CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION: THE WRITER'S BELLY
by Mark Kurlansky

THE BELLY OF PARIS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

NOTES ON FOOD AND HISTORY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INTRODUCTION

The Writers Belly
Mark Kurlansky

To many Americans this may seem odd, but when I was a teenager my hero was Emile Zola. This was not because he spoke out so forcefully and dramatically against anti-Semitism and corruption in high places when Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish artillery captain, was framed for an act of espionage and was serving a life sentence in a penal colony. And not just because he did things like that all his life. It was because Zola was engaged, a writer who understood that his success gave him a platform, and he had a profound sense of the responsibility that implied. All over the world there have been such writers. Victor Hugo was another one, Latin America has been famous for them, so have Africa and Asia. America had James Baldwin and John Steinbeck. What was so exceptional about Zola was that he was one of the rare politically engaged writers who never let his political convictions compromise his artistry.

Zola came from a generation much influenced by Hugo. But Zola admired Hugo more for his political commitment than for his romantic prose, or, in Zola's words, his “mountainous rhetoric,” which he found “chilling.”

Zola, a highly political man, always insisted on the separation of art and politics. Though he very much wanted to be known for his political stances, he did not want his novels to be thought of as political pieces. In 1876, when L'Assommoir, sometimes titled in English The Dram Shop, was first serialized, critics infuriated Zola by calling him a socialist writer for his dark depiction of working-class life. He responded, “I do not accept the label you paste on my back. I mean to be a novelist, purely and simply, without any qualifying adjective; if you insist on qualifying me, say that I am a naturalistic novelist. That will not annoy me.” Of course, his concern for the plight of the poor did not necessarily make him a socialist. He read Charles Fourier, Pierre Proudhon, and Karl Marx, and he appreciated their arguments, especially those of Marx, which were presented in the structure of science, because Zola worshipped science. But he was never completely comfortable with the movement, which is probably why the revolutionaries depicted in his books, especially in The Belly of Paris, are virtually comic characters. He was clearly a progressive firmly in the left wing of nineteenth-century politics, but he wanted to keep the distinction between a leftist novelist and a leftist who writes novels.

It was his contention that it was the duty of writers to expose the weaknesses in a society and the duty of politicians to act upon them. He assumed both roles but never mixed them. He believed a novel should bear the mark of an individual and not an ideology. There are no tirades or polemics in Zola novels. Those he reserved for well-crafted newspaper articles such as the famous “J' Accuse!” in which he attacked the government for its persecution of Dreyfus. Some of his characters have such fits, but he always makes them look a bit overblown and even silly. Zola often laughs at political radicals. The convictions are there in the way he portrays life, the way all of his characters have someone bigger trying to step on them, the way most people are consumed in banal struggles. Do not look for justice in a Zola novel; his world is maddeningly unfair. But he always has humor and a thrilling, dark sense of irony.

You cannot help but laugh at the legitimate political anger of Florent when he vents it by teaching a child penmanship with such sentences as “The day of justice will come.” Who but Zola would give us a scene like the one in The Belly of Paris where one of the greatest human rights atrocities in French history is recounted as a bedtime story for a child, while her father's hands are soaked in blood from making sausages?

Zola was always a man of his times, deeply involved in the ideas and movements of his day. He was one of the first amateur photographers, beginning shortly after the pastime was popularized in 1888 by George Eastman's first portable camera, the “box model.” In the last eight years of his life, he became one of the first modern shutterbugs, shooting several thousand snapshots. Though he was plump and unathletic, he also took up the new bicycling craze. In an age of science, of Darwin, an age when it was believed that science held the solutions, he called himself an “evolutionist” and wrote, “I must therefore ask of science to explain life to me, to make it known.”

Zola, like many French readers of his generation, was a great admirer of Honoré de Balzac, who died when Zola was ten years old and had written a cycle of ninety novels and novellas that he called The Human Comedy. For a long time Zola struggled with the question of how to be more than just an imitation of Balzac, who was also a realist, was also concerned with the social ills of the bourgeoisie, and had also portrayed life in Paris and the French provinces with great descriptive detail.

In his late twenties Zola began contemplating an enormous project, a series of novels about successive generations of a family in which characters would do battle with their inner selves and the demons they inherited. This was at a time when there was much discussion in France about the breakup, even disappearance, of the traditional family unit. Much was blamed on railroads, which, it was felt, made people too mobile.

Zola resolved to write two novels a year for the next twenty years, all about the fictional Rougon-Macquart family from Provence. He more or less kept to that schedule, occasionally frustrated, such as when Germinal, the miners' saga that many consider to be his masterpiece, took an entire nine months. By 1869, he had the cycle mapped out, and between 1872, at the age of thirty-two, and 1892, at the age of fifty-three, he carried out this plan. Zola had the words Nulla dies sine linea, “No day without a sentence,” engraved over his desk, but in truth he produced considerably more than a sentence. On most days he produced four handwritten pages, sometimes stopping the day's work in midsentence. He titled the series The Rougon-Macquarts: The Natural and Social History of a Family under the Second Empire. By its completion in 1892, the cycle consisted of twenty novels in thirty-one volumes and included all of the novels that have been deemed his most important work. He had created twelve hundred characters. He produced the first six books in five years. The Belly of Paris was the third.

When they were young his painter friend Paul Cézanne started to have doubts about his future, and Zola, trying to encourage him, wrote, “There are two men in an artist, the poet and the worker. He is born a poet, and he becomes a worker.”

He began his undertaking with a sense of inadequacy, believing that he had neither the depth of Balzac nor the poetic ear of Hugo. Zola wrote in a simple language, with great power but occasional clumsiness, even bad usage, which might be explained by the speed at which he worked. One of the great challenges of translating Zola is resisting the occasional desire to improve him. He needed more editing, and the translator has to resist providing it.

Zola's portrayals of poverty were shocking to readers of the time, especially the lower classes, who did not want to be seen that way. Readers were accustomed to having a certain degree of romance overlaid on misery. His raw portraits of the have-nots made his haves look all the more guilty. There is no poetry in Zola's novels. They are unflinchingly realistic, and this was a source of his power. Eventually it was the work of Zola more than other great writers that stirred the conscience of the middle class.

He had a close circle of friends with whom he frequently lunched, which included other writers such as Gustave Flaubert, Edmond de Goncourt, and Alphonse Daudet. In this circle Zola was known as someone who loved food, ate well and bountifully, and spoke very little unless fired up about some issue or when asked a question about his work. He seems to have been a shy man until sparked by one of his many passions. Some in this group, such as Flaubert, also mingled with members of the upper class, a social milieu in which Zola had no experience. From them he would extract knowledge for portraying those characters. It was one of a number of tricks Zola copied from Balzac.

All of the writers and artists of his group called themselves “naturalists,” a term coined by the painter Gustave Courbet. Zola pointed out that the term had a long history. In the seventeenth century, it had been used in philosophy to mean a school of thought that held up nature as the model. Naturalists, then, were predominantly atheists. After the emergence in the mid-nineteenth century of Darwin, whose principal works were published when Zola was a student, the term “naturalists” described those who used scientific methods. According to Zola, a naturalist artist used scientific methodology but infused it with his own language and personality. To Zola, scientific writing meant fiction whose facts were thoroughly researched. Science was the new fashion. Balzac, Flaubert, and many other writers in France, Italy, and other European countries were also experimenting with a scientific method of fiction writing. Zola's particular use of science, aside from the thoroughness of his research, may be seen in his study and application of the latest medical knowledge. In Zola, when a character is stricken with an ailment, the author knows of what he is writing.

Zola researched his books much as though he were a journalist writing nonfiction. In the 1880s, when he began Germinal, he lived with miners, drank with them at night, and went down into the mines; later, for La Bête humaine, he traveled on a train dressed as an engineer. In 1872, he lived in the belly of Paris. He spent his nights at the Courbevoie Bridge, where wagons loaded with food came into Paris from the west. He would scramble alongside the horses from the customs gate at the edge of the city eight miles to Les Halles with his pencil at the ready. He spent endless hours taking notes in the market and also examining the view from different approaches. A friend of painters—Cézanne was his closest boyhood friend—he tried to use words like brushstrokes. His visual descriptions can be labored. Several of his descriptions of food are so lengthy they will try the patience of all but the most dedicated foodies, though these remarkable passages are occasionally worth it, such as the depiction of Roquefort cheese resembling the face of an aristocrat stricken by a disease that attacked the rich who ate too many truffles. On the other hand, what a rare opportunity to view nineteenth-century French food firsthand.

His characterization of the bombastic painter Claude Lantier must have been shaped by years of counseling the chronically dissatisfied Cézanne, the impassioned perfectionist who once worked on a portrait of Zola and then, to the author's outrage, destroyed it because he did not like the way it was turning out. Cézanne was constantly flying into rages and depressions and tearing up his own work. Certainly Zola must have recalled his outings with Cézanne in Provence when he wrote about Florent and Claude in the countryside enjoying a long hike together. Claude Lantier has physical similarities to Cézanne, and he dresses like him in a red sash, felt hat, and old overcoat. But many of his views on art and his enthusiasm for morning markets are purely Zola. Novelists get into trouble when borrowing parts of friends for characters, and the recurring character of Claude Lantier strained Zola's friendship with Cézanne, who finally, after the 1886 publication of the novel L'Œuvre, about Lantier and the bohemian world of painters, stopped speaking to his childhood friend.

Zola also hounded the police for information on the administration of the market. This scientific approach, however, did not spare the speedy writer from the kinds of little errors in French grammar and spelling that a more careful editor might have caught and are not passed on in translation.

The beginning of the Rougon-Macquart cycle was delayed by the Franco-Prussian War, the German siege of Paris that forced Zola and many Parisians into exile in the provinces, and finally the overthrow of Napoleon III. To Zola and many French, the Bonapartes had been France's recurring curse, “a strange family that won't die,” he wrote, “that persists through its pale and moribund offspring.”

These events helped Zola's master project. By delaying the actual writing, he had time to plan out the novels, which established an orderly method so that when he did start to write each morning, he would consult the notes he had prepared, which he kept on index cards. His progress was so steady and programmed that he did only one draft, handing it in with only occasional cross-outs.

But the events also closed the book on the Second Empire and allowed Zola to write about a finite period of time. Newer events could not overtake his novel. In 1871, Zola wrote that the novels could now be set “inside a closed circle; it becomes the tableau of a dead reign,” of “a strange era fraught with madness and shame.”

He begins his fictional family, the ancestors of Beautiful Lisa and her nephew Claude Lantier in the The Belly of Paris, before the revolution that would unleash all the political forces of Zola's time, in Provence, just outside Plassans, the fictional name of his native Aix-en-Provence. Adélaïde Fouque is the daughter of landowning peasants outside Plassans. When she is eighteen her father goes mad and dies, and, left alone, she marries an illiterate gardener named Rougon. Three months after their son, Pierre, is born, Rougon dies. Adélaïde takes up with her neighbor, a brutal, alcoholic smuggler named Macquart, who lives apart from her in a windowless shack but nevertheless sires two illegitimate sons with her, the first Rougon-Macquarts.

The family appears in Le Ventre de Paris and winds its way through the cycle of novels. Lisa's sister Gervaise, the mother of Claude Lantier, is a principal character in L'Assommoir La Terre is the story of their brother Jean Macquart. Lisa's daughter, the little girl Pauline in The Belly of Paris, will grow up to be a leading character in La Joie de vivre

Throughout the Rougon-Macquart novels the harshest social criticism is leveled at the bourgeois class, Zola's class. In The Belly of Paris Lisa and Quenu are the great examples of the petite bourgeoisie, but there are similar couples in other novels, always fat, complacent, and obsessed with order. Curiously, they always have one child, a daughter, which provided the cycle of novels with an ample supply of bourgeois women. Women who read Zola may be inclined to stop dieting, for these bourgeois women, such as Lisa, drive men wild with their plumpness. Even while Lisa abuses Quenu and Florent with her small-mindedness, the sight of her ample round flesh excites the boy Marjolin to the brink of madness as he sneaks glimpses of her and her ample waist through the window.

The Belly of Paris was a hit when it first came out in 1873. Flaubert praised it, though the young Anatole France wrote that it was “vain, empty, detestable virtuosity,” and another critic called it “obscene.” There was a bit of both shock and fascination about this young writer who wrote about voluptuous women and the delights of food. The book expanded the young writer's readership and reputation. The first edition sold out in a month. Though it is good enough for a lesser writer to have built an enduring reputation on, it was eclipsed by the writer's later work. Zola himself considered it one of his best works, a better novel, he said, than L'Assommoir, which is generally considered one of his masterpieces. Most writers have a book that they regard as one of their best even though it never got its due. For Zola it was Le Ventre de Paris.

Le Ventre de Paris was one of five novels he adapted for the theater. It ran three and a half months at the Théâtre de Paris, not a spectacular success. The play has never been published. He coauthored it with William Busnach, with whom he had done his other adaptations. Letters from Busnach to Zola indicate that the stage adaptation had been thrown together hastily. Reviewers seemed to feel that the production relied more on spectacular settings—Les Halles at daybreak was singled out—than on true dramatic moments. But even Zola's most successful play the stage adaptation of Thérèse Raquin, comes off as a melodrama. Although Zola never achieved the triumph as a playwright that he did as a novelist, his novels are conspicuously theatrical. He develops characters and sets scenes and always gives rich visual backdrops. Almost every novel he wrote could easily be adapted to film.

To fully comprehend this novel, it must be understood that at the time Zola was writing it, France, and Paris in particular, had experienced more than eighty years of regular violent street uprisings. These events were considerably bloodier than the demonstrations brutally crushed by the police during the Algerian war or the skirmishes of May 1968. These were pitched battles on the streets between well-armed and -trained, war-hardened troops and armed rebels in which hundreds died. Though the would-be revolutionaries of Le Ventre de Paris make reference to the uprisings of 1848 and 1852 and even the violence of the 1830s and the late-eighteenth-century Revolution, in which 19,000 people were killed in the year-and-a-half-long “terror” of 1793–94, no doubt what Zola and his readers thought about was the recent events. In 1871, the uprising following the Franco-Prussian War claimed more lives than any battle of the war. While 900 of the 130,000 Versailles troops sent to crush the uprising were killed and another 6,500 were wounded, it is not even known how many Parisians they slaughtered on the streets during the six-day siege known as la semaine sanglante, the bloody week. A widely accepted estimate is between 25,000 and 30,000 dead. Many of them were executed by firing squads. Bodies were piled up around Paris. Gutters literally ran red with blood, and in places so did the Seine. Zola witnessed this, writing unsigned letters for a Parisian newspaper, La Cloche, and for Le Sémaphore de Marseille, a newspaper for which he wrote about 1,500 articles in the 1870s. Surveying the piles of corpses, he wrote, “Never will I forget the heartache I experienced at the sight of that frightful mound of bleeding human flesh thrown haphazardly on the two paths, heads and limbs mingled in horrible dislocation.”

It is against the background of this history and experience that Florent, Gavard, and the others in the Les Halles of his novel almost casually conspire to launch armed revolution. There would have been nothing difficult to believe about this to contemporary readers. On the other hand, the fear with which Lisa and others in the neighborhood reject such plans and disdain such plotters is also understandable. In fact, the 1871 Commune finished off the French appetite for violent revolution. It was the last one. But a different kind of violent cycle had taken its place. To avenge their defeat by the Germans in the Franco-Prussian War, which had set off the Commune uprising, the French leaped into World War I, defeated Germany, and imposed the punitive Versailles Treaty, an injustice, the denunciation of which brought Adolf Hitler to power. Germany got France, France got Germany, Germany got France, and then France was again liberated—two world wars and seventy-five years of bloody European history.

As might be expected from a late-nineteenth-century writer in the vanguard of the political thinking of his age, Zola was very interested in the status of women. To call him a feminist would be overstating it. In his own marriage, his wife, Alexandrine, like many of his women characters, came from a poor background and clung to the better life she had made by organizing and running everything, leaving Zola free for intellectual pursuits. It also gave him time for other pursuits, including a mistress with whom he had a second family. They all knew one another and, pleasantly for Emile, painfully for Alexandrine, they all spent time together.

The Belly of Paris has several examples of a smart, practical woman paired off with a good-natured, dreamy simpleton dependent on his woman's savvy, such as Lisa and Quenu and Cadine and Marjolin.

Few nineteenth-century novels portray women of the strength and complexity of Zola's women. Unlike those of Flaubert or Leo Tolstoy, Zola's are not so much the victims of an unfair society as women determined to be players. In The Belly of Paris Lisa scolds her husband for political activities, telling him, “If only you had asked my advice, if we had talked about it together. It's wrong to think that women don't understand politics … Do you want to know what I think? What my politics are?”

In both major and minor characters Zola shows an interest in the aspirations of women. When Clémence, herself a very minor character in The Belly of Paris, loses her job, she supports herself by giving French instruction to a young woman who is secretly trying to improve her education. We never learn anything more about this unnamed character, who is just a touch of set decoration in the picture he offers of society. Clémence herself holds her own in café political debates and is said to be manly.

Zola lived in a time when conservative politics and the Church supported the suppression of women while a new crop of progressives was denouncing the old ways. The subject fascinated young Zola, who continually wrote about it in letters to his friends. He seemed particularly influenced by the writings of Jules Michelet, a leading progressive who became a cultural hero of leftist youth after he was removed from his chair at the Collège de France because he refused to swear allegiance to the emperor in 1851. His books on women, L'Amour and La Femme, published in 1858 and 1859, when Zola was an impressionable teenager, called for a new role for women in society. To understand women, Michelet maintained, society had to free itself from the teachings of the Church and embrace science. Embracing science was the new religion of the time. Once women freed themselves of the slavery prescribed by the Church, they would become champions of progressive government, quite the opposite of Beautiful Lisa in The Belly of Paris, who proclaims, “I support a government that's good for business. If they commit acts of evil, I don't want to know.” But the freedom that the future held for women, according to Michelet, could be achieved only by a good marriage. Only through the progressive thinking of the husband could the wife be completed.

Despite the seeming simplicity of such theories, the women, the marriages, the relationships between men and women in Zola's novels are complicated. There is a great deal of fiction and a great deal of love. Zola prided himself on realism. As a young man Zola's letters were full of reflections on relations between the sexes. In 1860, shortly after the two Michelet books were published, Zola wrote to Cézanne, “A husband has been given a major project, to reeducate his wife. It takes more than sleeping together to be married, they must also think in tandem.” And that same year to a different friend:

It is true that it is rare to see a happy couple. But that is because married people only know love in a superficial way. They are still strangers to the heart, and if they remain that way they will be unhappy all their lives. But if you put together a young man and a young woman, they are beautiful and they have physical love, but this is not yet love. Soon they discover each other's qualities and deficiencies, and little by little their personalities do not compete, because there are no unforgivable faults, they love with their souls, truly and entirely.

Marriage in Zola's novels, as in life, is a complicated relationship full of pettiness but also love, stifling at times but at others comforting. In The Belly of Paris the marriage of the weak and simple Quenu to the forceful Lisa, in the hands of a lesser writer would have been a tale of an Amazonian tyranny, but in Zola's gifted hands it is a relationship of love, spite, jealousy tenderness, support—a marriage that is both difficult and solid. Even a character such as Lisa, who symbolizes all that was wrong with the petite bourgeoisie—fat, selfish, complacent, indifferent to the suffering of others, and a maddening hypocrite, who, despite a complete absence of religious belief, has a priest at the ready to rubber-stamp what she knows are misdeeds—is still a complete woman, so fully drawn, so human and real, that we cannot quite hate her, though she infuriates us.

Zola sets us up. Just when we are ready to hate a character, he shows us a human side that melts us. The horrid old gossip Mademoiselle Saget takes such pleasure in damaging everyone else with her gossip, but then we see her buying table scraps to eat, trying to cheer herself with the idea that she is eating scraps from the aristocracy but hoping no one sees her buying them. And we feel sorry for her.

Curiously, Zola's strong women have strong smells, and he devotes substantial space to describing them. Though the fleshy Beautiful Norman is described as an extremely attractive woman, lengthy descriptions are given of the odors she gives off and finally it is concluded that she is too “strong-smelling” for Florent's tastes. But Zola was obsessed in all his writing with descriptions of tastes and smells. He loved good food and detested bad eating. The Belly of Paris, a novel of food, of tastes and smells, has often been described, especially by English-speaking admirers, as “strange” or “bizarre.” Zola's friend the writer Edmond de Goncourt was one who noted Zola's curious olfactory obsession. In his Journal he wrote, “The nose of Zola is a very articular nose, a nose that interrogates, that approves, that condemns, a nose that is gay, a nose that is sad, a nose that punctuates the physiognomy of its master; the nose of a true hunting dog.”

Today, in an age when gastronomic fiction has become fashionable, this book seems ahead of its time. But despite Zola's being a bourgeois who loved food and looked it, the social criticism in The Belly of Paris revolves around the graphically illustrated conceit that the bourgeoisie not only eats too much but has an unhealthy obsession with food.

Zola's father, an Italian immigrant, was an adventurer who had done everything from joining the French Foreign Legion when it was first formed to becoming an engineer and building a major dam in Provence. Emile Zola was born in 1840 during a brief stay in Paris not far from the Les Halles neighborhood that would be the setting for The Belly of Paris. But his family soon returned to Aix-en-Provence, where Emile grew up. Like the central characters in The Belly of Paris, Florent and Quenu, Zola grew up in Aix and went to Paris as a penniless student. Many of Zola's characters have their roots in Aix, a town always referred to in his fiction by the pseudonym Plassans.

In Paris people who had little money found small apartments on the upper floors, and Zola for a time lived in an eighth-floor apartment with a view of the rooftops of Paris. As an aging and respected writer he looked back and recalled this view and the vow it inspired: “It was then, from my twentieth year on, that I dreamed of writing a novel of which Paris, with its ocean of roofs, would be a principal character, something like the chorus of antique Greek tragedies.” Twelve years before publication, he was already laying the groundwork for Le Ventre de Paris.

He lived meagerly in those years; he had little to eat, often surviving on bread dipped in olive oil from Provence that friends and family sent him. Later in life, when he had money, he would make up for the lost meals.

The Paris Zola came to in 1858 was considerably different from the one he had been born in. The emperor Napoleon III wanted to leave his mark on France by remaking the capital, an act of publicly financed arrogance that would often be imitated. Charles de Gaulle, François Mitterrand, and other French leaders have sought to leave their mark by changing Paris, but the most thorough remake was by Napoleon III. To accomplish this he brought in an architect, Georges Haussmann.

The wide boulevards and squares with resplendent monuments designed by Haussmann are much admired today, but at the time were regarded by many as the destruction of Paris. Haussmann himself was nicknamed “the great destroyer.” Paris had been a medieval city of narrow, winding streets, a teeming maze. Within these crowded and nearly unnavigable neighborhoods lived the Parisian masses that had risen up against Napoleon III's despotic rule on several bloody occasions.

