
the far end of the stall, crowding closely together, and their faces
almost touching one another. Mademoiselle Saget remained silent for two
long minutes, and then, seeing that the others were burning with
curiosity, she began, in her shrill voice: “You know that Florent!
Well, I can tell you now where he comes from.”
For another moment she kept them in suspense; and then, in a deep,
melodramatic voice, she said: “He comes from the galleys!”
The cheeses were reeking around the three women. On the two shelves at
the far end of the stall were huge masses of butter: Brittany butters
overflowing from baskets; Normandy butters, wrapped in canvas, and
resembling models of stomachs over which some sculptor had thrown damp
cloths to keep them from drying; while other great blocks had been cut
into, fashioned into perpendicular rocky masses full of crevasses and
valleys, and resembling fallen mountain crests gilded by the pale sun
of an autumn evening.
Beneath the stall show-table, formed of a slab of red marble veined
with grey, baskets of eggs gleamed with a chalky whiteness; while on
layers of straw in boxes were Bondons, placed end to end, and Gournays,
arranged like medals, forming darker patches tinted with green. But it
was upon the table that the cheeses appeared in greatest profusion.
Here, by the side of the pound-rolls of butter lying on white-beet
leaves, spread a gigantic Cantal cheese, cloven here and there as by an
axe; then came a golden-hued Cheshire, and next a Gruyere, resembling a
wheel fallen from some barbarian chariot; whilst farther on were some
Dutch cheeses, suggesting decapitated heads suffused with dry blood,
and having all that hardness of skulls which in France has gained them
the name of “death’s heads.” Amidst the heavy exhalations of these, a
Parmesan set a spicy aroma. Then there came three Brie cheeses
displayed on round platters, and looking like melancholy extinct moons.
Two of them, very dry, were at the full; the third, in its second
quarter, was melting away in a white cream, which had spread into a
pool and flowed over the little wooden barriers with which an attempt
had been made to arrest its course. Next came some Port Saluts, similar
to antique discs, with exergues bearing their makers’ names in print. A
Romantour, in its tin-foil wrapper, suggested a bar of nougat or some
sweet cheese astray amidst all these pungent, fermenting curds. The
Roqueforts under their glass covers also had a princely air, their fat
faces marbled with blue and yellow, as though they were suffering from
some unpleasant malady such as attacks the wealthy gluttons who eat too
many truffles. And on a dish by the side of these, the hard grey goats’
milk cheeses, about the size of a child’s fist, resembled the pebbles
which the billy-goats send rolling down the stony paths as they clamber
along ahead of their flocks. Next came the strong smelling cheeses: the
Mont d’Ors, of a bright yellow hue, and exhaling a comparatively mild
odour; the Troyes, very thick, and bruised at the edges, and of a far
more pungent smell, recalling the dampness of a cellar; the Camemberts,
suggestive of high game; the square Neufchatels, Limbourgs, Marolles,
and Pont l’Eveques, each adding its own particular sharp scent to the
malodorous bouquet, till it became perfectly pestilential; the
Livarots, ruddy in hue, and as irritating to the throat as sulphur
fumes; and, lastly, stronger than all the others, the Olivets, wrapped
in walnut leaves, like the carrion which peasants cover with branches
as it lies rotting in the hedgerow under the blazing sun.
The heat of the afternoon had softened the cheeses; the patches of
mould on their crusts were melting, and glistening with tints of ruddy
bronze and verdigris. Beneath their cover of leaves, the skins of the
Olivets seemed to be heaving as with the slow, deep respiration of a
sleeping man. A Livarot was swarming with life; and in a fragile box
behind the scales a Gerome flavoured with aniseed diffused such a
pestilential smell that all around it the very flies had fallen
lifeless on the gray-veined slap of ruddy marble.
This Gerome was almost immediately under Mademoiselle Saget’s nose; so
she drew back, and leaned her head against the big sheets of white and
yellow paper which were hanging in a corner.
“Yes,” she repeated, with an expression of disgust, “he comes from the
galleys! Ah, those Quenu-Gradelles have no reason to put on so many
airs!”