It is not by chance that the layout of today's Paris bespeaks power and militarism. To many at the time, the emperor was simply bulldozing neighborhoods and building streets through them in which troops could quickly be deployed. A wide boulevard, later known as the boulevard Saint-Michel after a statue that was erected in a central square, cut a wide swath through the Latin Quarter. The same reshaping took place on the right bank. Poor people were evicted, neighborhoods were leveled, boulevards and monuments were built.

By the time Zola returned to Paris, the area around Les Halles was unrecognizable to him just as it is to Florent in the opening of The Belly of Paris. Paris streets were renamed after men of power, and only a few names remain today, mostly in the former Les Halles neighborhood—rue de la Ferronerie (Foundry), pas du Mule (Mule Path)—to remind Parisians not only of the old Paris names but of what the old Paris was. The gentrification and destruction of working-class neighborhoods is a theme that runs through The Belly of Paris and many other Zola novels. In Au Bonheur des dames, published ten years later, in 1883, a department store opens and an entire neighborhood of shops is put out of business. It is a process that has, sadly, continued in Paris, but The Belly of Paris is set at the dramatic beginning of this process.

Zola writes about longing for the little remaining of old Paris, “les belles rues d'autrefois” the beautiful old-fashioned streets, and as an example he cites rue de la Ferronerie. I remember feeling the same way a hundred years later, after they tore down Les Halles and it was just a hole in the ground and some of these same streets, including rue de la Ferronerie, were all that was left of the old neighborhood. It is all gone now, of course.

Not only public works but also poverty expanded in the Paris of Napoleon III. Inflation dramatically reduced the spending power of the average Parisian. Many of Paris's 1.7 million people were near starvation. The average worker spent between a third and two thirds of his income on bread. At the same time conspicuous displays of gluttony were made fashionable for the ruling class, encouraged by the emperor. Peace was maintained by police repression. As many as 35,000 Parisians were arrested for vagrancy in a single year.

In 1866, things grew even worse when Haussmann was caught skimming funds from his enormous public works budget and fired. The work stopped, and perhaps as many as 100,000 workers who had been rebuilding the city were thrown out of work.

While much of the city starved, the new boulevards were packed with restaurants and cafés offering gaudy displays of gourmandism. This was especially true in 1867, when Napoleon hosted a universal exposition and threw almost daily galas for visiting dignitaries.

In 1858, when Zola as a young man returned to the Paris of his birth, the final touches were being put on the first six pavilions of the newly redesigned Les Halles Centrales, the central market. The market had already been there for seven hundred years. An irony for Zola, whose novel is so much about the connection between Les Halles and fat people, the market was started in the twelfth century under Louis VI, who was known as Louis the Fat.

Napoleon I had planned to redesign it but was defeated by the British before the plans could get under way. The look of the new pavilions was something no Parisians had ever seen. In the plans it was called “a veritable palace of iron and crystal.” Some disapproved, but others, like Claude the painter in Le Ventre de Paris, thought it was the only original building of the century that “has sprung naturally out of the soil of our times.”

It most definitely was a product of the times. In 1845, Victor Baltard, a leading Paris architect and son of a prominent Paris neoclassical architect and artist, Louis-Pierre Baltard, was commissioned along with his partner, Félix Callet, an older but less-known architect, to redesign Les Halles. Their plan called for eight pavilions of various sizes with stone walls and metal roofs. In 1848, construction was halted by the revolution. In 1851, the new president of the republic, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, laid the first stone. The Baltard-Callet stone buildings were massive in appearance, and Parisians sneeringly called the design the “Les Halles fortress.” In 1853, Bonaparte, now emperor, stopped the construction and searched for a new idea, which he said should be “vast but light, like the new train stations.” He called for buildings that resembled umbrellas. Amazingly, the winning design was by the rejected team of Baltard and Callet, with ten iron-and-glass pavilions (an additional two were not completed until 1936). It was a state-of-the-art innovation of the Industrial Revolution.

Les Halles were the first buildings in France—and among the first in the world—to display their metalwork; all of the struts and arches were clearly visible since the construction was an entirely glass-covered metal frame. Almost no one in Paris, Zola included, had ever seen such buildings, and they were a sight to wonder at.

Baltard's Les Halles was one of the great successes of architectural history, a huge step forward in the development of metal architecture. It seemed so light and airy, even transparent, yet offered the strength of metal construction. Soon more train stations, the new phenomenon of department stores, and exhibition halls copied the idea. It became fashionable for buildings to have iron-and-glass roofs. It became the leading design for markets around the world.

In 1959, the government, after years of debate about the grubby market clogging traffic with trucks in the center of Paris, built a market in the southern suburbs of Rungis and La Villette. By the late 1960s only the meat market remained. In 1967, Janet Flanner, the celebrated American chronicler of prewar Paris, wrote a sad article in Life magazine, referring to Le Ventre de Paris and bemoaning that “the market smells of gasoline fumes. It used to smell of horses.” In March 1969, by order of President Charles de Gaulle, the market was officially closed over the protests of students, who by then had considerable practice protesting de Gaulle. Life magazine ran another article titled “‘The Belly of Paris,’ Les Halles, Closes Forever.”

By 1973, the market was completely gone and the emperor Napoleon's vision of a central Paris devoid of working-class neighborhoods began to be completed. Les Halles and its market people were replaced by a shopping mall and the surrounding neighborhoods were rebuilt to be expensive and fashionable and stripped of their charm. One of Baltard's pavilions, completed in 1854, was classified as a historic monument and moved up the Seine to Nogent-sur-Marne, where it is now known as the Pavillon Baltard.

This period of the empire, from the 1848 uprising to the 1871 uprising, is the setting of the Rougon-Macquart saga. The Belly of Paris takes place over one year from 1858 to 1859 and, like most of the other books, has a very strong sense of the political issues of the time. So it is not surprising that the lead character is a bagnard, a convict from the newly established penal colony of French Guiana.

France has never known what to do with its possession on the northeast shoulder of South America. There was a widely circulated legend in sixteenth-century Europe that somewhere in the continent of South America was a huge city holding astounding quantities of gold and other mineral riches. The Spanish called this never-seen city El Dorado. In 1595, the British explorer Sir Walter Raleigh published a report on his visit to the South American coast, The Discovery of the Large, Rich and Beautiful Empire of Guiana, in which he claimed to have found El Dorado. This created considerable interest in the area. The French, the British, and the Dutch ended up with slices of the region, and although some gold could be panned in the rivers—and still is—no one has found anything comparable to the legend of El Dorado.

Every attempt to settle French Guiana has failed. A seventeenth-century effort was led by a man who appears to have gone mad and ruled with arbitrary brutality. The original colony of Cayenne, on the coast, was taken over by indigenous warriors, who, according to contemporary reports, ate the settlers. Slaves were imported from Africa for plantations, but they constantly rebelled and ran away to the interior. In the eighteenth century, Louis XV sent 14,000 settlers. Ten thousand of them died of disease so rapidly that their bodies were dumped into the sea because there was no longer manpower available for burial. The remaining settlers fled to three offshore islands, which they called the Iles du Salut, the healthy islands, because they had less malaria and other diseases.

When Louis-Napoléon came to power, he was interested in the problem of settling this territory. Slavery, which had never worked well in Guiana, was abolished in all French territories in 1848. So he sent several boatloads of indentured Chinese laborers to work the land. They were not farmers, and they moved to Cayenne and set up shops. Their descendants still operate shops in Cayenne. Once their labor had fled, many plantation owners, recognizing a good idea, abandoned their land, and they too moved to Cayenne.

Then the emperor had an idea: instead of spending a fortune having the navy maintain prison ships—the ships in which the prisoners provided oar power were outmoded anyway—why not ship convicts to Guiana and force them to develop the land? They would stay there and marry local women—or maybe female convicts could be sent—and they would settle Guiana. To make this plan work, the convicts, after serving their time, were required to spend an equal amount of time as “free men” in the colony. The government even sent prostitutes to marry the first prisoners released, but the women refused to marry any of the convicts and the angry officials shipped them off to labor in a prison camp. Some coupling did take place, but most of the children born of these pairings died in infancy, and many of the female convicts proved to be barren. A fertility expert, Dr. Jean Orgéas, was sent from France to study the problem. After a five-year study, he concluded in 1864 that white people could not reproduce in the tropics.

Convicts were required to spend their terms in hard labor chained to another convict or to an iron ball. If caught trying to escape, they were sentenced to an additional two to five years; if they were serving a life sentence, the penalty was two to five years with double chains.

But most prisoners tried to escape because the alternative was to labor in such misery that half would die of either fever or suicide. The prison system never was able to operate in the interior. The center of the prison was at the mouth of the Maroni River, and the rest of the prisoners were held in either Cayenne or the Iles du Salut. There were a few jungle camps where convicts were forced to work naked, their bodies eaten by insects and slashed by razor grass and thorny bushes. Only the convicts singled out for the harshest treatment, or those most likely to attempt escape, were sent to the islands. Florent, being a political prisoner, was one of them.

Zola, as always, did careful homework and seemed to understand much about the penal colonies. But his story of Florent escaping and returning to France was extremely improbable. Of the 70,000 men and women sent to Guiana between 1851 and 1947, only a handful finished their sentences and returned to France. Almost no escapees made it back. Only 18,000 prisoners survived their sentences. Some did not even survive the initial voyage from France. There were many escape attempts, and some escapees succeeded and lived in South America, where they were called “Maroni boys” by those who knew. But there were no Cayenne boys in Paris.

In The Belly of Paris the gabby Les Halles shopkeepers who would have Florent and other characters sent to Guiana were thoughtlessly delivering them to a life sentence that many regarded as worse than death.

Cayenne was a growing French human rights scandal. Numerous exposés were written about it, and by 1939 the French government had banned the release in France of Hollywood movies on the subject. During World War II, France was unable to feed its Guiana prisoners, and an estimated two thousand died. Finally the prisons were closed in 1947, the prisoners released to sleep on the streets of the few coastal towns of French Guiana. For decades they remained, slowly dying off, lost and broken men with blank stares, “convict eyes,” as one woman said of Florent.

The interior to this day is inhabited only by the descendants of runaway slaves and indigenous tribes. For outsiders it is almost impossible to survive in this dense jungle that the French have named l'enfer vert, the green hell. The prisons are slowly being reclaimed by jungle growth and humidity. The only use France has found for French Guiana is for the European Space Agency's Europe's Spaceport, from which a handful of technicians and a great many military guards send rockets to outer space because Guiana has the logistical advantage of being near the equator.

It seems fated that Zola wrote about Guiana early in his career, because it turned up again toward the end of his life at the center of the Dreyfus Affair. Dreyfus was sent to Devil's Island, making it famous, so that many Americans referred to the whole penal colony as Devil's Island, just as the French, with equal inaccuracy, called it Cayenne. Devil's Island is a tiny island that can be crossed from shore to shore on foot in a matter of minutes. There were never more than thirty convicts on the island at a time. Fewer than a hundred prisoners ever served on Devil's Island, so named because the waters around it are so wild and forbidding that it was said that the Devil lived there. Food and supplies were sent over in a basket by a cable from the mainland when the seas were too rough for boats.

Devil's Island was a place where political prisoners were sent, not to work but simply to be abandoned. In Zola's novel, it was where Florent was sent. In 1895, some thirteen years after Zola wrote about Florent, a real-life political prisoner, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, was sent there. A twelve-square-yard stone house was built for him, where he was constantly watched by guards who were under orders not to talk to him. But apparently they did and even played chess with him.

Today the island is abandoned. In 1986, I visited it. There was no place to land a boat, and I persuaded a gendarme to take me up to the rocks in his rubber Zodiac. I rolled onto the rocks, and he accelerated out to sea. I reminded him of our agreement for him to pick me up in exactly one hour, but as he pulled away he smiled, and over the roar of his outboard I heard him shout, “Au revoir, Dreyfus II!”

I smiled back, but it was not an entirely comfortable feeling. The island was overgrown with coconut palms. That's what happens. Coconuts are seeds. They drop and take root and are split up the middle by a palm tree. One of the few signs of human life on the island was Dreyfus's stone house. The metal roof was gone, and the room was empty except for a few of the encroaching coconuts and palm fronds that had made their way inside. I stood in Dreyfus's prison anxiously peering through the windows with their remnants of iron bars past the palm trees of the tiny island to the sea, looking for signs of the Zodiac. I was equipped for survival with a pen, a notebook, a sketch pad, and a small set of watercolors. I painted a watercolor of the room and then walked out to the rocks, hoping to see the gendarme in the distance. But I remained calm until the hour was up. Four very long minutes later the smiling gendarme arrived.

Politics, as Zola wrote of Florent, was Zola's destiny. The Dreyfus case was the climax of that destiny. Zola said of himself that he was a dull conversationalist and found a voice only when championing a cause. The French Revolution launched almost two centuries of something close to civil war. One side supported the Bonapartes, while the other opposed them. One side was monarchist, militarist, Catholic, antidemocratic, and anti-Semitic; the other was socialist, anti-imperial, antimilitary pro-women. They were the two sides that clashed over the Dreyfus Affair, and a lifetime of political stances seemed to lead Zola to the showdown. The split endured even after the Dreyfus Affair, with World War II collaborators and resisters and in the fight over decolonization in the 1950s and '60s. It was Zola's old adversaries, half a century after his death, who shouted down the French prime minister Pierre Mendès-France for withdrawing from Vietnam by shouting “Dirty Jew.” Zola lived only two years into the twentieth century, but it is easy to see where he would have stood throughout those years. Zola was always clear about where he stood.

In The Belly of Paris this divide is between the fat people and the thin people. In Zola's youth and in many of his novels, the split was between supporters of Napoleon III's empire and its opponents. By the time Zola was in his twenties, the repression had loosened and dozens of new anti-Napoleon journals had emerged in Paris. Zola launched his career in these journals, showing such a flair for controversy, whether in a political essay or a theater review, that he was sometimes accused of deliberately being contrary to get attention. In literature and the arts he was always a champion of modernism, one of the early supporters of the much-criticized Impressionism of Edouard Manet. Zola relished the attention, and he enjoyed being in Paris, which he called “the star of intelligence.”

At times Zola seemed almost frustrated that his defiant political stands did not evoke the kind of persecution—trials, banned writing, exile—for which the older and more celebrated Victor Hugo had famously been singled out. Zola's timing was off. While he was in Paris writing reviews, Hugo was in political exile. When he left Paris to avoid starvation under the 1871 German siege, Hugo was there eating zoo animals. Zola was ashamed that he had managed to escape Paris during the German siege. Manet stayed and manned artillery on a starvation diet, and many of Zola's artist and writer friends were there.

Then, in 1894, Alfred Dreyfus, a French-Jewish army officer from the German-speaking part of Alsace that had been taken by the Germans in the Franco-Prussian War, was falsely accused of passing secrets to the German command. A wave of anti-Semitism was unleashed in France. Zola did not so much befriend Jews as loathe anti-Semitism. He regarded it as a backward affliction of the mind that, if left unchecked, would eventually destroy France. Dreyfus was convicted and sent to Devil's Island, and Zola became one of his most conspicuous defenders.

Zola's January 13, 1898, open letter in L'Aurore, “J'Accuse!” is considered one of the great masterpieces of journalism and is possibly Zola's most famous piece of writing. It explained how Dreyfus had been framed by a fellow officer and accused the army command of covering it up. It began to change public opinion and put Zola at the center of a historic conflict. He was forced to leave the country to avoid being prosecuted for writing “J'Accuse!” and became a highly controversial figure.

He refused to take payment for any of the articles he wrote on the Dreyfus case, and when in exile in England he turned down sizable sums because he considered the case a purely French affair and would not write about it abroad. Although he had long embraced the working class, it had always shown great misgivings about him. Only with the Dreyfus case was he finally embraced by workers and trade unions. But he lost many readers over Dreyfus and never regained his popularity.

On September 28, 1902, Zola died in his home outside Paris of carbon monoxide poisoning from a malfunctioning chimney. In 1927, a stove fitter made a deathbed confession that he and other anti-Dreyfusards, while repairing a neighbor's roof, had deliberately blocked Zola's chimney to kill him. The story which did not surface until 1953, has never been confirmed but is most certainly the version of his death that Zola would have preferred. The few real writers, the ones who stand up and use their voices for what they believe, understand that being a writer is not without risks.

THE BELLY OF PARIS

CHAPTER ONE

In the silence of a deserted avenue, wagons stuffed with produce made their way toward Paris, their thudding wheels rhythmically echoing off the houses sleeping behind the rows of elm trees meandering on either side of the road. At the pont de Neuilly a cart full of cabbages and another full of peas met up with eight carts of turnips and carrots coming in from Nanterre. The horses, their heads bent low, led themselves with their lazy, steady pace, a bit slowed by the slight uphill climb. Up on the carts, lying on their stomachs in the vegetables, wrapped in their black-and-gray-striped wool coats, the drivers slept with the reins in their fists. Occasionally the light from a gas lamp would grope its way through the shadows and brighten the hobnail of a boot, the blue sleeve of a blouse, or the tip of a hat poking from the bright bloom of vegetables—red bouquets of carrots, white bouquets of turnips, or the bursting greenery of peas and cabbages.

All along the road and all the nearby routes, up ahead and farther back, the distant rumbling of carts told of other huge wagons, all pushing on through the darkness and slumber of two in the morning, the sound of passing food lulling the darkened town to stay asleep.

Madame François's horse, Balthazar, an overweight beast, led the column. He dawdled on, half asleep, flicking his ears until, at rue de Longchamp, his legs were suddenly frozen by fear. The other animals bumped their heads into the stalled carts in front of them, and the column halted with the clanking of metal and the cursing of drivers who had been yanked from their sleep. Seated up top, Madame François, with her back against a plank that held the vegetables in place, peered out but saw nothing by the faint light of the little square lantern to her left, which barely lit one of Balthazar's glistening flanks.

“Come on, lady, let's keep moving,” shouted one of the men who was kneeling in turnips. “It's just some drunken idiot.”

But as she leaned over she thought she made out a dark patch of something blocking the road, about to be stepped on by the horse.

“You can't just run people over,” she said, jumping down from her wagon.

It was a man sprawled across the road, his arms stretched out, facedown in the dust. He seemed extraordinarily long and as thin as a dry branch. It was a miracle that Balthazar had not stepped on him and snapped him in two. Madame François thought he was dead, but when she crouched over him and took his hand, she found it was still warm.

“Hey, mister,” she called softly.

But the drivers were growing impatient. The one kneeling in the vegetables shouted in a gruff voice, “Give it up, lady. The son of a bitch is plastered. Shove him in the gutter.”

In the meantime, the man had opened his eyes. He stared, motionless, at Madame François, with a look of bewilderment. She too thought that he must be drunk.

“You can't stay there, you're going to get yourself run over,” she told him. “Where were you going?”

“I don't know,” the man replied in a feeble voice. Then, with great effort and a worried face, “I was going to Paris, and I fell. I don't know …”

Now she could see him better, and he was pathetic with his black pants and black overcoat, so threadbare that they showed the contour of his bare bones. Underneath a hat of coarse black cloth that he had pulled down as though afraid of being recognized, two large brown eyes of a rare gentleness could be seen on a hard and tormented face. Madame François thought that this man was much too feeble to have been drinking.

“Where in Paris were you going?” she asked.

He didn't answer right away. This cross-examination was worrying him. After a moment's reflection, he cautiously replied, “Over there, by Les Halles.”

With great difficulty he had almost stood up again and seemed anxious to be on his way. But Madame François noticed him trying to steady himself against one of the wagon shafts.

“You're tired?”

“Very tired,” he mumbled.

Adopting a gruff tone, as though annoyed, and giving him a shove, she shouted, “Go on, move it! Get up in my wagon! You're wasting my time. I'm going to Les Halles, and I can drop you off with my vegetables.”

When he refused, she practically threw him onto the turnips and carrots in the back with her thick arms and shouted impatiently, “That's enough! No more trouble from you. You're beginning to annoy me, my friend. Didn't I tell you that I'm headed to the market anyway? Go to sleep up there. I'll wake you when we get there.”

She climbed back up, sat sideways with her back against the plank again, and took Balthazar's reins. He started up sleepily, twitching his ears. The other carts followed. The column resumed its slow march in the dark, the sound of wheels on the paving stones again thudding against the sleeping housefronts. The wagoneers, wrapped in their coats, returned to their snoozing. The one who had called out to Madame François grumbled as he lay down, “Damn, does she have to take care of every bum? You are something, lady.”

The carts rolled on, the horses, with their heads bowed, leading themselves. The man Madame François had picked up was lying on his stomach, his long legs lost in the turnips, which filled the back of the cart, while his head was buried in the spreading carrot bunches. With weary outstretched arms he seemed to hug his bed of vegetables for fear a jolt of the cart would send him sprawling in the road. He watched the two endless columns of gaslights ahead of him, which vanished in the distance into a confusion of other lights. A large white cloud nuzzled the horizon, so that Paris appeared to be sleeping in a glowing mist illuminated by all the lamps.

“I'm from Nanterre. My name is Madame François,” the woman said after a moment's silence. “Ever since I lost my poor husband, I go to Les Halles every morning. It's a hard life, but what can you do. And you?”

“My name is Florent, I come from far away,” the stranger replied awkwardly. “I'm really sorry, but I'm so exhausted that it's hard to talk.”

He did not want to say any more, so Madame François became silent too, letting the reins fall loosely on the back of Balthazar, who seemed to know every paving stone along the route.

In the meantime, Florent, staring at the broadening sparkle of Paris in the distance, contemplated the story that he had decided not to tell the woman. Sentenced to Cayenne[1] for his involvement in the events of December,[2] he had escaped to Dutch Guiana, where he had drifted for two years, filled with a passion to return to France but also afraid of the imperial police. He was about to enter the great city that he had so deeply missed and longed for. He told himself that he would hide there, returning to the peaceful existence he had once lived. The police knew nothing. Everyone would assume that he had died over there. He thought about his arrival at Le Havre, where he had landed with only fifteen francs hidden in the corner of a handkerchief. It had been enough for a coach to Rouen, but from there he had had to make his way on foot, having only thirty sous left. At Vernon he had spent his last two sous on bread. After that he couldn't remember anything. He thought he had slept in a ditch for several hours, and he might have shown a policeman the papers with which he had supplied himself. But these images danced vaguely in his head. He had come all the way from Vernon with nothing to eat, accompanied by fits of anger and sudden despondency that had made him chew the leaves on the hedges he passed along the way. He had kept walking despite stomach cramps, his belly knotted, his vision blurred, his feet advancing, unconsciously drawn by the image of Paris, so far away, beyond the horizon, calling to him, waiting for him.