Madame Lecœur and La Sarriette, however, had burst into exclamations of
astonishment: “It wasn’t possible, surely! What had he done to be sent
to the galleys? Could anyone, now, have ever suspected that Madame
Quenu, whose virtue was the pride of the whole neighbourhood, would
choose a convict for a lover?”
“Ah, but you don’t understand at all!” cried the old maid impatiently.
“Just listen, now, while I explain things. I was quite certain that I
had seen that great lanky fellow somewhere before.”
Then she proceeded to tell them Florent’s story. She had recalled to
mind a vague report which had circulated of a nephew of old Gradelle
being transported to Cayenne for murdering six gendarmes at a
barricade. She had even seen this nephew on one occasion in the Rue
Pirouette. The pretended cousin was undoubtedly the same man. Then she
began to bemoan her waning powers. Her memory was quite going, she
said; she would soon be unable to remember anything. And she bewailed
her perishing memory as bitterly as any learned man might bewail the
loss of his notes representing the work of a life-time, on seeing them
swept away by a gust of wind.
“Six gendarmes!” murmured La Sarriette, admiringly; “he must have a
very heavy fist!”
“And he’s made away with plenty of others, as well,” added Mademoiselle
Saget. “I shouldn’t advise you to meet him at night!”
“What a villain!” stammered out Madame Lecœur, quite terrified.
The slanting beams of the sinking sun were now enfilading the pavilion,
and the odour of the cheeses became stronger than ever. That of the
Marolles seemed to predominate, borne hither and thither in powerful
whiffs. Then, however, the wind appeared to change, and suddenly the
emanations of the Limbourgs were wafted towards the three women,
pungent and bitter, like the last gasps of a dying man.
“But in that case,” resumed Madame Lecœur, “he must be fat Lisa’s
brother-in-law. And we thought that he was her lover!”
The women exchanged glances. This aspect of the case took them by
surprise. They were loth to give up their first theory. However, La
Sarriette, turning to Mademoiselle Saget, remarked: “That must have
been all wrong. Besides, you yourself say that he’s always running
after the two Mehudin girls.”
“Certainly he is,” exclaimed Mademoiselle Saget sharply, fancying that
her word was doubted. “He dangles about them every evening. But, after
all, it’s no concern of ours, is it? We are virtuous women, and what he
does makes no difference to us, the horrid scoundrel!”
“No, certainly not,” agreed the other two. “He’s a consummate villain.”
The affair was becoming tragical. Of course beautiful Lisa was now out
of the question, but for this they found ample consolation in
prophesying that Florent would bring about some frightful catastrophe.
It was quite clear, they said, that he had got some base design in his
head. When people like him escaped from gaol it was only to burn
everything down; and if he had come to the markets it must assuredly be
for some abominable purpose. Then they began to indulge in the wildest
suppositions. The two dealers declared that they would put additional
padlocks to the doors of their storerooms; and La Sarriette called to
mind that a basket of peaches had been stolen from her during the
previous week. Mademoiselle Saget, however, quite frightened the two
others by informing them that that was not the way in which the Reds
behaved; they despised such trifles as baskets of peaches; their plan
was to band themselves together in companies of two or three hundred,
kill everybody they came across, and then plunder and pillage at their
ease. That was “politics,” she said, with the superior air of one who
knew what she was talking about. Madame Lecœur felt quite ill. She
already saw Florent and his accomplices hiding in the cellars, and
rushing out during the night to set the markets in flames and sack
Paris.
“Ah! by the way,” suddenly exclaimed the old maid, “now I think of it,
there’s all that money of old Gradelle’s! Dear me, dear me, those
Quenus can’t be at all at their ease!”
She now looked quite gay again. The conversation took a fresh turn, and
the others fell foul of the Quenus when Mademoiselle Saget had told
them the history of the treasure discovered in the salting-tub, with
every particular of which she was acquainted. She was even able to
inform them of the exact amount of the money found—eighty-five thousand
francs—though neither Lisa nor Quenu was aware of having revealed this
to a living soul. However, it was clear that the Quenus had not given
the great lanky fellow his share. He was too shabbily dressed for that.
Perhaps he had never even heard of the discovery of the treasure.
Plainly enough, they were all thieves in his family. Then the three
women bent their heads together and spoke in lower tones. They were
unanimously of opinion that it might perhaps be dangerous to attack the
beautiful Lisa, but it was decidedly necessary that they should settle
the Red Republican’s hash, so that he might no longer prey upon the
purse of poor Monsieur Gavard.
At the mention of Gavard there came a pause. The gossips looked at each
other with a circumspect air. And then, as they drew breath, they
inhaled the odour of the Camemberts, whose gamy scent had overpowered
the less penetrating emanations of the Marolles and the Limbourgs, and
spread around with remarkable power. Every now and then, however, a
slight whiff, a flutelike note, came from the Parmesan, while the Bries
contributed a soft, musty scent, the gentle, insipid sound, as it were,
of damp tambourines. Next followed an overpowering refrain from the
Livarots, and afterwards the Gerome, flavoured with aniseed, kept up
the symphony with a high prolonged note, like that of a vocalist during
a pause in the accompaniment.
“I have seen Madame Leonce,” Mademoiselle Saget at last continued, with
a significant expression.
At this the two others became extremely attentive. Madame Leonce was
the doorkeeper of the house where Gavard lived in the Rue de la
Cossonnerie. It was an old house standing back, with its ground floor
occupied by an importer of oranges and lemons, who had had the frontage
coloured blue as high as the first floor. Madame Leonce acted as
Gavard’s housekeeper, kept the keys of his cupboards and closets, and
brought him up tisane when he happened to catch cold. She was a
severe-looking woman, between fifty and sixty years of age, and spoke
slowly, but at endless length. Mademoiselle Saget, who went to drink
coffee with her every Wednesday evening, had cultivated her friendship
more closely than ever since the poultry dealer had gone to lodge in
the house. They would talk about the worthy man for hours at a time.
They both professed the greatest affection for him, and a keen desire
to ensure his comfort and happiness.
“Yes, I have seen Madame Leonce,” repeated the old maid. “We had a cup
of coffee together last night. She was greatly worried. It seems that
Monsieur Gavard never comes home now before one o’clock in the morning.
Last Sunday she took him up some broth, as she thought he looked quite
ill.”
“Oh, she knows very well what she’s about,” exclaimed Madame Lecœur,
whom these attentions to Gavard somewhat alarmed.
Mademoiselle Saget felt bound to defend her friend. “Oh, really, you
are quite mistaken,” said she. “Madame Leonce is much above her
position; she is quite a lady. If she wanted to enrich herself at
Monsieur Gavard’s expense, she might easily have done so long ago. It
seems that he leaves everything lying about in the most careless
fashion. It’s about that, indeed, that I want to speak to you. But
you’ll not repeat anything I say, will you? I am telling it you in
strict confidence.”
Both the others swore that they would never breathe a word of what they
might hear; and they craned out their necks with eager curiosity,
whilst the old maid solemnly resumed: “Well, then, Monsieur Gavard has
been behaving very strangely of late. He has been buying firearms—a
great big pistol—one of those which revolve, you know. Madame Leonce
says that things are awful, for this pistol is always lying about on
the table or the mantelpiece; and she daren’t dust anywhere near it.
But that isn’t all. His money—”
“His money!” echoed Madame Lecœur, with blazing cheeks.
“Well, he’s disposed of all his stocks and shares. He’s sold
everything, and keeps a great heap of gold in a cupboard.”
“A heap of gold!” exclaimed La Sarriette in ecstasy.
“Yes, a great heap of gold. It covers a whole shelf, and is quite
dazzling. Madame Leonce told me that one morning Gavard opened the
cupboard in her presence, and that the money quite blinded her, it
shone so.”
There was another pause. The eyes of the three women were blinking as
though the dazzling pile of gold was before them. Presently La
Sarriette began to laugh.