On a very dark night, he finally reached Courbevoie. Paris looked like a patch of starry sky that had fallen onto a blackened corner of the earth. It had a stern look, as though angered by Florent's return. Then he felt faint, his wobbly legs almost collapsing as he walked down the hill. While crossing the pont de Neuilly he supported himself, clinging to the stone railings, and leaned over to look at the inky waves of the rolling Seine between the thickly grown banks. A red signal lantern on the water followed him with its bloodshot eye. Now he had to pull himself up to climb to Paris at the top of the hill. But the boulevard seemed endless. The hundreds of leagues he had already traveled seemed as nothing compared to this. In this last stretch he was losing faith that he would ever reach the top of the hill with its crown of lights.

The flat boulevard stretched before him with its lines of tall trees and squat houses. Its wide grayish sidewalks were blotchy with the shadows of branches. The darkened gaps where the boulevard met the side streets were all in silence and shade. Only the stumpy little yellow flames of the gas lamps standing straight at regular intervals gave some life to this desolate wasteland. And Florent seemed to be making no progress, the boulevard growing longer and longer and carrying Paris away into the depths of the night. In time he began hallucinating that the gas lamps on both sides of him were running away, carrying the road off with them, until, completely losing his bearings, he fell on a pile of paving stones.

And now he was gently tossing and turning on his bed of vegetables, which felt more like a soft feather bed. He raised his head a little to watch the incandescent mist spread over the black silhouettes of the rooftops just visible along the horizon. He was approaching his destination, being carried there with nothing more to do than absorb the slow-motion bumps of the wagon, and, freed from the pain of fatigue, he now suffered only hunger. But his hunger was reawakened and becoming unbearable. His limbs had fallen asleep, and he could feel only his stomach, cramped and twisted as though by a red-hot iron. The ripe smell of vegetables that surrounded him, the piercing freshness of the carrots, made him almost faint.

With all his might he pushed his chest into this deep bed of food, trying to pull in his stomach as tightly as he could to suppress its loud rumblings. Behind him, the nine other wagons piled high with cabbages, mountains of peas, heaps of artichokes, lettuce, celery, and leeks, seemed to be slowly gaining on him as though to overtake him as he was racked with starvation and bury him in an avalanche of food.

They came to a stop, and deep voices could be heard. It was customs inspectors examining the wagons. And so Florent, his teeth clenched, at last entered Paris, passed out on a pile of carrots.

“Hey, you up there!” Madame François abruptly shouted. As he didn't move, she climbed up and shook him. Florent propped himself up. As he had slept, the hunger pains had stopped, but he was disoriented.

The woman made him get down, saying, “Can you help me unload?”

He helped her.

A heavyset man with a walking stick and a felt hat, with a badge on the left lapel of his coat, was growing angry and tapping the tip of his stick on the sidewalk. “Come on, come on, faster than that. How many meters do you have there? Four, isn't it?”

He gave Madame François a ticket, and she took a large coin out of her canvas bag. He moved on to vent his anger and tap the tip of his stick farther down the line. The market woman took Balthazar by the bridle and backed him up until the wagon wheels were against the curb. Then she opened the back of the wagon, marked off her four meters of curb with pieces of straw, and asked Florent to start passing the vegetables down. She arranged them in her alotted space with an artistic flair, so that the tops formed a green wreath around the bunches. She arranged the display with dazzling speed in the dank morning light that made it resemble a tapestry with geometric splashes of color.

After Florent handed her a huge bouquet of parsley that he had found on the wagon floor, she asked him one more favor: “I would really appreciate it if you could keep an eye on my goods while I park the wagon. It's very close, at the Compas d'Or on rue Montorgueil.”[3]

He told her not to worry. In truth, he was happy to sit there because moving around had started to revive his hunger. He sat down, leaning against a mound of cabbages by Madame François's stand. He told himself that he would be just fine sitting there, waiting and not moving. His mind was a void, and he could not even say exactly where he was. In the beginning of September the early morning was already remaining dark. The lanterns around him flickered in the dusky shadows. He was sitting by the side of a major street, which he did not recognize. It vanished into the night's blackness. He could see hardly anything except the produce he had been entrusted to watch. Down the market lanes he could make out only the outline of other heaps like a flock of sheep. In the middle of the route, blocking the street, he could see the outline of carts. From one end to the other, he could smell what he could not exactly see, a line of horses breathing in the dark. Shouts, a piece of wood or an iron chain hitting the pavement, the thumping of vegetables unloaded from wagons, and wheels scraping as carts were backed against the curb—these sounds loaded the still air with the exciting promise of dawn awakening.

Turning his head, Florent noticed, on the other side of the cabbage, a snoring man wrapped like a package in his overcoat, his head resting on a basket of plums. A little closer on the left side, he could see a ten-year-old child with an angel's smile fast asleep between two stacks of endive. Looking down the pavement, he could see nothing that seemed awake except maybe the lanterns hanging from invisible arms, their light bouncing over all the sleeping vegetables and people spread out in piles, awaiting daybreak.

What was surprising was the glimpse of two enormous pavilions on either side of the street, with grand roofs that seemed to rise out of sight amid a flurry of lights. In his weariness he imagined he was seeing an array of palaces, huge and orderly and light as crystal with streaks of light filtering through endless rows of venetian blinds. Between slender pillars, ladders of light rose into the shadow of the lower roof and then soared above it to a higher roof, giving the outline of large square halls where gray, slumbering heaps gathered under the glare of brilliant gaslight.

Florent turned away, enraged that he could not grasp where he was, disturbed by this fragile but gigantic specter, and as he looked up he glimpsed the luminous clock dial of the massive gray Church of Saint Eustache. He was suddenly jolted by the realization that he was near Saint Eustache—he was at pointe Saint-Eustache!

Just then Madame François came back, vehemently arguing with a man who was carrying a sack on his shoulders and offering only a sou per bunch for the carrots.

“Come on, Lacaille, you're not being fair. You're going to sell them to the Parisians for four or five sous. I'll sell them to you for two.”

As he left she said, “I swear, they act as though these things grow on their own. Let him go look for carrots at a sou a bunch. He'll be back, the drunk.”

She was saying this to Florent as she sat down next to him. “So, if you haven't been in Paris in a long time, you probably don't know the new markets. It's only been at most five years since they were built. Over there, you see, the pavilion next to us, that's for fruit and flowers. Further down is the fish market and poultry, and behind us, there, vegetables, then butter and cheese. There are six pavilions on this side and over on the opposite side, another four: the meat market, tripe and organs. It's huge, but the problem is that it's freezing in the winter. I heard they're going to tear down the buildings around the grain market and build another two pavilions. Did you know about all this?”

“No,” Florent answered, “I've been abroad. And this main street here, what's it called?”

“It's a new street called rue du Pont-Neuf. It starts at the Seine and goes all the way to rue Montmartre and rue Montorgueil. You could have figured it out in daylight.” She got up, seeing a woman eyeing her turnips. “Is that you, Mère Chantemesse?” she said pleasantly.

Florent looked down to the foot of rue Montorgueil. It was there that a group of sergents de ville had grabbed him on the night of December 4. He had been strolling boulevard Montmartre at about two in the afternoon, slowly ambling with the crowd, smiling at all the soldiers the government had posted in the streets so that it would be taken seriously, when suddenly the military had started making a sweep of the boulevard. It had gone on for a good quarter of an hour. Then someone had pushed him and he had been thrown to the ground at the corner of rue Vivienne. He wasn't sure what had happened after that because gunshots had rung out and the crowd had panicked and trampled him.

When he heard no more noise, he tried to get up but realized that a young woman in a pink bonnet was lying on top of him. Her shawl had slipped off her shoulders, and he could see her undergarment, a bodice tucked in little pleats. Just above her breasts were two holes where bullets had entered, and when he tried to move her gently to free his legs, two dribbles of blood had leaked out of the holes and over his hands. He had leapt to his feet and bolted, without a hat, blood moist on his hands. He had wandered around, delirious, until evening fell, constantly seeing the woman who had lain across his legs, her face so pale, her eyes so blue and large, her lips grimacing at the shock of being there, dead so soon.

At the age of thirty, he was a bashful young man who could barely bring himself to look a woman in the face, and now he would be seeing her face, carrying it in his heart and memory, for the rest of his life. It was as though she had been his beloved wife.

In the evening, his mind still blurred by the afternoon's horror, he had somehow, not really knowing how, found himself in a wine shop on the rue Montorgueil, where men were drinking and threatening to throw up barricades. He had gone with them, helping them pull up a few paving stones. He had sat on the barricade, worn out from wandering the streets, and he had vowed to himself that when the soldiers came he would fight. He wasn't even carrying a knife, and his head was still hatless. Around eleven o'clock, he nodded off, and in his sleep he saw the two holes in the white bodice staring at him like two bloodshot, tearstained eyes. When he woke up, he was being taken by four sergents de ville, who were beating him with their fists. The men at the barricade had all fled. The sergents had become enraged and almost strangled him when they found that he had blood on his hands. It was the young woman's blood.

Florent, lost in all these memories, looked up at Saint Eustache without noticing the hands of the clock. It was almost four o'clock. Les Halles was still asleep. Madame François was standing and arguing with Mère Chantemesse about the price of a bunch of turnips. Florent was remembering how he had almost been executed right there, against a wall of Saint Eustache. There a police detachment had just blown the heads off five unlucky souls, taken at a barricade on rue Grenéta. Five bodies had been piled on the sidewalk at a spot where he now saw what seemed to be a heap of bright pink radishes. He had avoided being shot only because sergents de ville carried only swords. They had taken him to the nearest police station and left him with the precinct chief, who was given a note written in pencil on a scrap of paper. It said, “Taken with his hands covered in blood. Very dangerous.”

He had been dragged from station to station until morning. Everywhere he was taken, the scrap of paper had accompanied him. He had been handcuffed and guarded as though he were a raving lunatic. On rue de la Lingerie, some drunken soldiers had wanted to shoot him and had already lit a lantern in preparation when the order had come to take him to the prison at police headquarters. Two days later he was in a dungeon at Fort Bicêtre. He had been suffering from hunger ever since. The pangs of hunger that had visited him in that dungeon had never left.

He had been one of a hundred men at the bottom of that cellar, where there was barely air enough to breathe, scrambling like captive animals for the few pieces of bread thrown to them. When he had been brought before the judge without any witnesses and with no opportunity to defend himself, he had been accused of belonging to an underground group, and when he swore that it was not true, the judge had pulled the scrap of paper from a file. “Taken with his hands covered in blood. Very dangerous.” That was all they had needed. He had been sentenced to deportation to the penal colony.

On a January night six weeks later, a guard had awakened him and taken him to a courtyard with about four hundred other prisoners. An hour later this first convoy had been marched in handcuffs between two columns of gendarmes with loaded rifles, to be shipped into exile. They had crossed the Austerlitz bridge and followed the boulevards to the Gare du Havre.

It was a festive carnival night. The windows of the restaurants along the boulevards were open. At the top of the rue Vivienne, right where he had found the dead woman—that unknown woman whose face he always carried with him—there was now a large carriage full of masked women, bare-shouldered and with laughing voices, irritated by being held up and appalled by “this interminable line of prisoners.”

From Paris to Le Havre the prisoners had not been given a drink of water or a mouthful of bread. Someone had forgotten to distribute rations before they left. For thirty-six hours they had had nothing to eat, until they were packed into the hold of the frigate Canada.

The hunger had never left him. Florent searched through his past and could not recall a moment of plenty. He had become dry and emaciated, with a shrunken stomach and skin that drooped from his bones. And now that he was back in Paris, it seemed to him to be fat, haughty, and overloaded with food, while surrounded by sadness. He had returned on a bed of vegetables, rolling into town on a huge wave of food that troubled him.

Had that festive carnival night continued all these seven years? Again he saw the open windows of the boulevard restaurants, laughing women, the city of gluttony he had left on that January day long ago. It seemed to him that everything had expanded and enlarged as though to keep up with the huge market, Les Halles, whose heavy breathing he was beginning to hear, still sluggish with yesterday's indigestion.

Mère Chantemesse had finally decided on a dozen turnip bunches. She gathered them up in her apron, pressing them to her midriff, which made her look even plumper than usual, and she stayed on to chat some more in her drawling voice. When she finally left, Madame François sat beside Florent again.

“Poor old Mère Chantemesse,” she said. “She must be at least seventy-two. I remember when I was a kid, her buying turnips from my father. And she has no family, only some little waif that she picked up God knows where, who gives her nothing but grief. But she gets by, selling a little and making a couple of francs' profit a day. If it were me, I could never spend all my days on the streets of Paris. She doesn't even have relatives.”

Seeing that Florent was not talking, she asked, “Do you have relatives in Paris?”

He seemed not to hear her. His old mistrust returned. His mind was swirling with old tales of police, their undercover agents on every street corner, and women selling the secrets they had pried loose from sad souls they took in. As he sat beside Madame François, she looked honest enough with her full, calm face and the black-and-yellow scarf around her head. She seemed about thirty-five, sturdy, with handsome good looks from her outdoor life. Her masculine bearing was softened by kind, soft dark eyes. She was a bit nosy, but it was a good-natured curiosity.

“I have a nephew in Paris,” she said, continuing the one-sided conversation, not the least offended by Florent's silence. “He hasn't turned out to be any good. Now he's enlisted … It's always good to have somewhere to go. I suppose your parents will be surprised to see you. It feels good to get home, doesn't it?”

All the while she talked, she never took her eyes off Florent, probably feeling sorry for him because he was so skinny. Then too, she guessed that there was a gentleman somewhere inside that tattered black overcoat, which was why she did not dare press a silver coin into his palm. But finally she did say, “You know, if you ever need anything—”

But Florent cut her off with clumsy pride, saying that he had everything he needed and knew exactly where he was going. This seemed to please her, and she repeated several times, as though to reassure herself, “Oh good, then you just have to wait for daybreak.”

A huge bell at the corner of the fruit market, right above Florent's head, started ringing. Its slow, regular notes seemed to awaken the market little by little. The carts kept coming with the growing ruckus of shouting wagoneers, the cracks of their whips, the iron wheel bands and horseshoes grinding into the stone pavement. The wagons, unable to move forward except in sudden jolts, lined up and slowly faded into the distant gray. All along rue du Pont-Neuf the carts unloaded, pulled close to the sidewalk, where the horses stood motionless in a line as though at a horse fair.

Florent examined a cart filled with magnificent cabbages. It had been backed up to the sidewalk with great care and effort, and its leafy pile rose above a gas lamp whose light fell on the large leaves, making them look like crimped pieces of green velvet. A young farm girl of about sixteen, wearing a blue linen coat and cap, climbed up on the cart and was up to her shoulders in cabbages. She began tossing them one by one to someone hidden in shadow below. Every now and then the girl would slip and disappear in a cabbage avalanche. Then her pink nose would be seen sticking out of the green and she would be heard laughing as the cabbages were tossed between Florent and the gaslight. He counted them automatically until the cart was empty, which left him feeling somehow disappointed.

The piles of vegetables were now spilling into the road, with narrow paths between them so that people could pass. The sidewalk was covered end to end with the dark vegetable mounds. But in the flicker of lantern light, you could barely make out the lush fullness of a bouquet of artichokes, the delicate green of the lettuce, the flush coral of carrots, the soft ivory finish of turnips. Flashes of the bright colors skipped across the mounds with the flickering of the light.

A crowd had awakened, and people were starting to fill up the sidewalk, scrambling among the vegetables, sometimes stopping, at times chattering, occasionally shouting. A loud voice could be heard in the distance screaming, “Chicory!”

The gates of the vegetable pavilion had just been opened, and the retailers who had stalls there, white caps on their heads, shawls knotted over their black coats, and skirts pinned up to protect them from getting dirty, began gathering their day's provisions in roomy baskets that stood on the floor. These baskets were seen darting in and out between the road and the pavilion, bumping into the heads of bystanders in the thick crowds, the bystanders expressing their displeasure with coarse complaints that were lost in the growing clamor of increasingly hoarse voices.

They could spend a quarter of an hour fighting over one sou. Florent was surprised at the calm of the marketers with their plaid clothing and tanned faces in the middle of the long-winded haggling of the market.

Behind him on the sidewalk of the rue Rambuteau, fruit was being sold. Hampers and smaller baskets were lined up, covered with canvas or straw giving off a strong odor of overripe mirabelle plums. After listening for some time to a soft, slow voice, Florent had to turn his head and look. He saw a charming woman, small and dark, sitting on the ground and bargaining.

“Oh, come on, Marcel,” she said. “You can take a hundred sous, won't you?” She was speaking to a man who kept his coat closely wrapped around him and did not answer. After about five very long minutes the woman went back on the attack. “Come on, Marcel, one hundred sous for that basket there and four francs for the other one. That'll make nine francs I owe you.”

More silence.

“All right, what's your price?”

“Ten francs, as you well know because I already told you. And what have you done with your Jules this morning, La Sarriette?” The young woman started laughing as she grabbed a fistful of small change from her pocket.

“Oh,” she said, “Jules is having his beauty rest this morning. He claims that men are not made for work.”

She paid for the two baskets and carried them into the newly opened fruit pavilion. Les Halles was still wrapped in artfully lit dankness, with thousands of stripes from jalousies beneath the awnings of the long covered street already heavily trafficked with pedestrians, while the distant pavilions were still deserted. At the pointe Saint-Eustache the bakers and wine merchants were busy taking down their shutters; their red shops, gaslights aglow, were brilliant against the grayness that still covered the other buildings. Florent looked at a boulangerie[4] on the left-hand side of rue Montorgueil, all full and golden with a fresh batch of bread, and he thought he could smell the fragrance of warm bread. It was 4:30 in the morning.

Meanwhile, Madame François had sold all her produce. When Lacaille reappeared with his bag, only a few carrot bunches were left.

“How about a sou for that?” he asked.

“I knew I'd be seeing you again,” she answered quietly. “Go ahead. Take the rest. There are seventeen bunches.”

“So that makes seventeen sous.”

“No. Thirty-four.”

They settled on twenty-five. Madame François was in a hurry to leave. Once Lacaille had wandered off with the carrots in his bag she said to Florent, “See that, he was watching me. The old bastard drifts around the market. Sometimes he waits till the last second to buy four sous' worth of goods. Oh these Parisians! They'll bicker over a few sous and then empty their pockets drinking at the wine shop.”

When Madame François spoke of Paris, her voice was full of irony and disdain. She talked about it as though it were a distant city so ridiculous and contemptible that she condescended to set foot there only in the dark of night.

“Now I can get out of here,” she said, sitting down next to Florent on a neighbor's vegetable pile.

Florent bowed his head. He had just stolen something. Just as Lacaille had left, Florent had spied a piece of carrot lying on the ground, picked it up, and was grasping it tightly in his right hand. Behind him, celery stalks and parsley bunches gave off a smell that was nauseating him.

“I'm going to get out of here,” Madame François repeated. This stranger touched her, and her senses told her that he was suffering, sitting there on the sidewalk motionless. She offered again to help him, but he again refused with an even more biting pride. He even stood up and remained on his feet to prove that he had regained his strength. Then, as Madame François turned away, he stuffed the carrot into his mouth. But despite his terrible longing to sink his teeth into it, he was forced to take it out of his mouth again, because she started examining his face again. She started to question him further with a kindhearted curiosity. Florent simply answered with nods and head shakes. Then, slowly, he began to eat the carrot.

She was finally about to leave when a powerful voice right behind her exclaimed, “Good morning, Madame François!”

The voice came from a skinny young man with big bones and a huge head. His face was bearded, with a delicate nose and sparkling clear eyes. He wore a rusty, beat-up black felt hat and was buttoned up in an enormous overcoat, once a soft chestnut but now discolored with long greenish streaks from the rain. Somewhat bent and shaking with nervous energy that seemed chronic, he stood in a pair of heavy laced shoes, the shortness of his pant legs revealing his blue hose.

“Oh, hello, Monsieur Claude,” she responded cheerfully. “You know, I was expecting you on Monday, and when you didn't show up I took care of your canvas for you, hanging it on a nail in my room.”

“Oh, Madame François, you're too kind. I'll finish that study of mine one of these days. I wasn't able to make it Monday. Does your big plum tree still have all its leaves?”

“Absolutely.”

“I wondered because I wanted it for a corner of my painting. It would be perfect by the side of the chicken coop. I've been thinking about it all week … Ah, what beautiful vegetables this morning! I came down very early this morning, looking for the rays of a beautiful sunrise landing on the cabbages.” He demonstrated with a sweep of his arm that took in the full length of the sidewalk.

Madame François answered, “Well, I'm leaving. Good-bye. See you soon, Monsieur Claude.” As she was leaving she introduced Florent to the young painter. “This gentleman seems to have come from far away. He's no longer at home in your pigsty called Paris. Maybe you could fill him in a bit.”

At last she was off, happy to have left the two of them together. Claude studied Florent with interest; his gaunt, diffident face seemed to Claude to be an original. Madame François's introduction was all he needed, and with the familiarity of a street hustler experienced in chance encounters, he calmly said, “I think I'll join you. Where are you going?”

Florent was still awkward. He did not open up so quickly. On the other hand, he had had a question on his lips ever since his arrival. Deciding to risk it, though he feared a disagreeable response, he asked, “Does the rue Pirouette still exist?”

“It certainly does,” the painter answered. “That street is a curious corner of old Paris. It bends and turns like a dancer, and the houses have huge bellies like fat women … I did a pretty good etching of it. I'll show it to you when you come by my place … Is that where you're going?”

Florent, heartened by the news that the rue Pirouette still existed, admitted that it was not his destination and that in fact, he had no place to go. But his distrust was reawakened by Claude's insistence. “Who cares?” said Claude. “Let's go to rue Pirouette anyway. It's the most wonderful color at night … Let's go, it's just a short hop.”

Florent had to follow him. They walked side by side, like two old friends, stepping over baskets and piles of vegetables. On the pavement at rue Rambuteau, there were mounds of gigantic cauliflowers, stacked with surprising orderliness like cannonballs. The delicate white cauliflower flesh opened like enormous roses, surrounded by large green leaves, so that the mounds resembled bridal bouquets on display on a flower stand. Claude stopped and emitted little whimpers of appreciation.

Then, in front of them, was the rue Pirouette, where he pointed to the houses, one by one, with stories and information about them. One gas lamp burned by itself in a corner. The peeling houses crammed together, their overhangs protruding above the ground floor, as the painter had said, like the bellies of fat women, while the gables above them tilted back as though leaning on their neighbors for support. Three or four others, placed farther back at the edge of the shadows, leaned forward as if about to fall on their faces. The gas lamp lit one house, making it appear very white, newly whitewashed, but still resembling a decrepit old woman freshly powdered and made up to look young. The other houses stretched into the darkness, cracked and green-streaked from the rain in the gutters, in such a hodgepodge of different colors and attitudes that it made Claude laugh.