“What a jolly time I would have with Jules if my uncle would give that
money to me!” said she.
Madame Lecœur, however, seemed quite overwhelmed by this revelation,
crushed beneath the weight of the gold which she could not banish from
her sight. Covetous envy thrilled her. But at last, raising her skinny
arms and shrivelled hands, her finger-nails still stuffed with butter,
she stammered in a voice full of bitter distress: “Oh, I mustn’t think
of it! It’s too dreadful!”
“Well, it would all be yours, you know, if anything were to happen to
Monsieur Gavard,” retorted Mademoiselle Saget. “If I were in your
place, I would look after my interests. That revolver means nothing
good, you may depend upon it. Monsieur Gavard has got into the hands of
evil counsellors; and I’m afraid it will all end badly.”
Then the conversation again turned upon Florent. The three women
assailed him more violently than ever. And afterwards, with perfect
composure, they began to discuss what would be the result of all these
dark goings-on so far as he and Gavard were concerned; certainly it
would be no pleasant one if there was any gossiping. And thereupon they
swore that they themselves would never repeat a word of what they knew;
not, however, because that scoundrel Florent merited any consideration,
but because it was necessary, at all costs, to save that worthy
Monsieur Gavard from being compromised. Then they rose from their
seats, and Mademoiselle Saget was burning as if to go away when the
butter dealer asked her: “All the same, in case of accident, do you
think that Madame Leonce can be trusted? I dare say she has the key of
the cupboard.”
“Well, that’s more than I can tell you,” replied the old maid. “I
believe she’s a very honest woman; but, after all, there’s no telling.
There are circumstances, you know, which tempt the best of people.
Anyhow, I’ve warned you both; and you must do what you think proper.”
As the three women stood there, taking leave of each other, the odour
of the cheeses seemed to become more pestilential than ever. It was a
cacophony of smells, ranging from the heavily oppressive odour of the
Dutch cheeses and the Gruyeres to the alkaline pungency of the Olivets.
From the Cantal, the Cheshire, and the goats’ milk cheeses there seemed
to come a deep breath like the sound of a bassoon, amidst which the
sharp, sudden whiffs of the Neufchatels, the Troyes, and the Mont d’Ors
contributed short, detached notes. And then the different odours
appeared to mingle one with another, the reek of the Limbourgs, the
Port Saluts, the Geromes, the Marolles, the Livarots, and the Pont
l’Eveques uniting in one general, overpowering stench sufficient to
provoke asphyxia. And yet it almost seemed as though it were not the
cheeses but the vile words of Madame Lecœur and Mademoiselle Saget that
diffused this awful odour.
“I’m very much obliged to you, indeed I am,” said the butter dealer.
“If ever I get rich, you shall not find yourself forgotten.”
The old maid still lingered in the stall. Taking up a Bondon, she
turned it round, and put it down on the slab again. Then she asked its
price.
“To me!” she added, with a smile.
“Oh, nothing to you,” replied Madame Lecœur. “I’ll make you a present
of it.” And again she exclaimed: “Ah, if I were only rich!”
Mademoiselle Saget thereupon told her that some day or other she would
be rich. The Bondon had already disappeared within the old maid’s bag.
And now the butter dealer returned to the cellar, while Mademoiselle
Saget escorted La Sarriette back to her stall. On reaching it they
talked for a moment or two about Monsieur Jules. The fruits around them
diffused a fresh scent of summer.
“It smells much nicer here than at your aunt’s,” said the old maid. “I
felt quite ill a little time ago. I can’t think how she manages to
exist there. But here it’s very sweet and pleasant. It makes you look
quite rosy, my dear.”
La Sarriette began to laugh, for she was fond of compliments. Then she
served a lady with a pound of mirabelle plums, telling her that they
were as sweet as sugar.
“I should like to buy some of those mirabelles too,” murmured
Mademoiselle Saget, when the lady had gone away; “only I want so few. A
lone woman, you know.”
“Take a handful of them,” exclaimed the pretty brunette. “That won’t
ruin me. Send Jules back to me if you see him, will you? You’ll most
likely find him smoking his cigar on the first bench to the right as
you turn out of the covered way.”