Florent had stopped at rue de Mondétour, in front of the next to last house on the left. All three stories, each with two shutterless windows neatly covered by white curtains, appeared to be asleep. On the top floor, a faint light could be seen through the curtain moving back and forth.

The shop beneath the overhang seemed to have a tremendous effect on Florent. It was starting to open, a shop with prepared greens. At the far end, shiny bowls could be seen, while on the display shelf in front, round domes and conical towers of spinach and chicory were placed in bowls, each notched in the back to leave space for flat serving spatulas, showing only their white metal handles.

Florent felt as though he had been struck motionless, riveted to the pavement by this sight. He did not recognize the shop. Reading the merchant's name on a red sign, Godebœuf, he felt even more dismayed. With his arms hanging limp at his sides, he studied the cooked spinach with the air of a cursed man.

From the opened window above, a little old woman leaned out and looked up at the sky and then at the market in the distance.

“Ah, Mademoiselle Saget is an early bird,” said Claude, looking up. And he added, turning to Florent, “I once had an aunt living in that house. That place is a nest of gossip. Ah, now the Méhudins are starting to stir. There's a light on the second floor.”

Florent was about to ask Claude a question, but there was something unnerving about him in his baggy, faded overcoat. Florent followed him without saying a word while Claude went on about the Méhudins. They were fishmongers; the elder woman was superb. The younger one, who sold freshwater fish, resembled a virgin in a Murillo painting, this blonde among all the carp and eels. Then he started asserting, with growing anger, that Murillo was a third-rate painter. Suddenly he stopped in the middle of the street and asked, “So where are you going?”

“At the moment, I'm not going anywhere,” Florent said wearily. “We can go wherever you like.”

As they were leaving rue Pirouette, a voice called out to Claude from the wine shop on the corner. Claude entered, with Florent behind him. They had still taken off the shutters on only one side. The gas burned in the shop's still-sleepy air. A forgotten dish towel and cards from a game the night before were scattered on the table, while a breeze from the wide-open door blew freshness into the stale warm smell of wine. The owner, Monsieur Lebigre, was serving a customer in his long-sleeved waistcoat, with his sloppy beard and fat, even features still pale with sleep. Men with deepset eyes were standing in groups drinking at the counter, coughing, spitting, and trying to wake themselves up with white wine and eau-de-vie.[5] Florent recognized Lacaille, whose sack was now bursting with vegetables. He was on his third round with a friend, who was telling a story at great length about the acquisition of a basket of potatoes. Then, after emptying his glass, he went to chat with Monsieur Lebigre in a small glassed-in office in the back where the gas had not yet been lit.

“What'll you have?” Claude asked Florent.

When they had entered, Claude had shaken hands with the man who had called out to him. He was a fort,[6] a handsome young man of no more than twenty-two, clean-shaven except for a trim mustache, with a hearty demeanor, wearing a broad-brimmed chalk-covered hat and a wool scarf with floppy laces for tightening his blue work shirt. Claude called him Alexandre, clapped him on the arm, and demanded to know when they were going back to Charentonneau. Then they reminisced about the great boat trip they had made together on the Marne. That evening they had eaten rabbit.

“So what are you drinking?” Claude asked Florent again.

Florent stared at the counter, feeling embarrassed. At the end were brass-ringed pots of punch and mulled wine, simmering over a gas burner's short blue-and-pink jets of flame. Finally, he admitted that he would love to have a hot drink. Monsieur Lebigre served them three glasses of punch. Near the pots was a basket of little butter rolls that had just been brought in and were still steaming. But the others didn't take any, so Florent just drank his glass of punch. He felt it falling into his stomach like a drizzle of molten lead.

Alexandre paid.

“He's a good guy, Alexandre,” said Claude after the two of them were back on the rue Rambuteau. “He's a lot of fun when we go to the country. He does amazing feats of strength. What a build, the oaf. I've seen him stripped. If he would only pose for me nude in the open air … Now, if you'd like, we could do a little tour through the market.”

Florent followed passively. The glow of light at the end of rue Rambuteau announced daybreak. The great voice of Les Halles grumbled in the distance; the occasional peal of bells[7] from some far-off pavilion competed with the rising bedlam. Claude and Florent turned into one of the covered streets between the fish and poultry pavilions. Florent looked up into the vaulted roof overhead, at the glistening wooden beams in between the black iron struts. As they turned onto the main thoroughfare, he imagined being in some unknown town with its various neighborhoods and suburbs, its boulevards and roads, plazas and intersections, all suddenly sheltered from a rainy day by a huge roof dropped into place as though by the whimsy of some giant.

The shadows that lingered in the crevices of the roof multiplied the forest of pillars and expanded the delicate ribbing, the fretwork balconies, the slatted windows. And there, high above the town, nestled in the shadows, was an immense metal jungle, with stems and vines and tangled branches covering this little world that resembled the foliage of an age-old forest.

Some sections of the market were still sleeping behind iron gates. The butter and poultry stands had long rows of trellised stalls that the gas lighting showed to be deserted. The fish pavilion was opening, and women were scurrying among the white stone slabs, which were littered with baskets and forgotten rags. The noise and activity were slowly picking up over at the vegetables, the fruit, and the flowers. Little by little morning was coming, from the working-class neighborhood, where the cabbage was piled at four in the morning, to the lazy, privileged zone, which began hanging its chickens and pheasants at eight.

The main covered passageways teemed with life. All along the sidewalks there were many produce sellers, including small-scale gardeners from the outskirts of Paris showing their little harvests of vegetable bunches and fruit bundles from the previous night. In the midst of the crowd's incessant comings and goings, carts pulled in under the vaulted roof, the clop of the horses' hooves slowing down. Two of the wagons blocked the intersection, and in order to get around them Florent had to press against some shabby bundles that looked like coal sacks and were so heavy that they bowed the axle of the wagon carrying them. They were damp and gave off a scent of seaweed, and huge black mussels were spilling out of the split end of one sack.

At every step they took, Claude and Florent were forced to stop for something. The seafood was arriving, and, one after another, railroad carts pulled up with tall wooden cages loaded with the bins and hampers that had been shipped by train from the coast. Trying to get out of the way of the fish carts, which were coming with increasing urgency, Claude and Florent practically dived under the wheels of the wagons filled with butter, eggs, and cheese, huge yellow chariots drawn by four-horse teams and decorated with colored lanterns. Workers were bringing down cases of eggs and baskets of cheeses and butter, which they carried into the auction room, where men in caps made entries in notebooks by gaslight. Claude was enthralled by the scene, lost in admiration for the lighting on a group in overalls unloading a cart. Finally they moved on.

Still traveling down the main route, they walked in a heady fragrance that surrounded them and seemed to follow them. They were in the midst of the cut flower market. On the ground, to the right and left, women sat with square baskets in front of them filled with bunches of roses, violets, dahlias, and daisies. Some bunches were darker, like bloodstains; others brightened into delicate, silvery grays. A lighted candle near one of the baskets gave the surrounding blackness a sudden burst of color, the bright plumage of the daisies, the bloodred of the dahlias, the rich blueness of violets, the brilliant tints of roses. And nothing was more like spring than the tenderness of this perfume on the pavement after the biting breath of seafood and the pungent scent of butter and cheese.

The two men went on their way meandering among the flowers. Out of curiosity they stopped in front of the women selling bunches of ferns and vine leaves, neatly tied-up bundles with twenty-five pieces in each. Then they went down a nearly deserted alley, where their footsteps echoed as though they were in a church. There they found a small cart the size of a wheelbarrow with an undersized donkey hitched to it, which was probably bored because when he saw them, he began braying so loudly that his groans echoed in the great vaulted roofs of Les Halles, which seemed to shake from the sound. The horses answered with neighing, then a stamping and scraping of hooves, a distant fracas that swelled, rolled, and then faded.

In front of Claude and Florent on rue Berger they saw, in the glow of gaslight, bare retail shops, open on one side, with baskets and fruit surrounded by three grimy walls covered with arithmetical calculations scribbled in pencil. As they stood there they saw a well-dressed woman curled up with an air of weary contentment in the corner of a cab that looked misplaced in the procession of carts as it made its way along.

“There's Cinderella heading home without her slippers,” said Claude with a smile.

They chatted now as they went back to the market. Claude, his hands in his pockets, whistled and expounded on his love for this great mountain of food that rose up every morning in the heart of Paris. He roamed the streets every night dreaming of colossal still lifes, extraordinary works. He had even begun one. He had made his friend Marjolin and that slut Cadine pose, but it was hard. Those damn vegetables and the fruit and fish and meat—it was all too beautiful!

Florent listened to the artist's exuberance with his own belly aching from hunger. It was obvious that it had not occurred to Claude at that moment that all those beautiful objects were there for people to eat. He loved them for their colors. But suddenly he stopped talking and tightened the long red belt that he wore under his greenish coat, an old habit. Then he continued with a sly look.

“And here, this is where I have my breakfast, at least with my eyes, which is better than nothing at all. Sometimes when I forget dinner the night before, I work myself into indigestion the next morning by watching the carts come in here, filled with all sorts of good things. On such a morning I love my vegetables more than ever. Oh, the thing that exasperates me, the real injustice of it, is that those good-for-nothing bourgeois actually eat all this.”

He remembered a dinner that a friend had bought him at Baratte's[8] one glorious day. They had had oysters, fish, and game. But Baratte's had gone under and all the carnival life of the old Marché des Innocents was now buried, and everything had been replaced by the huge central market, a steel giant of a new town. “Fools can say what they like, but this was the quintessence of the era.”

At first Florent could not decide if he was criticizing the picturesqueness of Baratte's or its cheerful atmosphere. But Claude was on a rant against romanticism. He preferred his piles of cabbage to the rags of the Middle Ages. And he wound up by denouncing the weakness of an etching he had done of rue Pirouette. “All those grubby old places ought to be torn down and replaced by modern ones.”

“Listen,” he said, stopping. “Look over there in the corner. Isn't that a ready-made painting, infinitely more human than all their beloved pretentious paintings?”

Along the covered street women were selling coffee and hot soup. In a corner a crowd of customers had gathered around a man selling cabbage soup. The galvanized tin bucket full of broth was steaming on the little heater, whose holes emitted the pale glow of embers. The woman, armed with a ladle, took thin slices of bread out of a cloth-lined basket and dipped yellow cups into the soup. She was surrounded by tidy saleswomen, farmers in overalls, forts with coats stained by the foods they had carried and their backs bent by the weight of the loads, poor ragged drifters—the entire hungry early-morning crowd of Les Halles, eating, scalding themselves, sticking their chins forward so that the trickle from their spoons would not stain their clothes.

And the passionate painter blinked his eyes, thrilled by the scene, looking for the best vantage point, working out the painting's best composition. But the goddamn cabbage soup smelled impressive.

Florent turned his head, unable to watch the customers emptying their soup cups in silence like a cluster of distrustful animals feeding. Claude himself was overwhelmed by pungent steam rising from someone's spoon that struck him in the face.

He tightened his belt, smiling as though he was annoyed. Then, as they continued their stroll, he alluded to the punch Alexandre had bought them, saying in a low voice: “It's a funny thing, but have you ever noticed that you can always find someone to buy you a drink but there is never anyone who will pay for something to eat?”

It was daybreak. The houses at the end of rue de la Cossonnerie along boulevard Sébastopol were still black, but above the clean line of their slate roofs, a patch of blue sky framed in the arches of the covered street shone like a half-moon. Claude, who had been bending down to look through some ground-level gratings, peering down into the glimmering gaslight of deep cellars, glanced up at the opening between the pillars, as though studying the dark roofs on the edge of the clear sky. Then he stopped again, this time to inspect an iron ladder, one of those that connected the two levels of roofing. Florent asked him what he was looking at up there.

“It's that bastard Marjolin,” said the painter, not in answer to Florent's question. “You can bet he's lying in some gutter, unless he spent the night with the animals in the poultry cellar. I need him to do a study.”

And he told the story of how his friend Marjolin had been found by the market women one morning on a pile of cabbages and how he had grown up wild on the neighborhood streets. When they wanted to send him to school, he would suddenly become ill and they had to take him back to the markets. He knew the most hidden nooks and loved them as if they were his family moving with squirrellike agility through his ironwork forest. What a pretty couple they made—he and the slutty Cadine, whom Mère Chantemesse had picked up one night at the old Marché des Innocents. He was beautiful, this big oaf, golden as a Rubens with a reddish down that caught the light; she was a little thing, lithe and slender, with an odd face beneath a tangle of frizzy black hair.

Claude, engrossed in his talk, walked quickly, bringing his companion to the pointe Saint-Eustache. But Florent, whose legs were starting to buckle again, finally collapsed on a bench near the horse trolley station. There was a cool breeze. At the bottom of the rue Rambuteau, a bright pink light was streaking the milky sky, which higher up was cut by broad gray patches. With the dawn came such a sweet balsamic scent that for a minute Florent thought he was sitting on a hillside in the country. But Claude pointed out to him that on the other side of the bench was the herb market. All along the walkway, around the triperie[9] there were, in a manner of speaking, fields of thyme, lavender, garlic, and shallot. The merchants had adorned the young plane trees all along the walkway with long branches heavy with bay leaves as thick and green as a victor's wreath. The strong perfume of bay leaf dominated.

The luminous face of the clock on Saint Eustache turned pale, a night-light surprised by the dawn. One by one, the gaslights in the wine shops in the neighborhood were extinguished, like stars faded away by a bright sky. And Florent looked at the huge market emerging from the shadows, coming out of a dreamland in which they had been held, the palaces sprawling along the streets. They seemed to solidify into a greenish gray color with their columns holding up an endless expanse of roof. They rose in a geometrical mass, and once all the lights had been extinguished and the matching square buildings were bathed in dawn light, they seemed like some kind of oversize modern machine, a kind of steam engine with a cauldron designed to serve all mankind, a huge riveted and bolted metal belly built of wood, glass, and iron with the power and grace of a machine with glowing furnaces and dizzily spinning wheels.

Claude had enthusiastically leapt to his feet on the bench and forced his companion to admire daybreak on the vegetables. There was a sea of vegetables between the rows of pavilions from pointe Saint-Eustache to rue des Halles. At the two intersections at either end the seas grew higher, completely flooding the pavement. Dawn rose slowly in soft grays, coloring everything with a light wash of watercolors. The mounting piles, like a swelling sea, the river of greenery rushing through the streets like an autumnal torrent, took on delicate shadows and hues: tender violet, milk-blushed rose, a green steeped in yellows—all the soft, pale hues that change the sky into silk at sunrise. Step by step the fire of dawn rose higher, shooting up bursts of flame at the far end of rue Rambuteau as the vegetables brightened and grew more distinct from the bluish darkness that clung to the ground. Lettuce, escarole, and chicory, with rich earth still stuck to them, opened to expose swelling hearts. Bundles of spinach, bunches of sorrel, packets of artichokes, piles of peas and beans, mountains of romaine tied with straw, sang the full greenery repertoire from the shiny green lacquered pods to the deep green leaves—a continuous range of ascending and descending scales that faded away in the variegated heads of celery and bundles of leeks. But the most piercing note of all came from the flaming carrots and the snowy splotches of turnips, strewn in ample quantities all along the market and lighting it with their colors.

At the intersection of rue des Halles were mountains of cabbages. There were enormous white cabbages that were hard and compact like metal balls, curly savoys whose great leaves made them look like basins of greening bronze, and red cabbages that the dawn seemed to change into exquisite flowery masses the color of wine, crimson and deep purple. At the other end, where pointe Saint-Eustache intersects rue Rambuteau, the route was blocked by swollen-bellied orange pumpkins crawling across the ground in two lines. The varnished brown of onions shone here and there in baskets and the bloodred heaps of tomatoes, the muted yellow of cucumbers, and the deep purple of eggplants, while thick black radishes in funereal drapes still held memories of the night amid this vibrant, jubilant new day.

Claude clapped his hands at the sight. He found something extravagant, crazy, and sublime in all the jaunty vegetables. He insisted that they were absolutely not dead but, after being pulled from the earth the day before, were awaiting the next sunrise to make their farewells from the cobblestones of Les Halles. He saw them as alive, their leaves wide open, as though their roots were still embedded in warm, well-manured soil. He also claimed to hear in the market the death rattle of all the little gardens on the outskirts of the city.

A crowd of white caps, black jackets, and blue overalls was converging in the narrow passages between piles. The forts' huge baskets made their way slowly over the heads of the crowd. The saleswomen, grocers, and fruit sellers were doing a brisk business. A group of corporals and a few nuns were huddled around mountains of cabbages, and institutional cooks were hunting for bargains. The unloading continued, the carts tossing their loads to the ground as though they were shipments of cobblestones, adding more and more waves to the sea of produce that was now spreading to the opposite pathway. And from the far end of the rue du Pont-Neuf, carts kept coming in a line without end.

“It is phenomenally beautiful,” cooed the enraptured Claude.

But Florent was in pain. He believed himself to be tested by some supernatural temptation and turned to look at the side facade of Saint Eustache, unable to look at the market any longer. From this view it seemed washed in sepia against the blue sky with its rosettes and broad arched windows, its bell turret and slate roof. Then his eyes rested on the somber depths of rue Montorgueil, where gaudy signs stood out. On the corner of rue Montmartre, gilded balconies gleamed in the sunlight. When he looked back at the intersection, his eyes were drawn to other signboards with inscriptions such as DRUGGIST AND PHARMACY and FLOUR AND DRIED BEANS in large red and black letters on dull backgrounds.

By now the households in the corner buildings with their narrow windows were waking up, and the airy new rue du Pont-Neuf was showing a touch of the remaining facades of old Paris, yellowing and sturdy. Standing at the empty windows of the large store at the corner of rue Rambuteau, smart-looking attendants in tight pants with large cuffs were arranging their displays. Further away, in the Maison Guillout, severe as a barracks, cookies in gilded wrappers and ornate petits fours were artistically set out in glass cases. All the shops were now open, and workers in white smocks carrying tools under their arms were hurrying up the street.

Claude was still standing on the bench on his tiptoes, trying to see farther down the streets. Suddenly, coming from the crowd that he was not even focusing on, he caught a glimpse of a head draped in blond hair, followed by a smaller one covered in frizzy black curls.

“Hey, Marjolin! Hi, Cadine!” he shouted.

Since his voice was lost in the noise of the crowd, he jumped off the bench and took off. Then he remembered that he had left Florent behind and came back. “You know, I live at the end of the impasse des Bourdonnais,” he said. “My name's written in chalk on the door: Claude Lantier. Come and see my etching of the rue Pirouette.”

Then he vanished. He did not even know Florent's name. After having offered him his views on art, he disappeared in the street the same way he had appeared.

Now Florent was alone. At first he welcomed this solitude. Ever since Madame François had picked him up on avenue de Neuilly he had been moving in a world part sleep and part pain, which had kept him from completely grasping anything. Finally he was free to do exactly what he felt like and to shake himself free of this nightmare of overflowing food following him everywhere. But his mind remained blank, and he could find nothing within him except a vague sense of fear. The day had brightened, and everything could be seen clearly now. He looked at his pants and his pathetic coat. He buttoned the first, dusted off the second, and attempted to straighten himself up, afraid that his black rags would scream out from where he had come. He was seated in the middle of a bench alongside some homeless people who had settled there to wait for sunrise. The nights at Les Halles are good to drifters and vagabonds.

Two sergents de ville, still in night uniforms with their greatcoats and képis,[10] paced back and forth on the sidewalk, side by side, with their hands folded behind their backs. Each time they passed the bench, they cast a glance at the prey whose presence they could sense. Florent thought they recognized him and were about to arrest him. Anxiety overtook him, and he was gripped by a mad compulsion to run. But he didn't dare and had no idea how to get away. The frequent glances shot at him by the sergents de ville, their slow and icy perusal, kept him on the verge of panic. Finally he got up from the bench and, fighting the urge to flee as fast as his long legs would carry him, managed to stroll away quietly, though his shoulders trembled with the fear that at any second he would feel a rough hand grabbing the back of his collar.

Now he had but one thought, one idea, and that was to get away from the market as fast as he could. He would put off his research until later, when the area had emptied out. The three streets that intersected here, rue Montmartre, rue Montorgueil, and rue de Turbigo, worried him. They were blocked by all kinds of vehicles, and the sidewalks were clogged with vegetables. Florent continued until rue Pierre-Lescot, but there he ran into the watercress and potato markets, and it seemed to him there was no way past them. It looked better to take rue Rambuteau. But once he reached boulevard Sébastopol he ran into such a barricade of carriages, wagons, and carts that he turned off to rue Saint-Denis. But there he was back with the vegetables. Retailers had just set up their stands—thick planks propped up on tall baskets—and the flood of cabbages, carrots, and turnips started again. Les Halles overflowed. He tried to escape the flood, but it ran after him. He tried rue de la Cossonnerie, rue Berger, the square des Innocents, rue de la Ferronerie, rue des Halles. He was trapped, disheartened, afraid that he was unable to hop off this carousel of vegetables, which would end up prancing around him, thin vines wrapping around his legs.

The eternal trail of carts and horses stretched all the way to rue de Rivoli and place de l'Hôtel de Ville. Huge vans were hauling away supplies for all the district's grocers and fruit sellers. Large covered wagons with straining, groaning flanks were starting for the suburbs. In rue du Pont-Neuf, Florent became completely disoriented. He stumbled upon a row of handcarts where numerous vendors were arranging their goods. Among them, heading off down rue Saint-Honoré pushing a cart of carrots and cauliflower, he sighted Lacaille.

Florent followed him, hoping he would help him find his way out. Even though the weather was dry, the pavement was very slippery, and discarded artichoke stalks and leaves of all kinds made walking a bit perilous. He slid with each step. He lost track of Lacaille in rue Vauvilliers and, heading into the grain market, once again found his route blocked by vehicles. He no longer tried to fight. Les Halles had defeated him, the tide had overtaken him. Slowly he worked his way back to pointe Saint-Eustache.

Now he heard the loud rumbling of the wagons setting out from the market. Paris was dispersing the mouthfuls that would feed its two million inhabitants. These markets were like a huge central organ, furiously pulsating and pumping the blood of life through the city's veins. The uproar from all the stocking and provisioning was like the chomping of the jaws of a colossus, at one end the cracking of whips of the big buyers driving their wagons to the local markets, at the other the plodding clogs of the poor women who sold lettuce from door to door carrying off their baskets.

Florent entered a covered passage on the left between a group of four pavilions, which, he had noticed when it was nighttime, had no lights on. There he hoped to find refuge, some corner in which he could hide. But now these pavilions were as packed and lively as everywhere else. He went to the end of the street. Wagons were arriving at a quick rate, congesting the market with cages of live poultry and deep square baskets in which dead birds were laid. On the opposite sidewalk, other wagons were unloading whole calves, lying on their sides like children wrapped in shrouds so tailored that only the bloody stumps of their chopped-off legs were showing. There were also whole sheep and sides of beef, legs and shoulders. Butchers in long white aprons stamped the meat, carried it off, weighed it, and hung it on hooks in the auction room.

With his face close to the grating, Florent studied the rows of hanging cadavers—the red cattle and sheep, the pale calves flecked with the yellow of fat and tendons and with gaping bellies. Then he passed along the sidewalk by the triperie with its calves' feet and heads, the rolled tripe neatly packed in boxes, the brains fastidiously laid in flat baskets, the bloody livers, the purplish kidneys. He paused to inspect long two-wheeled carts covered with a round tarpaulin loaded with halved pigs hung on either side over a bed of straw. Seen from behind, the inside of the cart looked like a tabernacle lit by the rows of naked flesh. On the straw were tin cans catching the dripping blood.

Florent was gripped by a fever. The bland smell of the butchers and the pungent smell of the tripe agitated him. He got out of the covered passageway, preferring the open air of rue du Pont-Neuf.

He was in misery. Shuddering suddenly in the morning air, his teeth chattering, he was afraid that he was about to faint. He looked for but could not find even a corner of a bench to sit on, a place to sleep, even if it meant being awakened by the sergents de ville. About to pass out, he propped himself against a tree, his eyes closed, and a humming sound filled his ears. The raw carrot he had eaten, barely chewing it, was now wrenching his stomach, while the punch befuddled his head. He was drunk with illness, exhaustion, and hunger. Once again a flame burned in his chest, and he clutched at his body as though trying to block an opening through which his entire being might slip away. The pavement seemed to be listing sharply. His pain grew so unbearable that he tried to keep walking in order to distract himself. He walked straight ahead and became lost in the vegetables. He followed one narrow path, turned down another, tried to retrace his steps, but took a wrong turn and was once again lost in the greens. The heaps were piled so high that people were walking between two walls of bundles and bunches. Only their heads could be seen over these battlements, white or black depending on the color of their hats, gliding by while enormous swinging baskets, at the same height as the top of the piles, looked like wicker boats adrift on a stagnant mossy lake.

Florent stumbled over a thousand obstructions—forts hefting their loads and market women arguing in coarse voices. He slipped on a bed of discarded leaves and stalks lying thickly on the sidewalk and nearly choked on the scent of crushed greens. At last falling into a stupor, he stopped and gave in to the shoving and insults, reduced to flotsam adrift on ocean swells.

Cowardice was breaking his spirit. He could easily have stooped to begging, and he was infuriated by his stupid pride of the night before. If he had accepted the charity of Madame François, if he had not been so foolishly intimidated by Claude, he would not now be at nearly his last breath, here among the cabbages. What particularly annoyed him was that he had not questioned the painter about rue Pirouette. And now he might very well drop dead on the pavement like a stray dog.

For the last time he raised his eyes and looked at the market glittering in the sun. Bright sunshine was streaming through the covered passageway from the other end, splitting the pavilions with a beam of light, while fiery shafts poured down on the distant expanse of roofs. The great iron framework grew less clear and turned bluish, a mere silhouette outlined against the flaming sunlight. High above, a windowpane caught fire and flame dripped down the sloping zinc roof all the way to the gutter. Below, the tumultuous metropolis was lit by a cloud of golden dust.

The day's awakening was spreading from the snoring of the market gardeners, wrapped in their thick coats, to the rolling wagons, more active than ever. Now the entire city had opened its gratings, the sidewalks were humming, the pavilions were abuzz. The air was thick with voices. It was as though the mutterings Florent had heard in the shadowy early hours from four o'clock on were now blossoming into full sentences.

To the right, to the left, everywhere, the shrill cries sent the treble notes of a flute into the bass rumble of the crowd. It was the sound of seafood, butter, poultry, and meat being sold. The pealing of bells sent added vibrations through the noisy market. All around Florent, sunlight set vegetables on fire with color. The pale water-color he had seen at dawn had vanished. The ample hearts of lettuce were aflame. The hues of the greenery had turned brilliant, the carrots glowed bloodred, the turnips turned incandescent in the triumphal sunlight.

Loads of cabbage were being unloaded to the left of Florent. He turned away and saw in the distance even more wagons being unloaded on rue de Turbigo. The tide was still rising. At first he had felt it around his ankles, then at stomach height, and now it was threatening to rise over his head. Blinded, drowning, his ears ringing, his stomach demolished by all that he had seen and guessing that there were even greater, unfathomable depths of food to come, he asked for mercy. Mad sorrow gripped him at the thought that he would starve to death here at the heart of glutted Paris, in the midst of the market's resplendent daybreak. Fat, hot tears dripped from his eyes.

Now he reached one of the wider alleys. Two women, a small elderly one and a tall withered one, walked by him, headed toward the pavilions.

“So you have come to do your shopping, Mademoiselle Saget?” the tall withered one asked.

“Well, Madame Lecœur, if you can call it shopping. You know how it is for a woman alone, living on almost nothing. I wanted a nice little cauliflower. But it's too expensive. What about the butter, how much is that today?”

“Thirty-four sous. I have some that is very nice. Come with me and I'll show you.”

“Yes, well, I don't know. I still have a little lard left …”

Florent, with a supreme effort, followed the two women. He remembered having heard Claude mention the little elderly woman. He told himself that after she left the tall woman, he would go up and question her.

“And how is your niece?” Mademoiselle Saget asked.

“La Sarriette does what she wants,” Madame Lecœur answered bitterly. “She's decided to go off on her own, and her business is no longer my problem. When all her boyfriends have cleaned her out, don't expect me to give her a bite of bread.”

“You were so good to her. She ought to be doing well this year. Fruits are getting good prices. And how is your brother-in-law?”

“Oh, he—” Madame Lecœur bit her lips and did not seem to want to say anything else.

“The same as always, huh?” Mademoiselle Saget continued. “He's a decent man. But I've heard it said that he goes through money …”

“Who knows how he spends his money?” Madame Lecœur said abruptly. “He's very secretive and also stingy. You know, he's the kind of man who would let you drop dead before he'd loan you a hundred sous. He knows perfectly well that butter, not to mention cheese and eggs, have not had a good season. He's selling poultry as fast as he can get them. But never, not once, not one time, has he offered to help me. Of course, I'm too proud to accept it, you understand, but I would have appreciated the gesture.”

“Oh, look, here he is now,” said Mademoiselle Saget in a low voice.

The two women turned around to look at someone crossing the street to enter the covered passage.

“I'm in a hurry,” Madame Lecœur muttered. “I left my shop with no one watching it. But also, I don't want to talk to him.”

Florent too had mechanically turned to see the man. He was a short, burly man with a cheerful demeanor and grayish stubble for hair. He carried a fat goose under each arm with their heads hanging down and bumping into his legs. Suddenly Florent opened his arms in pleasure and, completely forgetting his exhaustion, ran after the man. When he caught up with him, he shouted, “Gavard!” and slapped him on the back.

The other man looked up and, caught by surprise, studied this tall black figure whom he did not recognize.

Then, all of a sudden, he shouted, “It's you!” Seemingly confused, he added, “Is it really you?”

He almost dropped his fat geese. He still could not control his amazement. But then, seeing his sister-in-law and Mademoiselle Saget, who were observing the encounter from a distance with interest, he continued walking.

“Don't stand there. Come on. There are too many eyes and tongues around here.”

Once under the covered passage, they began talking. Florent told how he had gone to the rue Pirouette, which seemed to amuse Gavard greatly. Then he told Florent that Florent's brother, Quenu, had moved his charcuterie[11] nearby, to rue Rambuteau, across from Les Halles.[12] What amused him even more was that Florent had just spent the morning walking around with Claude Lantier, an oddball who by chance was the nephew of Madame Quenu. Gavard was going to take Florent to the charcuterie, but when Florent told him that he had entered France with false papers, he became very serious and secretive. He tried to keep about five steps ahead of him so as not to attract attention. After passing by the poultry pavilion, where he dropped off his two geese on a counter, he crossed rue Rambuteau with Florent following close behind. Stopping in the middle of the street, he glanced knowingly at a large, handsome charcuterie.

Diagonal sunbeams struck rue Rambuteau, lighting up the fronts of the buildings, with the entrance to rue Pirouette in the center of the block appearing like a black hole. At the other end, the great hulk of Saint Eustache glittered in the sunlight like a sparkling casket. In the middle of the crowd, an army of street sweepers emerged from a distant intersection, marching forward in a line and swinging their brooms in unison. At the same time, cleaners were picking up trash on their forks and tossing it into carts that stopped every twenty paces with a sound like smashing pottery. But Florent noticed nothing but the sight of the large charcuterie sparkling in the sunlight.

He was almost at the corner of the rue Pirouette, and the shop was a joy to behold. It was filled with laughter and bright light and brilliant colors that popped out next to the white of the marble countertops. There was a sign; a painting covered with glass with the name QUENU-GRADELLE in large gilded letters framed in leafy branches. The two side panels of the storefront, also glass-covered paintings, depicted chubby cupids frolicking amid animal heads, with pork chops and garlands of sausages, and these still lifes, adorned with rolls and rosettes, were such pretty paintings that the raw meat looked like reddish fruit preserves. Within this lovely frame was the window display on a bed of delicately shredded blue paper, with a few well-placed sprigs of fern making plates of food look like bouquets with greenery. It was a world of good things, mouthwatering things, rich things.

First of all, close to the windowpane, was a row of crocks full of rillettes[13] alternating with jars of mustard. The next row was nice round boned jambonneaux[14] with golden breadcrumb coatings. Behind these were platters: stuffed Strasbourg tongues all red and looking as if they had been varnished, appearing almost bloody next to the pale sausages and pigs' feet; boudin[15] coiled like snakes; andouilles[16] piled two by two and plump with health; dried sausages in silvery casings lined up like choirboys; pâtés,[17] still warm, with little labels stuck on them like flags; big, fat hams; thick cuts of veal and pork whose juices had jellied clear as crystal candy. In the back were other dishes and earthenware casseroles in which minced and sliced meats slept under blankets of fat. Between the plates and dishes, on a bed of blue paper, were pickling jars of sauces and stocks and preserved truffles, terrines of foie gras, and tins of tuna and sardines. A box of creamy cheeses and one of escargot, wood snails with parsley and butter, were casually strewn in opposite corners.

At the top of the window display, draped with symmetry on a bar armed with sharp wolves' teeth, were links of sausages, dried saucissons[18] and cervelas,[19] their lacy membranes hanging like cords and tassels. On the highest rung in this gourmand's chapel, amid the membranes and between two bunches of purple gladioli, the window was crowned by a small, square aquarium decorated with rocks and housing two goldfish that never stopped swimming.

The sight gave Florent goose bumps. He noticed a woman in the doorway standing in the sunlight. She had a prosperous, contented look that went with the cheerful displays of fat food. A handsome woman, she nearly filled the doorway not too large but full-busted and ample for a woman of only thirty. It was early in the morning, but her hair was well brushed and arranged over her temples— a tidy-looking woman. She had that fine shine and milky pink complexion of people who spend their days around fats and raw meat. She had a slightly grave demeanor, very calm and slow, with eyes that smiled while her lips remained serious. A white starched collar encircled her neck, white cuffs reached up to her elbows, and a white apron covered her to the tips of her shoes, all of which allowed only an occasional glimpse of her black cashmere dress, round shoulders, and ample bosom. The sun glared on all this white. But despite the glow from her bluish black hair, her pink complexion, and her glaring sleeves and apron, she never blinked. She bathed herself in the morning sun, her soft eyes taking in the overflowing Les Halles. The woman was visibly respectable.

“That's your brother's wife, your sister-in-law, Lisa,” Gavard told Florent. He had acknowledged her with a slight nod but then ducked down an alleyway, continuing to take every precaution, not wanting Florent to enter the shop even though it was empty. He was clearly thrilled to be having this slight adventure, enjoying the intrigue.

“Wait here,” he said. “I'll go see if your brother is alone. When I clap my hands, you can come in.”

He pushed open a door at the end of the alley. But the minute Florent heard his brother's voice behind the door, he bounded in. Quenu, who adored him, threw his arms round Florent's neck. They kissed like children. “Oh my God, it's really you!” Quenu stammered. “I can't believe it. I thought you were dead! Just yesterday I was saying to Lisa, ‘Poor Florent’”

He stopped, turned his head toward the shop, and shouted, “Hey, Lisa! Lisa!” Then he turned to a little girl hiding in a corner. “Pauline, go find your mother.”

But the little girl did not move. She was a beautiful five-year-old with a chubby round build, who looked very much like the beautiful charcuterie woman. She held in her arms an enormous tabby cat, which had contentedly surrendered to the child's embrace, its paws hanging loose while the little girl squeezed it tightly in her little arms, as though afraid that this badly dressed man would try to steal her pet.

Slowly Lisa came over to them.

“This is Florent. My brother,” Quenu repeated.

Lisa addressed him as “Monsieur” and welcomed him. She quietly studied him from head to foot without showing any unpleasant surprise. Only her lips showed a slight downward curl. She just stood there until she started to smile at the way her husband was embracing him. As Quenu calmed down, he noticed Florent's emaciated, wretched appearance.

“Oh, poor fellow,” he said. “That place didn't agree with you. Look at me, you see how I've fattened up.”

He was fat, too, quite fat for a man of only thirty. He was bursting out of his shirt and apron, all wrapped up in white linen like a big stuffed doll. His clean-shaven face was sticking out, slightly resembling the snout of one of the pigs he was with all day. Florent had barely recognized him. Seated, Quenu cast a glance at the lovely Lisa and little Pauline. They looked brimming with good health, solidly built, fit, and trim. The two in their turn looked at Florent with that uneasiness that fleshy people always feel in the presence of someone who is extremely skinny. Even their cat was puffed up with fat and stared at Florent suspiciously with dilated yellow eyes.

“You can wait until we have breakfast, can't you?” asked Quenu. “We eat early, about ten o'clock.”

The shop was filled with the smells of cooking. Florent thought back on the horrible night he had just passed, how he had arrived with the vegetables, his agony in the heart of Les Halles, drowning in the endless sea of food that he had just escaped. Then, in a low voice with a sweet smile, he said:

“No, I can't wait. You see, I'm really hungry.”

CHAPTER TWO

Florent had just begun studying law in Paris when his mother died. She lived in Le Vigan in the Gard.[1] She had taken a second husband, someone named Quenu from Yvetot in Normandy. Some subprefect had sent Quenu to the Midi and then forgotten him. He continued working at the subprefect's office, finding the region charming, the wine good, the women pleasant. Indigestion took him away three years after his marriage. All he left his wife was a hefty boy who looked like him. The mother was already struggling to pay for the education of Florent, her first son from a previous marriage. He was her great joy sweet-natured and hardworking and always winning the school prizes. It was on him that she lavished her affections and pinned all her hopes. It might be that her favoritism for the pale, skinny boy came from her fondness for her first husband, a Provençal with warm country charm who had been devoted to her. Perhaps Quenu, whose good humor had at first touched her, had shown himself to be too self-satisfied and confident. She decided that her younger son—and in southern families the younger son is often sacrificed—would never amount to much. So she sent him to a school run by a neighbor, an old spinster, where the boy learned nothing but how to be footloose on the neighborhood streets. The two brothers grew up far apart from each other, like strangers.

By the time Florent got to Le Vigan, his mother had already been buried. She had insisted on concealing her illness from him until the last moment because she did not want to disturb his studies. He found the little Quenu, then twelve years old, sitting at a table, crying. A furniture dealer, a neighbor, had told him of his poor mother's suffering. She had run out of money and had worked herself to death so that her older son could finish studying law. To her little ribbon business, which never brought in very much money, she'd had to add other activities that kept her working late into the night. An obsession with this singular idea to see Florent become a lawyer, a man of substance in the town, had turned her hard and miserly and pitiless to herself and everyone else. Little Quenu ran around with holes in his pants and shirts with frayed sleeves. He never served himself at the table but waited for his mother to cut him his share of bread. And she cut thin slices. This was the way of life that had destroyed her, along with the great despair of having failed to accomplish her goal.

This story had a terrible impact on Florent's gentle character. He choked with tears. Taking his brother in his arms, he held him to his chest and kissed him as though trying to give him back the love of which he had deprived him. Then he looked at the boy's worn-out shoes, his torn sleeves and dirty hands, all the wretchedness of an abandoned child. Over and over again, he told him that he would take him away and they would be happy together.

The next day, when he reviewed the situation, he was afraid that he would not even have enough money to pay the fare back to Paris. At any cost, he did not want to stay in Le Vigan. Fortunately he was able to sell the ribbon business, which raised enough money to pay his mother's debts. Despite her frugality she had run up bills. Since there was nothing left for him, the neighbor, the furniture merchant, offered him five hundred francs for the furniture and linens of the deceased. It was a bargain for the dealer, but the young man nonetheless thanked him with tears in his eyes. He bought his brother new clothes and took him away that same evening.

Back in Paris there was no question of his continuing law school. Florent deferred all his ambitions. He took on a few pupils and set himself up with little Quenu on rue Royer-Collard at the corner of rue Saint-Jacques in a large bedroom that he furnished with two iron frame beds, a wardrobe, and a table with four chairs. From now on he would raise a child, and he was pleased by this sudden paternity. At first he tried to give Quenu lessons when he came home in the evening, but the thickheaded child barely listened and refused to learn anything. Instead he would start sobbing and recall with nostalgia the days when his mother had let him run in the streets. In despair, Florent stopped the lessons and promised the boy an indefinite vacation. He excused his own weakness by repeatedly arguing that he had not brought the boy to Paris to harass him. His singular code of conduct became making sure that the boy's childhood was a happy one. He adored him, was enthralled by his laughter, took endless delight in being surrounded by the child's well-being and carefree life.

Florent remained skinny in his threadbare black coat, his face yellowing with the grinding burden of teaching, while Quenu became a cheerful, plump man, a bit slow, barely able to read, but with a pleasant good spirit that nothing could shake. He gave brightness to the large, somber room on the rue Royer-Collard.

The years went by. Florent, with a devotion like that of his mother, kept Quenu at home as though he were his grown-up, shiftless daughter. He did not even bother Quenu about household tasks, doing the shopping and cooking the food himself. This, Florent reasoned, helped him to escape his own dark thoughts. He had a sad nature and thought he had evil tendencies. In the evening, when he returned home, splattered with mud, his head bowed by his irritation with other people's children, he would be revived by the big, chunky boy whom he found spinning a top on the tile floor. Quenu laughed at his brother's ineptitude at making omelettes and the seriousness with which he prepared a pot-au-feu. When the lamp was put out, Florent sometimes grew sad again as he lay in his bed. He dreamed of returning to his law studies and plotted how to divide his time in order to take courses at the law school. Once he had figured this out, he felt content. But then a slight bout of fever that kept him home for eight days created such a hole in his budget and worried him so much that he dropped all thoughts of returning to his studies.

His child grew. Florent found a position as instructor at a school on rue de l'Estrapade at a salary of eighteen hundred francs a year. This was a fortune. With some frugality he could even save some money for Quenu. When Quenu was already eighteen years old, Florent was still treating him like a daughter whose dowry must be set aside.

While his brother was having his brief illness, Quenu too had spent time reflecting. One morning he announced that he wanted to work, that he was now old enough to earn his living. Florent was deeply moved. Just across the street from them lived a watchmaker whom Quenu could see through the curtainless window, leaning over his little table all day, adjusting delicate things and patiently studying them through a magnifying glass. Seduced by this sight, the boy declared a taste for watchmaking. But after fifteen days, he became restless and started crying like a ten-year-old that the work was too complicated and that he would never know “all the dumb little things that go into a watch.”

Then he decided he would like to be a locksmith but found the work tedious. In the next two years he tried more than ten trades. Florent thought that Quenu was right, that he shouldn't take up a trade if his heart was not in it. Meanwhile, Quenu's noble ambition to earn his own living was putting a serious strain on the budget of the two young men. Since he had started hopping from craft to craft, there had been constant new expenses, the cost of clothing, outside meals, entertaining new colleagues. Florent's eighteen hundred francs were no longer enough. He had to take on two night students. For eight years now he had been wearing the same worn-out coat.

But the two brothers had made a friend. The building they lived in had a side on rue Saint-Jacques, where there was a shop that roasted chickens run by a respectable man named Gavard whose wife was dying of lung disease caused by the constant smell of chicken grease. On evenings when Florent came home too late to cook a bit of meat, he got into the habit of spending a dozen sous at the rotisserie for a piece of turkey or goose. Such an evening was like a feast day. Gavard became interested in the skinny young man and learned his story. He invited Quenu into the shop and soon the youth spent all his time there. As soon as his brother went to work, Quenu went downstairs and installed himself in the back of the shop, infatuated with the four giant skewers that turned with a soft noise in front of the high bright flames.

The large copper pots at the fireplace glistened, the birds smoked, the fat sang as it dripped in the pan. The spits seemed to chat with one another and eventually threw a few kind words toward Quenu, who, with a long-stemmed ladle, lovingly basted the golden breasts of huge turkeys and plump geese. He passed hours this way, his face turning red in the dancing flames, looking a bit stupid as he snickered at the large animals getting cooked. He didn't move until they were taken off the spits. The birds fell on the platters, the skewers slid from their stomachs, the stomachs emptied all steaming, with the juice running from the holes behind and at the throat, drenching the shop in the strong scent of roasted meat. Then the youth, who had stood up to follow the operation with his eyes, started clapping his hands and talking to the birds, telling them how nice they were and how they would be eaten up and there would be only bones left for the cats. And he jumped up if Gavard gave him a piece of crusty bread that he would put in the drip pan, leaving it there to stew for a half hour.

It was no doubt there that Quenu found his love of cooking. Later on, after trying out every other trade, he returned, as though it were his destiny, to the skewered animals whose juice made you lick your fingers. At first he was worried about irritating his brother, a man of little appetite who spoke of tasty things with the disdain of a man who has not tasted. But then, watching Florent listen to him as Quenu explained some very complicated dish, he decared it to be his true vocation and started working for a large restaurant. From that time on, a new pattern was established for the two brothers. They continued to live in the room on rue Royer-Collard, where they returned every evening—the one with a face lit by the heat of the ovens, the other with the beaten face of a mud-spattered teacher. Florent kept his old black coat, losing himself in his students' homework, while Quenu, to make himself comfortable, tied on his apron, put on his white coat and white chef's hat, and stood over the stove rattling the skillet and entertaining himself by cooking some delicacy.