Mademoiselle Saget distended her fingers as widely as possible in order
to take a handful of mirabelles, which joined the Bondon in the bag.
Then she pretended to leave the market, but in reality made a detour by
one of the covered ways, thinking, as she walked slowly along, that the
mirabelles and Bondon would not make a very substantial dinner. When
she was unable, during her afternoon perambulations, to wheedle
stallkeepers into filling her bag for her, she was reduced to dining
off the merest scraps. So she now slyly made her way back to the butter
pavilions, where, on the side of the Rue Berger, at the back of the
offices of the oyster salesmen, there were some stalls at which cooked
meat was sold. Every morning little closed box-like carts, lined with
zinc and furnished with ventilators, drew up in front of the larger
Parisian kitchens and carried away the leavings of the restaurants, the
embassies, and State Ministries. These leavings were conveyed to the
market cellars and there sorted. By nine o’clock plates of food were
displayed for sale at prices ranging from three to five sous, their
contents comprising slices of meat, scraps of game, heads and tails of
fishes, bits of galantine, stray vegetables, and, by way of dessert,
cakes scarcely cut into, and other confectionery. Poor starving
wretches, scantily-paid clerks, and women shivering with fever were to
be seen crowding around, and the street lads occasionally amused
themselves by hooting the pale-faced individuals, known to be misers,
who only made their purchases after slyly glancing about them to see
that they were not observed.[*] Mademoiselle Saget wriggled her way to
a stall, the keeper of which boasted that the scraps she sold came
exclusively from the Tuileries. One day, indeed, she had induced the
old maid to buy a slice of leg of mutton by informing that it had come
from the plate of the Emperor himself; and this slice of mutton, eaten
with no little pride, had been a soothing consolation to Mademoiselle
Saget’s vanity. The wariness of her approach to the stall was,
moreover, solely caused by her desire to keep well with the
neighbouring shop people, whose premises she was eternally haunting
without ever buying anything. Her usual tactics were to quarrel with
them as soon as she had managed to learn their histories, when she
would bestow her patronage upon a fresh set, desert it in due course,
and then gradually make friends again with those with whom she had
quarrelled. In this way she made the complete circuit of the market
neighbourhood, ferreting about in every shop and stall. Anyone would
have imagined that she consumed an enormous amount of provisions,
whereas, in point of fact, she lived solely upon presents and the few
scraps which she was compelled to buy when people were not in the
giving vein.
[*] The dealers in these scraps are called _bijoutiers_, or jewellers,
whilst the scraps themselves are known as _harlequins_, the idea being
that they are of all colours and shapes when mingled together, thus
suggesting harlequin’s variegated attire.—Translator.
On that particular evening there was only a tall old man standing in
front of the stall. He was sniffing at a plate containing a mixture of
meat and fish. Mademoiselle Saget, in her turn, began to sniff at a
plate of cold fried fish. The price of it was three sous, but, by dint
of bargaining, she got it for two. The cold fish then vanished into the
bag. Other customers now arrived, and with a uniform impulse lowered
their noses over the plates. The smell of the stall was very
disgusting, suggestive alike of greasy dishes and a dirty sink.[*]
[*] Particulars of the strange and repulsive trade in harlequins, which
even nowadays is not extinct, will be found in Privat d’Anglemont’s
well-known book _Paris Anecdote_, written at the very period with which
M. Zola deals in the present work. My father, Henry Vizetelly, also
gave some account of it in his _Glances Back through Seventy Years_, in
a chapter describing the odd ways in which certain Parisians contrive
to get a living.—Translator.
“Come and see me to-morrow,” the stallkeeper called out to the old
maid, “and I’ll put something nice on one side for you. There’s going
to be a grand dinner at the Tuileries to-night.”
Mademoiselle Saget was just promising to come, when, happening to turn
round, she discovered Gavard looking at her and listening to what she
was saying. She turned very red, and, contracting her skinny shoulders,
hurried away, affecting not to recognise him. Gavard, however, followed
her for a few yards, shrugging his shoulders and muttering to himself
that he was no longer surprised at the old shrew’s malice, now he knew
that “she poisoned herself with the filth carted away from the
Tuileries.”