Sometimes they smiled at the way they looked, the one all in black and the other all in white. The two contrasting outfits, one cheerful and one morose, seemed to make the big room half festive and half somber, in between merry and mournful. Still, never was a household marked by such disparity so harmonious. The elder brother grew ever thinner, consumed by the intensity he had inherited from his Provençal father, while the younger one grew ever fatter, like a true son of Normandy. But they loved each other with a brotherhood that came from their mother, a woman who had been nothing but love.

A relative in Paris, their mother's brother, Gradelle, had a charcuterie in the Les Halles neighborhood, on rue Pirouette. He was a fat, cheap, heartless man, who received his nephews as starving street waifs when they first introduced themselves, and they had rarely returned. On his saint's day, Quenu would take him a bouquet of flowers and Gradelle would hand him a ten-sou coin. Florent, always proud, hated the way Gradelle would peruse his threadbare clothes with the worried, suspicious glance of a miser who feared being asked for a free dinner or a hundred sous. One day, without intending anything in particular, Florent asked his uncle to change a hundred-franc bill, and ever after that the uncle was less apprehensive when he sighted the “youngsters,” as he called them. But still the relationship never progressed.

To Florent, the years passed like a bittersweet dream. He tasted all the bitter joys of parenthood. At home there was nothing but love. But out in the world, with the humiliations of his students and the shoving and pushing of the streets, he felt himself souring. He was embittered by his crushed ambition. It was a long time before he could accept his fate as a plain, poor, and ordinary man. To escape turning mean, he embraced idealism and took refuge in principles of truth and justice. It was then that he became a republican,[2] entering republicanism the way a heartbroken girl enters a convent. If he could not find a republic warm and peaceful enough to numb his troubles, he would invent one. Books no longer pleased him; all the marked-up paper with which he was surrounded reminded him of the stinking classroom, the boys' chewed-up spit-balls, the agony of long, sterile hours. Besides, books spoke only of revolution and pride, and he felt an overwhelming need for peace and withdrawal. To soothe and still himself, to dream that he was serenely happy, that the entire world was reaching this same state, to construct in his imagination the ideal republican city in which he would like to live, became his recreation, the work of his leisure hours. He no longer read except what was necessary for teaching, preferring to wander the rue Saint-Jacques all the way to the outer boulevards, sometimes going even farther, returning by the barrière d'Italie with his eyes toward the Quartier Mouffetard, all the time working out measures of great moral import, humanitarian legal projects, that would transform this suffering city into a city of bliss.

When the days of February bloodied Paris, he became distraught and ran to all the “clubs,”[3] demanding that they atone for the bloodshed with “the eternal embrace of republicans the world over.” He became an enraptured orator, preaching revolution as the new religion, full of gentleness and redemption. It took the dark days of December[4] to break him from the doctrine of the brotherhood of man. But he was unarmed and let himself be taken like a sheep and was then treated as though he were a wolf. When he was awakened from the grip of the brotherhood of man, he found himself starving on the cold stones of a cell in Bicêtre.

Quenu, only twenty-two years old at the time, was overtaken with burning anguish when his brother did not come home. The following day, he went to look for him at the Montmartre cemetery among the dead from the streets, who had been lined up and covered with straw, their heads sticking out grotesquely. Quenu's courage failed, his eyes became blinded with tears, and he had to make a second pass along the row. Finally, after eight long days, he found out at the Prefecture of Police that his brother had been imprisoned. He was not allowed to see him, and when he tried to insist they threatened to arrest him. So he ran to Uncle Gradelle, whom he saw as a man of influence, hoping that he could help Florent. But Gradelle flew into a rage, saying that it served Florent right, that the idiot had no business being mixed up with those lowlife republicans. Then he added that he had always known that Florent would turn out badly, that it was written all over his face.

Quenu cried out every tear in his body, nearly choking. His uncle, feeling a bit ashamed, felt that he should do something for the young man and offered to take him in. He needed an assistant and knew that Quenu was a good cook. Quenu, finding the thought of returning to the large, empty room on rue Royer-Collard unbearable, accepted the offer. That same night he slept at his uncle's, in a dark hole of a garret where he had barely enough space to stretch out to his full length. But he cried less there than he would have across from his brother's empty bed.

After a long effort he managed to get permission to see Florent. But on his return from Bicêtre, he was bedridden with a fever. For nearly three weeks he lay in a lifeless, barely conscious state. That was his first and only illness. Meanwhile, Gradelle regularly cursed his republican nephew. One morning when he found out that Florent was being shipped to Cayenne, he went upstairs, tapped Quenu on the hand to wake him up, and brutally blurted out the news, provoking such a reaction that the next day the young man was up and out of bed. His sorrow melted, and his flabby flesh seemed to absorb all his tears. A month later he laughed and then grew angry with himself for laughing, but his lighthearted nature won out and soon he would laugh without reason.

He learned the charcuterie trade. It gave him even more pleasure than being a cook. Uncle Gradelle told him that he should not neglect the pots, that it was rare to find a charcutier who was also a good cook, and that he was lucky to have trained at a restaurant before coming to him. Gradelle made full use of Quenu's talents, having him cook dinners sent out to customers and putting him especially in charge of grilling and pork chops with cornichons.[5] Since the young man was actually of great help, Gradelle grew fond of him in his way and would pinch his chubby arm when in a good mood. He sold the cheap furniture from the rue Royer-Collard and kept the money, forty francs and change—for safekeeping, he said, so that Quenu wouldn't just let the money slip through his fingers. Instead he gave him six francs each month for spending money.

Quenu, short of money and sometimes abused, was perfectly happy. He liked to have life parceled out for him. Florent had indulged him like a lazy daughter. Besides, he had made a friend at his uncle's. When his wife died, Gradelle had had to hire a girl to look after the shop and had deliberately chosen one healthy and attractive-looking, knowing that a good-looking girl would show off his charcuterie and charm his clients. He knew a widow living on rue Cuvier, near the Jardin des Plantes, whose late husband had been postmaster at Plassans,[6] the seat of a subprefecture in the south of France. This woman, who lived modestly, her rent subsidized by an annuity, had brought to town a plump, pretty child whom she had raised as her daughter. Lisa, as the child was named, looked after the woman with a tranquil air, an even temper, and a serious demeanor, but she was lovely when she smiled. In fact, her great charm appeared on the rare occasions on which she showed her smile. Then she could caress with her eyes, and her usual seriousness gave an incalculable value to this unpredictable science of seduction. The elderly woman often said that Lisa's smile would lead her to perdition.

When the woman died of asthma, she left all her savings, some ten thousand francs, to her adopted daughter. Lisa stayed by herself at the rue Cuvier apartment for eight days before Gradelle went there to look for her. He knew her because the elderly woman had often brought her along on visits to the rue Pirouette. But at the funeral she was so strikingly beautiful and sturdily built that he followed her all the way to the cemetery. As the coffin was being lowered, he was thinking what a great thing it would be to have her at the charcuterie counter. He pondered and finally resolved to offer her thirty francs a month with room and board. When he made the proposal, Lisa asked for twenty-four hours to think it over. In the morning she turned up with a small bundle of clothes and ten thousand francs hidden in the bodice of her dress.

A month later she seemed to own the store, Gradelle, Quenu, and even the little kitchen boy. Quenu in particular would have chopped off his fingers just to please her. When she deigned to smile, he was frozen on the spot, laughing with delight as he looked at her.

Lisa, the oldest daughter of the Macquarts from Plassans, still had a father. But she said he lived abroad, and she never wrote him. She sometimes let it drop that her mother had been a very hard worker and that she took after her. In fact, she was indefatigable. She sometimes added that the good woman had worked herself to death in order to support her family. Then she would hold forth on the relative duties of husbands and wives, doing so with such wisdom and candor that Quenu was enchanted. He said that he completely agreed with her ideas. Lisa's ideas were that everyone should work to earn a living, that everyone had a duty to pursue his own happiness, that it was a mistake to encourage idleness, and that the presence of so much misery in the world was in large part due to laziness. This pet theory was a sweeping condemnation of the drunkenness and legendary idleness of her father, the elder Macquart. But though she could not see it, there was much of Macquart in her. She was just a steady, sensible Macquart with a rational desire for comfort, who understood that the best way to fall asleep blissfully is to make a comfortable bed to lie in. She gave all her time and effort to the preparation of this fluffy soft couch. Even when only six years old, she was willing to sit still on her little chair all day, as long as she was given her evening cake.

At Gradelle's charcuterie her life was calm and dependable and periodically lit up by her beautiful smiles. She had not taken his offer with a sense of adventure; in Gradelle, she knew she could find a protector, and perhaps she saw in this somber shop on the rue Pirouette, where there were people on whom fortune had smiled, the future of her dreams of a healthy, pleasant life with steady work that was not exhausting, in which each hour brought its own reward. She looked after her counter with the same quiet care that she had given to the postmaster's widow. Soon the cleanliness of Lisa's aprons became legendary in the neighborhood. Uncle Gradelle was so pleased by this beautiful girl that he sometimes said to Quenu as he was tying up sausages, “If I wasn't over sixty, I swear to God, I'd be fool enough to marry her. She's like a bar of gold, my boy a woman like that in trade.”

Quenu was becoming infatuated with her. He laughed with slightly too broad a smile one day when a neighbor accused him of being in love with her. But he wasn't bothered by it. They were great friends. In the evening they climbed the stairs together to go to bed. Lisa slept in a small room adjoining the young man's black hole. She had brightened her room with muslin curtains. The couple would stand together for a moment on the landing, each holding a candle, and chat as they put their keys in the locks. And as they closed their doors they would say, in a friendly tone:

“Good night, Mademoiselle Lisa.”

“Good night, Monsieur Quenu.”

As Quenu undressed, he would listen to Lisa getting ready for bed. The partition between them was so thin that they could hear each other's every move. He would think, “Ah, now she's closing the curtains. I wonder what she's doing in front of the dresser. There, now she's sitting down and taking her shoes off. Well, good night, she's blown out the candle. Let's sleep.” When he heard the bed creak, he would chuckle to himself, “Damn, she's no feather, that Lisa.” This thought amused him and made him laugh, but then he would fall asleep dreaming of hams and strips of petit salé[7] that he had to prepare the next day.

It went on like this for a year without a blush from Lisa or any embarrassment from Quenu. In the morning, the busiest time of day, when the young girl came down to the kitchen, their hands would meet amid the ground meat. Sometimes she helped him, holding the sausage skins with her chubby fingers while he stuffed them with meats and lardoons.[8] Sometimes they tasted the raw sausage meat on the tips of their tongues, to make sure it was well seasoned. She helped him with her knowledge of recipes from the Midi, with which he experimented with great success. Often he could feel her over his shoulder, looking into his pots, leaning so close he felt her neck in his back. She would pass him a spoon or a plate. The heat of the fire made their skin flush. Still, nothing in the world would have made this young man stop stirring his fatty bouillies[9] that he was thickening on the stove, as she pronounced with gravity on the proper cooking time. In the afternoon, when the shop was quiet, they would chat together for hours.

Lisa sat at the counter, leaning back slightly, calmly knitting. Quenu sat on a big oak block, dangling his feet and tapping his heels against the oak. They reveled in each other's company, talking about everything from the most banal cooking discussions to Uncle Gradelle and life in the neighborhood. She told him stories the way you would to a child. She knew very pretty tales of miracles, full of lambs and little angels, which she told in a soft, high-pitched voice with an air of mock gravity. If a customer happened to come in, she asked Quenu to fetch the lard pot or the box of snails so that she did not have to disturb herself.

At eleven o'clock they slowly climbed the stairs as they did each night before. As they closed the doors they said in their peaceful voices:

“Good night, Mademoiselle Lisa.”

“Good night, Monsieur Quenu.”

One morning Uncle Gradelle dropped dead while making a galantine.[10] He fell forward with his face on the chopping block. Lisa, without losing her composure, pointed out that the dead man could not very well be left sprawled in the middle of the kitchen and had the body dragged into the small back room where he had slept. Then she established the official story with the helpers. They all had to agree that he had died in his bed because otherwise the entire neighborhood would be repulsed and they would lose business. Quenu helped carry the dead man away, feeling amazed and very surprised at his inability to produce any tears. But later on, he and Lisa cried together. Quenu and his brother, Florent, were the sole heirs. The neighborhood gossips claimed that Gradelle had a considerable fortune. But the truth was that there was not one piece of silver to be found. Lisa grew uneasy, and Quenu noticed how pensive she had become, always looking around as though she had lost something. Finally she decided to undertake a massive shop cleaning, claiming that people were beginning to talk, that the story of the old man's death had gotten out and they had to have a spotless shop.

One afternoon, after having spent the past two hours in the basement washing the salting tubs, Lisa came up carrying something in her apron. Quenu was grinding up a pig's liver. She waited for him to finish, chatting with him in a nonchalant way. But her eyes had a special glow and she smiled her beautiful smile, while saying she wanted to talk to him about something. She climbed the stairs awkwardly, her legs impeded by whatever it was she was carrying that was almost bursting her apron open. At the third floor she had to stop and lean on the banister to catch her breath. Quenu, taken aback, said nothing and followed her into her bedroom. It was the first time she had ever invited him in. She closed the door and, releasing the corners of her apron, which her cramped fingers could no longer hold up, she let softly rain on her bed a shower of gold and silver coins. She had found Uncle Gradelle's treasure at the bottom of the salting tub. The pile of money made a deep depression in the young woman's delicate, fluffy bed.

Quenu and Lisa suppressed their joy as they sat on the bed, Lisa at the head, Quenu at the foot, on either side of the money pile, counting it out on the bedspread to muffle the sound of the coins. They had forty thousand francs in gold, three thousand francs in silver, and forty-two thousand francs in banknotes in a tin box. It took a good two hours to add it all up. Quenu's hands were shaking, and Lisa did most of the work. She stacked the gold on the pillow, leaving the silver in the hollow of the bed. When they had reached the total, eighty-five thousand francs, an enormous sum for them, they began to discuss their future, their marriage, without having ever talked about love. The money seemed to loosen their tongues. They gradually slid themselves farther back on the bed so that they were leaning against the wall under the white muslin curtains with their legs stretched out. As they chattered on, their hands, caressing the silver coins between them, met and stayed together against a pile of one-hundred-sou coins.

They were surprised by twilight. Lisa suddenly blushed at finding herself lying next to a man. They had messed up the bed, the sheets were hanging off, and the gold made dents in the pillow between them, looking like the imprints of two heads that had rolled there in hot passion.

They got up awkwardly with the confused look of two lovers who had just committed their first transgression. The unmade bed covered in money stood like an accusation of forbidden pleasure behind a closed door. That was the moment of their fall. Lisa, who straightened out her clothes as though covering up her guilt, started looking for her ten thousand francs. Quenu wanted her to add them to his uncle's eighty-five thousand. Laughing, he mixed the two sums, saying that the money too should marry, and it was agreed that Lisa should keep “the stash” in her dressing table. When she had locked it up and remade the bed, they went calmly downstairs. They were man and wife.

The wedding took place the following month. The neighborhood considered it a completely suitable match. They heard vague stories of a treasure, and Lisa's honesty was a subject of endless eulogies. After all, she could have said nothing to Quenu and kept it all for herself. The fact that she had said something was testimony to her impeccable honesty. She was certainly a worthy mate for Quenu. This Quenu was a lucky man. He was not very good-looking, and he had found himself a pretty woman who had dug up a fortune. Admiration for her went so far that people ended up saying that Lisa was stupid to have done it. Lisa smiled when people hinted at this. She and her husband lived as they had before, in a close and contented friendship. She helped him, touched his hand over the ground meat, leaned over his shoulder to examine the pots. And still it was only the enormous fire in the kitchen that could bring heat to their blood.

But Lisa was an intelligent woman who quickly understood the folly of leaving ninety-five thousand francs in a dressing table drawer. Quenu would have gladly returned the money to the bottom of the salting tub until he had earned an equal amount and they would have enough to retire to Suresnes, an outlying area they both loved. But she had other ambitions. Rue Pirouette wounded her sense of cleanliness, did not fulfill her need for fresh air, light, and a healthy environment. The shop where Uncle Gradelle had amassed his fortune, penny by penny, was a sort of black pit, one of those questionable charcuteries that old neighborhoods have, where the worn stones of the floor, despite frequent washing, retained the strong smell of meat. The young woman dreamed of a light, modern shop, luxurious as a drawing room and with a sparkling window bordering the sidewalk of some broad street. This was not a latent desire to play the grande dame behind the counter. She had a very clear concept of the prerequisite niceties of a modern business. Quenu was frightened the first time she spoke of moving and spending part of their money on decorating the new shop. Softly shrugging her shoulders, she smiled.

One day, as nightfall was blackening the charcuterie, the couple heard a woman by the shop door say to another woman, “Well, I wouldn't buy there anymore, not so much as a piece of boudin. You see, dear, they had a corpse in the kitchen.”

Quenu wept. The story of the death in the kitchen had gotten around. Now he blushed in front of his customers anytime he saw them bend down and sniff his foods. So he went to his wife and brought up her idea about moving. She had been working on it without saying anything and had found some possibilities in a prime location, a few steps away on rue Rambuteau. The new central market was being opened across the street, which would triple their business and make their shop known all over Paris.

Quenu let himself be talked into lavish expenditures—more than thirty thousand francs in marble, glass, and gilding. Lisa spent her time with the workers, giving her opinions on the most minute details. When at last she was installed behind the counter, customers lined up just to see the shop. The interior walls were lined in white marble from top to bottom. The ceiling was covered with an immense square mirror in an ornate gilded frame, while from the center hung a crystal chandelier with four arms. And behind the counter, on the left hand at the far end of the shop, were more mirrors, fitted between the marble panels and looking like doors that opened into an infinite series of brightly lit halls where meats were on display. To the right was a huge counter that was considered a particularly fine piece of work. At intervals along the front were diamond-shaped medallions of pink marble. The floor was covered in alternating pink and white tiles with a dark red pattern for a border. The neighborhood was proud of the charcuterie and no longer even mentioned the old one on rue Pirouette, where there had been a death. For a month, neighborhood women gathered on the sidewalk to look at Lisa across the cervelas and the caul fat[11] sausages displayed in the window. They admired her white-and-pink flesh, which matched the marble. She seemed to be the soul, the living glow, the healthy, sturdy goddess of charcuteries. And from then on she was known as “Beautiful Lisa.”

To the right of the shop was a dining room, a spotless room with a buffet, a table, and light oak chairs with cane seats. The mat that covered the floor, the soft yellow wallpaper, the imitation oak oilcloth, all gave a coolness to the room, slightly softened by the shine of a brass lamp that hung from the ceiling and sprawled above the table with its large transparent porcelain shade. A door from the dining room led to the huge square kitchen. Beyond this was a small tile-floored courtyard used to store lumber, tubs, barrels, pans, and all sorts of tools that were not being used. To the left of a water faucet, by the side of a gutter that drained off greasy water, were pots of withered flowers, removed from the window display and at their last gasp.

Business was thriving. Quenu, who at first had been panicked, now had great respect for his wife, who, according to him, “had a great head on her shoulders.” At the end of five years they had almost eighty thousand francs in solid investments. Lisa would say that they were not overly ambitious and she had no desire to accumulate money too quickly otherwise she would have encouraged her husband to get into the wholesale pig trade. They were still young and still had time ahead of them, they didn't want to be in some seedy business. They would work at their own pace, without wearing themselves out, and live a good life.

“You know,” Lisa would add in her more expansive moments, “I have a cousin in Paris. I don't see him, because the two families aren't speaking to each other. He has changed his name to Saccard[12] to let some things be forgotten. Well, they say this cousin has made millions. But he doesn't live well, he's always in a state of anxiety, always rushing here and there, doing business with the Devil. A man like that can't even eat his dinner in peace, can he? The rest of us, at least, can enjoy what we eat. You love money because you need it to live. It's natural to look after your own well-being. But to make money just for the sake of making money and giving yourself anxiety and more trouble than the pleasure it could bring, I tell you, I'd rather just sit here with my arms crossed. And I would just like to see my cousin's millions. I don't believe in millions like that. I happened to see him the other day in his carriage. His face looked yellow and kind of sly. A man who's making a lot of money doesn't look like that. Anyway, that's his problem. We would rather have a hundred sous and have a good time earning it.”

Things went well at home. In the first year of their marriage they had a daughter. The three of them were a beautiful sight. The business prospered without their overworking, just the way Lisa wanted. She had carefully sidestepped any possible cause of trouble, allowing the days to flow on in the luxurious air of this lumbering prosperity. It was a little corner of stable contentment, a cozy manger where mother, father, and little girl could grow fat.

Quenu alone was occasionally sad when he thought of poor Florent. Until 1856, he received letters from him, though rarely. Then there were no more letters. Quenu learned from a newspaper that three convicts had attempted to escape from Devil's Island and drowned before they were able to reach the mainland. The police had no definite information, but it was likely that his brother was dead. Quenu still hoped, but the months passed. Meanwhile, Florent was wandering in Dutch Guiana but refrained from writing because he hoped to get back to France. Finally Quenu started to mourn for his brother the way people mourn for someone with whom there was no chance for a farewell. Lisa had never known Florent. When Quenu mourned his loss in front of her, she always found kind words to say, and she showed no impatience when, for about the hundredth time, he began to tell some story of the old days in the big room on rue Royer-Collard, the thirty-six trades he had taken up one after the other, and the little delicacies he had cooked at the stove all dressed in white, while Florent was all dressed in black. She listened peacefully to such talk, with infinite acceptance.

It was into the middle of all this well-planned, mature domestic bliss that one morning in September Florent dropped in, just at the time when Lisa took her morning sun bath and Quenu, his eyelids still heavy from sleep, was absentmindedly fingering the congealed fat left in the pans from the day before. The shop was completely thrown by the event. Gavard advised them to hide “the outlaw,” as he somewhat pompously called him, puffing out his cheeks. Lisa, paler and more serious than usual, led him to the fifth floor, where she gave him the room used by the girl who worked in the shop. Quenu sliced him some bread and ham. But Florent could hardly eat anything. He was nearly overcome with light-headedness and nausea. He went to bed for five days in a state of delirium, the onslaught of brain fever, which, fortunately, he vigorously fought off. When he regained consciousness, he saw Lisa seated by his bed, silently stirring something in a cup with a spoon. When he tried to thank her, she told him that he must remain completely still and that they could talk later. In another three days, Florent was on his feet. Then one morning Quenu came up to tell him that Lisa was waiting for them in her room on the first floor.