On the very next morning vague rumours began to circulate in the
markets. Madame Lecœur and La Sarriette were in their own fashion
keeping the oaths of silence they had taken. For her own part,
Mademoiselle Saget warily held her tongue, leaving the two others to
circulate the story of Florent’s antecedents. At first only a few
meagre details were hawked about in low tones; then various versions of
the facts got into circulation, incidents were exaggerated, and
gradually quite a legend was constructed, in which Florent played the
part of a perfect bogey man. He had killed ten gendarmes at the
barricade in the Rue Greneta, said some; he had returned to France on a
pirate ship whose crew scoured the seas to murder everyone they came
across, said others; whilst a third set declared that ever since his
arrival he had been observed prowling about at nighttime with
suspicious-looking characters, of whom he was undoubtedly the leader.
Soon the imaginative market women indulged in the highest flights of
fancy, revelled in the most melodramatic ideas. There was talk of a
band of smugglers plying their nefarious calling in the very heart of
Paris, and of a vast central association formed for systematically
robbing the stalls in the markets. Much pity was expressed for the
Quenu-Gradelles, mingled with malicious allusions to their uncle’s
fortune. That fortune was an endless subject of discussion. The general
opinion was that Florent had returned to claim his share of the
treasure; however, as no good reason was forthcoming to explain why the
division had not taken place already, it was asserted that Florent was
waiting for some opportunity which might enable him to pocket the whole
amount. The Quenu-Gradelles would certainly be found murdered some
morning, it was said; and a rumour spread that dreadful quarrels
already took place every night between the two brothers and beautiful
Lisa.
When these stories reached the ears of the beautiful Norman, she
shrugged her shoulders and burst out laughing.
“Get away with you!” she cried, “you don’t know him. Why, the dear
fellow’s as gentle as a lamb.”
She had recently refused the hand of Monsieur Lebigre, who had at last
ventured upon a formal proposal. For two months past he had given the
Mehudins a bottle of some liqueur every Sunday. It was Rose who brought
it, and she was always charged with a compliment for La Normande, some
pretty speech which she faithfully repeated, without appearing in the
slightest degree embarrassed by the peculiar commission. When Monsieur
Lebigre was rejected, he did not pine, but to show that he took no
offence and was still hopeful, he sent Rose on the following Sunday
with two bottles of champagne and a large bunch of flowers. She gave
them into the handsome fish-girl’s own hands, repeating, as she did so,
the wine dealer’s prose madrigal:
“Monsieur Lebigre begs you to drink this to his health, which has been
greatly shaken by you know what. He hopes that you will one day be
willing to cure him, by being for him as pretty and as sweet as these
flowers.”
La Normande was much amused by the servant’s delighted air. She kissed
her as she spoke to her of her master, and asked her if he wore braces,
and snored at nights. Then she made her take the champagne and flowers
back with her. “Tell Monsieur Lebigre,” said she, “that he’s not to
send you here again. It quite vexes me to see you coming here so
meekly, with your bottles under your arms.”
“Oh, he wishes me to come,” replied Rose, as she went away. “It is
wrong of you to distress him. He is a very handsome man.”
La Normande, however, was quite conquered by Florent’s affectionate
nature. She continued to follow Muche’s lessons of an evening in the
lamplight, indulging the while in a dream of marrying this man who was
so kind to children. She would still keep her fish stall, while he
would doubtless rise to a position of importance in the administrative
staff of the markets. This dream of hers, however, was scarcely
furthered by the tutor’s respectful bearing towards her. He bowed to
her, and kept himself at a distance, when she have liked to laugh with
him, and love him as she knew how to love. But it was just this covert
resistance on Florent’s part which continually brought her back to the
dream of marrying him. She realised that he lived in a loftier sphere
than her own; and by becoming his wife she imagined that her vanity
would reap no little satisfaction.