Quenu and Lisa lived there in a little apartment, three rooms and a dressing room. The brothers passed through an empty room that contained only chairs, then a little sitting room in which the furniture was covered with white dustcovers in the half-light of closed venetian blinds to keep the soft blue of the covers from fading, and finally arrived in the bedroom, the only room that was used and was comfortably furnished in mahogany. The bed was particularly striking with its four mattresses, four pillows, a thick bundle of blankets, and an eiderdown. This was a bed made for sleeping in. A mirrored wardrobe, a washstand with drawers, a lace-covered table, and several chairs with lace-covered seats expressed solid middle-class comfort. Against the left-hand wall, on either side of the fireplace mantle—which was decorated with vases painted with landscapes and mounted on bronze stands, along with a gilded clock on which a statuette of a pensive Gutenberg, also gilded, pressed his fingers into a book—were hanging oil portraits of Lisa and Quenu in ornate oval frames. Quenu was smiling, Lisa had an air of propriety, and both were dressed in black with pinkish smooth skin and idealized features— all very flattering. The floor was covered by a rug with stars and rosettes. In front of the bed was a fluffy rug with long strands of curly wool, knit by the charcuterie mistress in long, patient hours at the counter. But the object that stood out amid all the new furniture was a heavy, square secretary, which had been refinished in vain, for the cracks and pockmarks in the marble top, the scratches in the mahogany, blackened with age, still showed. Lisa wanted to keep this piece, which Uncle Gradelle had used for more than forty years. She insisted that it would bring them good luck. In truth it had heavy metal hardware, a lock like one would find on a prison gate, and was so heavy that it could not be moved.

When Florent and Quenu entered, Lisa, seated in front of the writing flap of the secretary, was working on rows of numbers in a large, round, and very readable hand. She gestured not to interrupt her, and the two men sat down. Florent, with some amazement, took in the room: the two portraits, the clock, the bed.

“Here we are,” said Lisa after calmly checking an entire page of figures. “Listen … we have some accounts to settle with you, my dear Florent.”

It was the first time she had addressed him in this way. She held the sheet of paper with the figures and continued, “Your uncle Gradelle died without leaving a will; you are, you and your brother, the two sole heirs. Today we owe you your share.”

“But I'm not asking for anything,” Florent protested. “I don't want anything!”

Quenu had known nothing of his wife's intentions. His face had become a bit pale and showed a slight touch of anger. Of course he loved his brother, but it was not really necessary to throw this question of his uncle's inheritance in his face. They could have broached the subject another time.

“I understand perfectly well, my dear Florent,” Lisa started up again, “that you did not come back here just to claim what is yours. However, business is business; it's better to settle it right away. Your uncle's savings came to eighty-five thousand francs. I have therefore put into an account for you forty-two thousand five hundred francs. Here it is.”

She showed him a figure on the sheet of paper.

“Unfortunately, it's not quite that easy to determine the value of the shop, equipment, stock, clientele. I can only estimate, but I think I've figured it all out, and without any skimping. I've come up with a figure of fifteen thousand three hundred and ten francs, which for you comes to seven thousand six hundred and fifty-five francs. See for yourself.”

She had recited the figures in a clear voice, and she now held out the sheet of numbers, which he felt obligated to take.

“But wait a minute!” Quenu cried out. “Since when was the old guy's shop worth fifteen thousand francs? I wouldn't have given you ten thousand for it, myself.”

His wife was beginning to annoy him. You didn't take honesty quite this far. It wasn't as though Florent had ever even mentioned the charcuterie. Besides, he didn't want anything, he had said so.

“The charcuterie was worth fifteen thousand three hundred and ten francs,” Lisa calmly repeated. “You see, my dear Florent, there's no point in calling in a lawyer. It's up to us to share since you've come back. I started thinking about it the moment you showed up, and the whole time you were upstairs in a fever, I've been working on an inventory as best I could. You see, it's all set out in every detail. I looked through all our old papers and tried to remember as best I could. Read it out loud, and I will explain anything you'd like to know about.”

Florent started to smile. He was amused by this honesty, which seemed to come so easily and naturally. He lay the sheet of figures on the young woman's lap. Then he took her hand.

“My dear Lisa,” he said. “I'm very glad to see that you're doing so well. But I don't want your money. This inheritance is for my brother and you, who looked after this uncle to the last. I don't need anything, and I don't want to interfere in your business.”

She insisted and even got a little angry, whereas Quenu sat in silence, biting his fingernails.

“Besides,” said Florent, bursting into laughter, “if Uncle Gradelle could hear you, he'd find a way to come back and take the money away … He wasn't very fond of me, Uncle Gradelle.”

“That's true, he didn't like you very much,” Quenu, at the end of his patience, muttered.

But Lisa was still arguing. She said that she didn't want to have money that was not hers in her secretary, that it would always bother her, that she couldn't be at peace knowing it was there. But Florent continued to joke, offering to buy shares in the charcuterie. Besides, it wasn't that he was refusing their help, since there was little chance of his finding work right away, and then too he would need some clothes since he was not presentable.

“There you are!” exclaimed Quenu. “You'll sleep with us, eat with us, and we're going to buy you everything you need. That goes without saying. My God, you didn't think we would throw you out in the street, did you?”

Quenu felt emotional and even a little ashamed for having been alarmed at the idea of having to hand over so much money at once. He managed to joke, telling his brother that he was going to fatten him up. Florent nodded, and Lisa folded the sheet of figures and stored it in the secretary.

“You're wrong,” she said to conclude the discussion. “I've done what I should have. Now it will be the way you want it. But as for me, I could not have lived in peace without making the offer, my conscience would have plagued me.”

Then they talked about other things. Florent's presence had to be explained without attracting the attention of the police. He told them how he had managed to return to France, thanks to the papers of a poor devil who had died of yellow fever in Suriname. By an odd coincidence, this fellow had also had the first name Florent. Florent Laquerrière had only a female cousin left behind in Paris, and he had learned of her death while he was in America. Nothing could be easier than to pass himself off as the other Florent. Lisa offered to play the part of the cousin. They agreed to tell a story of cousin Florent returning from America, where he had failed to find his fortune, and they, the Quenu-Gradelles, as they were known in the neighborhood, were putting him up until he could find work. Once everything was settled, Quenu insisted on his brother taking a tour of the house down to every last stool. In the empty room, where there was nothing but chairs, Lisa pushed open a door, showed him a small dressing room, and said that the girl in the shop could sleep there and he could keep his room on the fifth floor.

That evening Florent was suited up in new clothes. Against the advice of Quenu, who found them depressing, he insisted on having another black coat and black pants. They no longer tried to conceal Florent in the house, and Lisa told the story they had worked out to everyone who asked. He spent almost all of his time in the charcuterie, daydreaming on a chair in the kitchen or leaning against the marble in the shop. When they dined, Quenu tried to stuff him with food and became irritated at what a light eater his brother was, leaving half his food on the plate.

Lisa had returned to her easy, kind ways, tolerating Florent's presence even in the morning when he was in the way. She was apt to forget about him, and then, when the figure dressed in black would suddenly appear, it would startle her. But she would somehow produce her beautiful smile so that his feelings would not be hurt. She was struck by this thin man's indifference, and she felt a combination of respect and fear. As for Florent, he felt surrounded by warmth and affection.

At bedtime, he climbed the stairs, a little weary from his empty day, along with the two boys who worked in the charcuterie, who stayed in the attic eaves next to him. One of them, Léon, was barely fifteen years old, a thin boy with a sweetness about him, who stole the first cuts from hams and the forgotten ends of sausages. He hid them under his pillow and ate them at night without bread. A number of times Florent had the impression that Léon was hosting a banquet at about one in the morning. First came the sound of hushed whispering voices and then chewing and the crackling of paper, and then ripples of laughter, girlish laughter, would break into the still of the sleeping house.

The other boy Auguste Landois, was from Troyes. Bulging with unhealthy fat and with an oversize head that was already balding, he was twenty-eight years old. The first night he went up the stairs with Florent, he told him his life story in a rambling, confused narration. He had come to Paris only to perfect his skills so he could open a shop back in Troyes, where his cousin Augustine Landois was waiting for him. They had the same godfather and he and she had been given the same first name. But he had grown ambitious in Paris and now hoped to set up shop in Paris, with the help of the money his mother had left him, which he had entrusted to a lawyer before leaving Champagne. At this point in the story they had reached the fifth floor, but Auguste delayed Florent on the landing to tell him how wonderful he thought Madame Quenu was. She had agreed to send for Augustine to replace a girl who had not worked out. Though he now knew the trade thoroughly, she was just beginning to learn. In a year or eighteen months, they would get married and set up a charcuterie in Plaisance or some busy Parisian neighborhood. There was no hurry to get married because pork fat products were not getting a good price that year. He went on to say that they had been photographed at a fair in Saint-Ouen. Then he went into the attic to have another look at the picture, which he had left on the mantel so the room for Madame Quenu's cousin would look nice.

For a moment, he was lost standing there in the pale yellow glow of a candle, studying the room in which that young woman still had a presence. Then he walked up to the bed and asked Florent if it was comfortable. She, Augustine, now slept downstairs and would be better off there. The attic was very cold in the wintertime. Finally he departed, leaving Florent alone with the bed and the photograph in which Auguste appeared as a pale Quenu and Augustine as an unripened Lisa.

Florent, befriended by the boys, spoiled by his brother, and accepted by Lisa, ended up completely bored. He had looked for classes to teach but had not been successful. He had avoided the Quartier des Ecoles, where he was afraid of being recognized. Lisa had very gently suggested that he approach some of the commercial houses, where he might take care of the correspondence and keep the books. She kept coming back to this idea and finally offered to find him a spot herself. It was slowly getting on her nerves, seeing him not working and idly wondering what to do with himself. At first it was only a normal dislike of seeing someone dividing his time between eating and folding his arms. She wouldn't have dreamed of asking him to eat elsewhere, but she would say to him, “Personally, I couldn't bear spending all my time daydreaming. I can't imagine how you can feel hungry in the evening … you know, you need something to tire you out.”

Gavard, for his part, looked for a job for Florent. But he looked in strange and suspicious ways. He wanted to find some employment that was dramatic, had bitter irony, or was in someway suitable for “an outlaw.” Gavard had a contrary nature. He was just over fifty and prided himself in having already witnessed the fall of four governments. Charles X, the clerics, the aristocrats, the rabble shoved out the door, all that simply made him shrug his shoulders. Louis-Philippe had been an imbecile with his myth of the citizen king who concealed big money in his wool stocking. As for the republic of ‘48, it was a farce. The workers had sold out, but he no longer even admitted to having supported the coup d’état because he now regarded Napoleon III as his personal enemy, a reprobate who locked himself up with de Morny[13] and the others to indulge in orgies. He never tired of this theme. Slightly lowering his voice, he would declare that every evening women were taken to the Tuileries in closed carriages and that he himself had one night heard the sounds of the revelries as he was crossing the place du Carrousel.

To be as much in opposition as possible to any government in power was Gavard's religion. He committed the greatest outrages he could imagine against the political system, only to laugh about them later. To begin with, he always voted for the legislative candidate who would make the most trouble for the government at the Corps Législatif.[14] Then, if he could steal public money, cause the police to stumble, or start some kind of trouble, Gavard would try to give the affair as much of an air of insurrection as possible. Also, he lied a lot to make himself appear tremendously dangerous and talked as though “the crowd up in the Tuileries”[15] knew him well and trembled at the thought of him. He maintained that the next time things blew up, half of that bunch would have to be guillotined and the other half sent into exile. His violent political stance was fed by braggadocio, in far-fetched stories that demonstrated the same cynicism that leads a Parisian shopkeeper to take down his shutters on the day of a riot so he can count the corpses in the street. So when Florent got back from Cayenne, Gavard immediately sensed an opportunity and looked for some way, spiritually, to play some trick on the emperor, the ministers, the people in power, all the way down to the lowly sergents de ville.

Gavard took a hidden pleasure in Florent. He winked at him and spoke to him in a lowered voice when talking of the most banal things and clasped his hands with all sorts of Masonic secrecy. At last he had found his adventure. He knew someone who really was in danger, who could speak, without exaggeration, of the perils he had faced. He could feel the unstated fear of this young man who had come back from the penal colony, whose thinness testified to his long hardship, but this same delicious fear made Gavard think even more of himself, convinced that he was doing something truly shocking in treating this dangerous man as his friend. Florent became sacred. Gavard swore by him. Florent's name would be invoked if his argument needed support. He was attempting to crush the government once and for all.

Gavard had lost his wife on rue Saint-Jacques some months after the coup d'état. He had kept his rotisserie until 1856. At that time, it was rumored that he had made a considerable amount of money in association with a neighboring grocery store owner from a contract to furnish the Army of the East with dried vegetables. The truth was that after having sold the rotisserie, he had had enough capital to live on for a year. But he didn't like to speak of the source of this revenue. That was awkward for him and kept him from speaking candidly about the Crimean War, which he characterized as dangerous adventurism “undertaken merely to consolidate the throne and fill certain pockets with money.”

After a year, he was nearly dead from boredom in his bachelor quarters. Since he dropped by at the Quenu-Gradelles almost every day, he moved nearer to them on rue de la Cossonnerie. It was there that he fell in love with Les Halles, its roar of noise and constant exchange of gossip. He decided to rent a stall in the poultry market just to keep himself amused, to fill his days with idle market gossip. Now he could live a life of endless chitchat, stay on top of all the petty scandals of the neighborhood, fill his head until it was dizzy with gossip. He tasted a thousand rarified pleasures, at last in his element, diving into it with the sensual pleasure of a carp swimming through sunlight.

Florent would sometimes visit him in his stall. The afternoons were still warm, and women sat plucking fowl along the narrow alleyways. Rays of sunlight fell between the awnings, and in the warmth, feathers slipped from fingers and looked like snowflakes dancing in the golden powder of sunbeams. Merchants shouted a long stream of sales pitches, offers, and seductions: “A beautiful duck, Monsieur? … Want to have a look … I have some really fine-looking fat chickens … Monsieur, Monsieur, don't you want to buy this pair of pigeons?”

Florent managed to slip past, both embarrassed and deafened. The women continued plucking as they vied for his attention, and he was nearly suffocated by a cloud of down, thick as a puff of smoke with the stench of poultry.

At last, in mid-alleyway by the water faucets, he found Gavard babbling away in shirtsleeves, his arms crossed over a blue apron. There Gavard ruled over a group of ten or twelve women like a benevolent prince. He was the only man in that section of the market. He had already been through five or six women to run the stall, all of whom had become angered by his long wagging tongue, so that he had decided he would run it himself, naively insisting that the problem was that the silly creatures wanted to pass the whole day gossiping and he could not control them. But since he did need to have someone to keep his place when he wasn't there, he had brought in Marjolin, who was drifting through the market trying out all the lesser positions Les Halles had to offer.

Florent sometimes spent as much as an hour with Gavard, marveling at his endless babble and how confident he was surrounded by petticoats. Interrupting one woman, then picking an argument with another ten stalls away, and grabbing a customer from a third, he made more noise by himself than the hundred or so talkative neighbors who raised such a clamor that the steel girders thumped like tom-toms.

The poultry seller's only relatives were a sister-in-law and a niece. When his wife had died, her older sister, Madame Lecœur, who had been widowed for a year, had mourned her in an exaggerated fashion, going every evening to console the bereaved husband. At the time she was entertaining the idea that she might somehow take the still-warm place of her dead sister. But Gavard could not bear thin women: he said it pained him to feel their bones under the skin. He didn't even pet cats and dogs unless they were very fat. He derived a personal satisfaction from the feel of round, well-fed backs.

Madame Lecœur, her pride wounded, but worse, furious to watch all those hundred-sou coins the rotisserie brought in slipping from her grasp, nurtured a deep grudge. Her brother-in-law became her enemy, and this animosity preoccupied her days. When she saw him set himself up in the market only two steps from where she sold her butter, cheese, and eggs, she accused him of having done it just to annoy her and bring her bad luck. From then on she was always complaining and turned so yellow and melancholy that she really did start losing customers and her business turned sour.

For a long time she had been raising the daughter of one of her sisters; a peasant woman had sent her the child and never given her another thought. The child grew up in Les Halles. Since she was named Sarriet, which was her family name, she soon became known as La Sarriette. At the age of sixteen, La Sarriette was such an alluring young street wench that men would come and buy cheese just to see her. With her pastel face, dark brown hair, and eyes that burned like embers, she was not interested in gentlemen but preferred people from humbler classes. Finally she chose a fort from Ménilmontant who worked for her aunt. When she was twenty, she established a fruit-selling business with some funds from an unknown source, and from then on Monsieur Jules, as her lover was named, was seen with spotless hands, a clean shirt, and a velvet cap; and he came down to the market only in the afternoons, wearing slippers. They lived together on rue Vauvilliers on the third floor of a large house with a sleazy café on the ground floor. La Sarriette's ingratitude capped Madame Lecœur's growing bitterness, and she hurled barrages of scatological abuse at the girl whenever she spoke to her.

The girl conspired with Monsieur Jules to invent stories that they spread throughout the butter pavilion. Gavard thought La Sarriette was funny and indulged her, stroking her cheeks whenever he ran into her. She was plump and succulent.

One afternoon, while Florent was sitting in the charcuterie, weary from the useless trek he had made all morning in search of work, Marjolin entered. This chunky youth, with his Flemish blend of heft and sweetness, was Lisa's protégé. She would say that he had a complete absence of malice and was a little stupid, but was as strong as a horse and a bit interesting in that no one seemed to know anything about his mother or father. It was she who had gotten Gavard to give him a job.

Lisa was at the counter, annoyed by the sight of Florent's dirty shoes, which were tracking mud onto the floor's pink and white tiles. She had already gotten up twice to toss handfuls of sawdust on the floor. She smiled at Marjolin.

“Monsieur Gavard,” said the young man, “has sent me to ask …” He stopped, looked around, and lowered his voice. “He told me to wait until you were alone and then repeat these words, which he made me learn by heart: ‘Ask them if there is any danger or if I can come talk to them about the matter they know about.’”

“Tell Monsieur Gavard that we're expecting him,” said Lisa, who was used to the mysterious ways of the poultry vendor.

But Marjolin did not turn to leave. Instead, he remained in his tracks in a state of ecstacy before the beautiful charcuterie mistress.

As though moved by silent adulation, she asked, “You are happy at Monsieur Gavard's? He's not a bad man, and you should try to please him.”

“Yes, Madame Lisa.”

“But you're not being sensible. Only yesterday I saw you on the roofs of Les Halles. And you were with a bunch of lowlifes. You're a man now, and you should be thinking of your future.”

“Yes, Madame Lisa.”

But then she had to tend to a customer, a woman wanting a pound of pork chops and cornichons. She got up from the counter and went to the chopping block at the far end of the shop. There, with a slender knife, she separated three chops from a side of pork. Lifting a cleaver with her bare, strong hand, she gave three sharp blows. At each blow her black merino dress rose slightly behind her and the stays of her corset showed under her tightly stretched bodice. With great seriousness, her lips tight, her eyes wide, she slowly gathered up the chops and weighed them.

When the lady had left, Lisa saw Marjolin, enraptured at the sight of her delivering those three blows of the cleaver, so clean and powerful. “What, you're still here!” she shouted at him.

He started to leave, but she held him up for a second. “If I see you again with that little tramp Cadine … don't deny it. This morning again you were together at the triperie, watching them splitting sheeps' heads. I don't understand how a handsome man like you can be interested in a slut like Cadine, the little grasshopper. Okay get going and tell Gavard that he should come now, while there's no one in the shop.”

Marjolin walked off in confusion and despair, without saying anything.

Beautiful Lisa stood at her counter, her head turned slightly toward Les Halles, while Florent studied her in silence, surprised to find her so beautiful. Until that moment, he had never really seen her. He didn't know how to look at women. She appeared to him over the meats displayed on the counter. In front of her, laid out on white plates, were dried sausages from Arles and Lyon, tongues and pieces of petit salé boiled in water, pigs' heads covered in jelly an uncovered crock of pork rillettes, a can of sardines whose torn-back lid showed a lack of oil inside, and then to the right and the left, set up on boards, were Italian pains de fromage and fromage de cochon,[16] an ordinary pale pink ham, a York ham with deep red meat sealed in a layer of fat. There were round and oval dishes with stuffed tongues, a truffled galantine, and boar's head with pistachios, while closer to her, within her reach, stood yellow earthenware crocks with larded veal, pâté de foie gras, a hare pâté.

Since Gavard had not shown up, she arranged some lard de poitrine[17] on a little marble shelf at the end of the counter and straightened out the crock of saindoux[18] and the crock of fat drippings from the roasts, wiped down the platters on each side of the balance scales, and poked around the waning fire in the food warmer. The perfume of meat rose and overtook her in a heavy truffle-scented calm. That particular day there was a wondrous freshness to Lisa. The crisp whiteness of her apron and sleeves reflected in the whiteness of the plates around her, and above, her plump neck and rosy cheeks showed, echoing the pastel of the hams and the paleness of the transparent fats.

Florent began to feel intimidated by the sight of her, made uneasy by her primness. He stole looks at her from the mirrors around the shop. He could see her from behind, in front and in side view, and even from the ceiling, which showed the tightly rolled chignon and the bangs along her temples. The shop was packed with a crowd of Lisas, showing their broad shoulders, the strength of their arms, their round breasts so stiff and inexpressive that they aroused him no more than the sight of a belly would. He stopped himself, settling on one of the side views at the mirror next to him, between two sides of pork. Along the line of marble and mirrors ran hooks from which hung sides of pork and rolls of larding fat, and Lisa, with her strong neck, her round hips, and her swelling bosom, in side views, looked like a trussed-up queen in the midst of lard and raw flesh. Then the beautiful charcutière leaned forward and smiled warmly at the two goldfish forever swimming circles in the aquarium in the window.

Gavard came in. With an air of urgency he looked in the kitchen for Quenu. As soon as he had installed himself sidesaddle at a marble table, with Florent still in his chair, Lisa still at her counter, and Quenu leaning against a side of pork, Gavard announced that at last he had found a job for Florent. And that they would laugh when they heard about it and the government would be stung.

Suddenly he stopped, seeing Mademoiselle Saget push open the shop door only because she had seen from the street such a well-attended meeting at the Quenu-Gradelles'. The little old woman in the faded dress with her ever-present black bag on her arm, in a ribbonless black straw hat that cast a furtive shadow over her pale face, nodded to the men and gave Lisa a caustic smile.

She was an acquaintance who still lived in the house on rue Pirouette as she had for the past forty years, doubtless on some meager income, though she never discussed it. She had once mentioned Cherbourg, saying that she had been born there, but nothing more than that was ever learned about her. She spoke only of other people, of every aspect of their lives, down to how many shirts they had laundered per month, taking her need to peer into her neighbors' existence to the point of listening at doors and opening letters. Her tongue was feared from rue Saint-Denis to rue Jean-Jacques-Rousseau and from rue Saint-Honoré to rue Mauconseil. All day long she drifted through the streets with her empty basket, as though she were shopping but buying nothing just trading news, keeping up to date on the most trivial of facts, thereby managing to store in her head the complete history of every house, every floor, every person in the neighborhood. Quenu had always accused her of being the one who had spread the story of Gradelle dropping dead on the chopping block, and he had borne her a grudge ever since.

As it happened, she was extremely well informed on the subject of Uncle Gradelle and about Quenu as well. She had collected all the details, examined them from every possible angle, and committed them to memory. But for the last fifteen days, the appearance of Florent had been confusing her and a raging curiosity was consuming her. It made her physically ill when she hit a blank spot in her intelligence. Yet she could have sworn that she had seen this tall loafer before somewhere.

She stood in front of the counter, looking at the dishes one by one and murmuring in her wispy voice, “I never know what to eat anymore. When it gets to be afternoon, I'm like a tortured soul thinking about my dinner. And then, later, I don't feel like anything. Madame Quenu, do you have any of those breaded chops left?”

Without waiting for an answer, she lifted one of the lids on the food warmer. It was the section used for andouille, fresh sausages, and boudin. But the dish had gone cold, and only one stray forgotten sausage was left on the grill.

“Have a look on the other side, Mademoiselle Saget,” said the charcutière. “I think there's one chop left.”

“No, that doesn't do anything for me,” muttered the little old lady, who nevertheless stuck her nose under the second lid. “It was just a whim—but breaded chops tonight would be too heavy. I'd rather have something that I wouldn't need to heat up.”

She had turned toward Florent and was staring at him. She looked at Gavard, who was drumming his fingertips on the marble tabletop. With a smile, she invited them to resume their conversation.

“Why don't you take a piece of petit salé?” Lisa suggested.

Mademoiselle Saget picked up the fork resting on a plate by its metal handle and poked around with it, prodding each piece of petit salé. Lightly tapping each bone to estimate its thickness, she then turned them over to examine the pink meat, again saying, “No, you know I'd really like a breaded chop. But the one that's left is too fatty. I'll have to try another time.”

Lisa bent over to watch her through the sausage skins hanging in the front and saw her cross the road and go into the fruit market.

“The old nanny goat,” snarled Gavard. And since they were now alone, he told them about the position he had found for Florent. It was quite a tale. One of his friends, Monsieur Verlaque, a fish inspector, was so ill that he needed to take some time off. Just that morning the poor man had told him that it would be a great favor if he could recommend someone to take over and keep the position open for him in case he wanted to return.

“You have to understand,” Gavard added, “Verlaque isn't going to last another six months. Florent is going to be able to keep his position. It's a beautiful situation. It will completely dupe the police. The prefecture is responsible for the position. It's going to be a big laugh when Florent starts getting paid by the police.”

He broke into a huge belly laugh, finding it all perversely comic.

“I don't want the job,” said Florent emphatically. “I've sworn to accept nothing from the empire. I would rather die of starvation than work for the prefecture. It's out of the question. Do you understand, Gavard!”

Gavard understood and was slightly embarrassed. Quenu lowered his head. But Lisa turned to glare at Florent, her neck puffed up, her bosom nearly popping its bodice. She was just about to open her mouth when La Sarriette came in and the shop again fell silent.

“Well!” exclaimed La Sarriette with her soft laugh, “I almost forgot to get lard. Madame Quenu, could you cut me a dozen strips, nice and thin? You know, for larks.[19] Jules wants to eat larks. Oh, and how are you, Uncle?”

She filled the shop with her swirling skirts and smiled at everyone with the freshness of milk and her hair on one side falling down from the wind. Gavard took her hands, and she brashly went on, “I'll bet you were all talking about me when I came in. What were you saying, Uncle?”

Lisa called to her, “Tell me if these are thin enough.” On the edge of a board she was delicately cutting the lard. As she wrapped it up, she asked, “Can I get you anything else?”

“Oh my God, I must be losing my mind,” said La Sarriette. “Give me a pound of saindoux. I just love fried potatoes. I can make a lunch of nothing but two sous of fried potatoes and a bunch of radishes. Yes, one pound of saindoux, Madame Quenu.”

Lisa took a thick piece of paper on the scale and, taking the crock of saindoux from under the shelf, scooped out globs with a wooden spatula and built a mound on the paper with gentle taps. When the scale plate dropped, she took the paper and quickly twisted the ends closed with her fingers.

“That's twenty-four sous,” Lisa said, “and six sous for the larding strips, that makes thirty sous. Did you need anything else?”

La Sarriette said, “No.” Still laughing, showing her teeth, she paid. Staring at the men, her gray skirt a little off kilter and her carelessly tied red scarf revealing just a little bit of the white of her bosom. Just before leaving, she challenged Gavard again: “So you're not going to tell me what you were talking about as I came in. I could see you laughing from the middle of the street. Oh, you sly one, I won't love you anymore.”

She walked out and crossed the street. Lisa dryly observed, “Mademoiselle Saget sent her.”

Then it was back to silence. Gavard was taken aback by Florent's response to his proposition. Lisa spoke first.

“It's wrong of you to turn down the position of fish inspector, Florent. You know how hard it is to find a job, and you're hardly in a position to be choosy.”

“I have my reasons,” answered Florent.

Lisa shrugged. “Come on, you can't be serious. I understand how much you dislike the government, but it would be stupid to let that stop you from earning a living. Besides, dear, the emperor isn't a bad man. You don't believe, do you, that he knew of your suffering? How could he know if you were eating moldy bread and tainted meat? He can't be held responsible for everything that happens. You can see for yourself that he hasn't interfered with the rest of us. You're not being fair, not at all.”

Gavard was feeling more and more uncomfortable. He could not stand hearing these tributes to the emperor.

“Wait a minute, Madame Quenu,” he murmured. “You're going a bit too far. He really is trash.”

“Oh, you!” the energized Beautiful Lisa interrupted him. “With all your stories, you won't be satisfied until someday you get robbed and massacred. Don't talk politics to me, because it will make me mad. We're talking about Florent now and saying he should take the inspector job. Isn't that right, Quenu?”

Quenu, who until then had not breathed a word, was caught off guard by the abruptness of his wife's question. “It's a good position,” he said without committing himself.

Once again an awkward silence fell on the room, and Florent said, “Please, just forget it. My mind is made up. I'll wait.”

“You'll wait!” shouted Lisa, at the end of her patience.

Two reddish flames were burning on her cheeks. Planted firmly there in her white apron, her hips wide, she struggled to resist unleashing unkind words. Then another customer came into the shop, deflecting her anger. It was Madame Lecœur.

“Could you please give me a half-pound assorted plate at fifty sous a pound?” she asked. At first she pretended to have not seen her brother-in-law; then she greeted him with a nod. She studied the three men from the tops of their heads down to the tips of their toes, no doubt hoping to find their secret somewhere in the manner in which they were waiting for her to leave. She could sense that she had somehow disturbed them, and that made her look even sharper and more sour than usual in her drooping skirts, with her long spidery arms with their gnarled hands held under her apron. Gavard, ill at ease in the silence, detected a slight cough and asked, “Have you caught a cold?”

“No,” she said curtly. In the places where the bones neared the surface of her face, the skin was stretched brick red and the dark flame that touched her eyelids pointed to a liver ailment fed by the bitterness of her jealousies. She turned back to the counter and followed Lisa's every gesture with the untrusting eye of a customer convinced she is going to be cheated.

“Don't give me any cervelas,” she said. “I don't like them.”

Lisa cut the thin slices with a small knife. She moved to the smoked ham, then the ordinary ham, curling off fine slivers that curled in her hand as she leaned slightly forward to keep her eye on the knife. Her plump, ruddy hands, which worked around the meats with a light, dextrous touch, seemed to have acquired the suppleness of fat. She held out a terrine and asked, “You'd like some larded veal, wouldn't you?”

Madame Lecœur seemed to think about this for a long time; then she agreed. Lisa then sliced from the terrine. She took some slices of larded veal and a slab of hare pâté on the end of her knife blade. Each slice was placed in the middle of a sheet of paper on the scale.

“Aren't you going to give me any boar's head with pistachios?” asked Madame Lecœur in an unpleasant voice.

So she had to give her the boar's head. This butter vendor was becoming difficult. She wanted two slices of galantine, she liked that. Lisa, already irritated, fidgeted with the knife handle and pointed out that the galantine had truffles and could be included only in an assortment at three francs a pound. The customer continued to sniff around the plates to look for more things to ask for. When the assortment was weighed out, she insisted on Lisa adding some aspic and cornichons. The block of aspic, in the shape of a gâteau de Savoie in the middle of a porcelain platter, jiggled in the grasp of Lisa's angry hands, and vinegar squirted from the jar as she grabbed two cornichons with her fingers from behind the dish warmer.

“That's twenty-five sous, isn't it?” Madame Lecœur asked in a casual tone. She could clearly see and tremendously enjoyed Lisa's repressed irritation, slowly taking out her money, as though the coins had gotten lost in her pocketbook. Then she glanced disdainfully at Gavard, reveling in the strained silence that her presence prolonged, vowing that she would not leave as long as they were concealing some “chicanery” from her. But Lisa finally placed the package in her hand and she had to leave. She exited without saying a word, casting one last stare around the shop.

Once she was gone Lisa exploded, “La Saget sent her too! Is that old battle-ax going to march everyone in Les Halles in here to find out what we were talking about? And what vicious people they are! Whoever heard of breaded chops and assorted plates being sold at five in the afternoon? They'd rather make themselves sick with indigestion than miss out on what we were saying. If La Saget sends anyone else, wait and see the reception she gets. I'll show her the door, even if it's my own sister.”

The three men were silenced by Lisa's anger. Gavard had leaned over the brass railing, where, lost in his thoughts, he absentmindedly fiddled with a little glass railing that had come loose. Then he raised his head. “Personally,” he said, “I look at the whole thing as a big farce.”

“What's that?” asked Lisa.

“The fish inspector job.”

She raised her hands, shot one last look at Florent, and then sat on the cushioned bench behind the counter with her mouth sealed. But Gavard began to expound on his theory, the idea being that the government would get fleeced because Florent would get their money. He repeated with satisfaction, “My dear friend, weren't those the bastards that nearly starved you to death? Well, now's your chance to make them feed you. It's a beautiful thing. It struck me immediately.”

Florent smiled but still said no. Quenu, to please his wife, tried to come up with a good argument. But Lisa seemed to no longer be listening. She was staring at the market. Suddenly she sprang to her feet, shouting, “Aha, now they're sending the Norman to spy on us. She's going to pay for the others.”

A tall brunette pushed open the shop door. It was Louise Méhudin, the beautiful fish woman whom everyone called the Norman. She had a brazen kind of good looks and delicate white skin. She was almost as assertive as Lisa, the look in her eyes was even bolder, and her breasts were more alluring. She came in with a prancing gait, a gold chain jingling against her apron, her uncovered hair combed up in the latest style, and a bow at her throat, a lace bow that made her the queen coquette of Les Halles. She had about her a slight scent of the sea, and on one of her hands, near the little finger, a herring scale shone like a small patch of mother-of-pearl. The two women had lived in the same house on rue Pirouette, where they had been close friends, linked by a rivalry that kept each thinking about the other. In the neighborhood people said “the Beautiful Norman,” just as they said “Beautiful Lisa.” This made them competitors, always compared, forcing them both to live up to their reputation for beauty.

If Lisa leaned over a little at her counter, she could see the fish woman working in the pavilion across the way amid salmons and turbots. Each kept an eye on the other. Beautiful Lisa tightened the laces on her corset and the Beautiful Norman responded by adding more rings to her fingers and bows to her shoulders. Whenever they saw each other, they were very sweet, very flattering, while their eyes darted from under lowered lids, searching for defects. They were always very attentive to each other and professed the greatest affection.

“Tell me, is it tomorrow that you make the boudin?” asked the Norman in a merry voice.

Lisa remained icy. She did not often get angry, but when she did, her anger stubbornly remained. She responded, “Yes,” in a cold voice, barely moving her lips.

“It's just that, you know, I love boudin hot out of the pot. I'll come back.”

She was aware of the icy reception by her rival. She looked at Florent, who seemed to interest her, and then, not wanting to leave without having the last word, she unwisely added, “I bought some of your boudins the day before yesterday. They weren't very fresh.”

“Not fresh!” Lisa repeated, her face turned white and lips trembling.

Up until that point Lisa might have kept her composure lest the Norman get the idea that it was the lace bow to which she was reacting But now not only was she being spied on but she was also being insulted, and that was going too far. Arching her back and planting her fists on the counter, she let loose in a harsh voice, “You don't say. Remember last week when you sold that pair of soles, did I go saying in front of everyone that they were spoiled?”

“Spoiled? My soles spoiled?” shouted the fish woman, her face turning purple.

For a moment they stood breathless, mute and infuriated beneath the meat rack. All the loveliness of their friendship had evaporated. It had taken only one word to reveal the sharp teeth hidden behind the smile.

“You are a crude and vulgar woman,” said the Beautiful Norman. “See if I ever set foot in here again.”

“Get out then, get out!” said Beautiful Lisa. “Everyone knows about you.”

The fish woman parted with a vulgar word that left the charcuterie woman's entire body shaking. The scene had unfolded so quickly that the three astonished men had not had time to intervene. Lisa quickly regained her composure. As Augustine, the shopgirl, was returning from her errands, Lisa took up the conversation where it had left off without making the slightest reference to what had just taken place. Pulling Gavard to the side, she told him not to give Verlaque a final answer. She would make it her mission to make up her brother-in-law's mind, for which she would need, at most, two days.

Quenu came back to the kitchen just as Gavard was taking Florent for a vermouth at Monsieur Lebigre's. He pointed out three women in the covered street between the fish and the poultry pavilions.

“They're gossping away,” Gavard muttered in a voice that was full of envy.

Les Halles was slowly clearing out, and there stood Mademoiselle Saget, Madame Lecœur, and La Sarriette at the edge of the walk. The old woman was spouting, “Just like I told you, Madame Lecœur, they always have your brother-in-law in the shop. You saw him there yourself, didn't you?”

“With my own two eyes! He was seated at a table and looked completely at home.”

“Personally,” La Sarriette interrupted, “I didn't hear anything bad. I don't know why you're making such a fuss about it.”

Mademoiselle Saget shrugged. “Oh well, you're still an innocent, my dear. Can't you see why the Quenus are always enticing Monsieur Gavard to their shop? What do you want to bet he'll leave everything he has to little Pauline?”

“Do you think so!” exclaimed Madame Lecœur, pale with anger. Then, in a mournful voice as though she had just received some terrible news, she said, “I'm all alone, completely defenseless. He's completely free to do as he pleases. You just heard how his niece sides with him too. She has forgotten what she cost me and wouldn't lift a finger to help me.”

“Not so, Aunt,” said La Sarriette. “It is you who never has a kind word for me.”

Right there and then they reconciled their differences and kissed. The niece promised that she would stop her teasing, and the aunt swore on all she held sacred that she would treat La Sarriette as though she were her own daughter. Mademoiselle Saget offered them advice on how to keep Gavard from squandering his money. And they all agreed that the Quenu-Gradelles were unsavory and needed to be watched.

“I don't know what kind of shenanigans they're up to,” said the old spinster, “but there's something fishy going on. And that Florent, Madame Quenu's cousin, what do you two make of him?”

The three women huddled close together and lowered their voices. “Remember how we saw him one morning,” said Madame Lecœur, “with his boots falling apart and his clothes covered with dust, sneaking around like a thief who had just gotten away with something … That man frightens me.”

“No,” said La Sarriette, “he's very skinny, but he's not a bad man.”

Mademoiselle Saget was thinking out loud. “I've been working on this for the past two weeks, trying to find out something about him. Clearly Monsieur Gavard knows him. I must have met him somewhere, I just can't remember where.”

She was still combing her memory when the Norman, straight from the charcuterie, blew in like a storm. “She's certainly polite, the big Quenu ogre!” she announced, relieved at getting it off her chest. “Imagine her telling me that I sold rotten fish. But I took care of her in her pretty little lair where she keeps tainted pork that makes everyone sick.”

“What did you say to her?” asked the old woman, all excited, thrilled to hear that the two had argued.

“Me, I didn't say a thing. Not a thing. I just dropped in to tell her very politely that I would be stopping by for boudin tomorrow evening. And then she turned on me. Filthy little hypocrite with her sanctimonious airs! But this is going to cost her a lot more than she knows.”

The three could sense that the Norman had not spoken the entire truth. But that didn't stop them from rushing to her defense with a volley of curses. They turned toward rue Rambuteau, inventing insults and making up tales about the filthiness of the kitchen and other meaty accusations. If the Quenus had been dealers in human flesh, the women's outrage would not have been more violent. The Norman felt the need to retell the story three more times.

“And the cousin?” Mademoiselle Saget asked in a mischievous tone. “What did he say?”

“Cousin?” the Norman replied in a sharp voice. “You believe this cousin story? He's someone's lover, the big goon.”

The other three protested. Lisa's virtue was an act of faith in the neighborhood.

“Go on, you never know about these slippery holy hypocrites. That husband of hers is a bit too simple not to cheat on.”

Mademoiselle Saget nodded as though she agreed with this point of view. Sweetly she said, “Besides, this cousin has dropped in from nowhere and the story offered by the Quenus doesn't smell quite right.”

“Oh, yes, he's that fatso's lover,” the fish woman again asserted. “Some tramp or bum she found in the streets. That's clear.”

“Skinny men are backward men,” declared La Sarriette with a knowing air.

“She bought him an entire new outfit,” Madame Lecœur added. “He has cost her a lot.”

“Well, yes, yes, you could be right,” said the old maid. “I'm going to have to learn more …”

The three agreed to keep one another informed about anything that happened at the Quenu-Gradelle establishment. The butter vendor claimed that she wanted to open her brother-in-law's eyes to the kind of place he was frequenting. But by then the Norman's anger had subsided, and, being at heart a kind person, she left with a feeling that she had talked too much.

Once she was gone, Madame Lecœur observed cagily “I could swear the Norman said something surly. That's the way she is. She would be wise not to talk about cousins falling from the sky, she who once found a baby in her fish shop.”

The three looked at one another and laughed. Then, once Madame Lecœur left, La Sarriette said, “My aunt is foolish to be so preoccupied with all these stories. That's what's making her so skinny. She used to beat me if a man looked at me. One thing is sure, though, there won't be some little brat turning up under her bolster, not my aunt.”

This gave Mademoiselle Saget another chuckle. And once she was by herself, as she went back to rue Pirouette, she thought how those “three floozies” were not worth the rope to hang them. Besides, someone could easily have seen them, and it would not be good to get on the wrong side of the Quenu-Gradelles, who were, after all, affluent and respected people. She made a detour to rue de Turbigo, to the Taboureau boulangerie, the most beautiful bakery in the neighborhood. Madame Taboureau was a close friend of Lisa and an authority beyond question on all subjects. When you said, “Madame Taboureau said so” or “according to Madame Taboureau,” there was nothing more to be said on the subject. Today, the elderly spinster Saget, on the pretext of wanting to know when the oven would be heated so that she could bring in her dish of pears, sang the praises of Lisa and especially her excellent boudin. Then, content that she had established this moral alibi and pleased that she had fanned the flames of a quarrel that was erupting while positioning herself above the fray she returned home with peace of mind, except that she still could not quite place where she had seen Madame Quenu's cousin.

That same day, in the evening after dinner, Florent decided to go for a walk along some of the covered streets of Les Halles. A fine mist was rising, and the empty pavilions were a mournful gray, studded with the yellow teardrops of gas flames. For the first time Florent felt out of place. He recognized the inept way in which he, a thin and artless man, had fallen into a world of fat people. He realized that his presence was disturbing the entire neighborhood and that he was a problem for Quenu, as a counterfeit cousin with a dubious look. He was saddened by these thoughts, not that he had noticed the slightest coldness on the part of his brother and Lisa. It was their kindness that upset him, and he found himself guilty of insensitivity and putting himself up in their home. Self-doubt started to overtake him. Recalling the conversation in the shop that afternoon gave him a vague feeling of uneasiness. As his mind was invaded by a memory of the scent of meat at Lisa's counter, he felt himself sliding into a spineless lack of resolve. Maybe he had been wrong to refuse the position of inspector that had been offered. This thought provoked an internal struggle, and he had to shake himself to rediscover the resolve of his conscience. A damp breeze was coming up, and it blew through the covered passages. By the time he was forced to button up his coat, he had regained his calm and his conviction. It was as though the smell of fat from the charcuterie, which had weakened him, was now blown away by the wind.

He was going back home when he ran into Claude Lantier. The painter, concealed in the folds of his green coat, had an angry, muffled voice. He was in a fury against painting, declaring it a dog's trade, and swore that he would never again in his life pick up a brush. That afternoon he had kicked his foot through a study he had been working on, of the head of that tramp Cadine.

Claude was prone to such fits caused by his inability to produce the kind of durable, living work of which he dreamed. At such times nothing existed for him any longer, and he would wander the streets seeing only darkness and waiting for the next day's resurrection. Usually he said that he felt bright and cheerful in the morning and horribly depressed in the evening. Each of his days was a long, disillusioning struggle. Florent barely recognized the night wanderer of Les Halles. They had already met a second time before this, one time in the charcuterie. Claude, who knew the real story of the fugitive, had taken his hand and declared that he regarded Florent as a good man.

But Claude rarely went to the charcuterie.

“Are you still at my aunt's?” he asked. “I don't know how you can stand being around that kitchen. It stinks in there. If I spend an hour in there, I feel like I've eaten enough for the next three days. It was a mistake to have gone there this morning. That's what ruined my study.”

Then, after he and Florent had walked a few steps in silence, he continued, “Oh, what fine people. They're so healthy, it makes me ill. I'd like to paint their portraits, but I don't know how to do such round faces that don't have any bones. You wouldn't see my aunt Lisa kicking her foot through her pots. I was a fool to have wrecked Cadine's head. Now that I think about it, it wasn't that bad.”

Then they began chatting about Aunt Lisa. Claude said that his mother had not seen anything of her in a long time. He had the impression that Lisa was ashamed that her sister had married a worker. And besides, she did not like to be around the less fortunate. As for himself, he told Florent how a generous man had sent him to college because he had been taken with the donkeys and old women that he had drawn when he was only eight years old. But the good man had died, leaving him an income of a thousand francs a year, just enough to keep from starving.

“I would rather have been a worker. Take a carpenter, for example. Carpenters are happy men. Say they have to make a table. They make it, then they go to bed happy to have made their table, completely satisfied. Me? I hardly sleep at all at night. All those damn studies that I can't finish dance in my head. I never finish anything, never, never!”

His voice almost broke into sobs. Then he tried to laugh. He cursed, searching for foul language, wallowing in muck with the ice-cold rage of a fine and delicate spirit who fantasizes his own degradation. He ended by squatting in front of one of the Les Halles gratings that ventilate the markets below—cellars where the gas burns permanently. Down there in the depths, he pointed out to Florent, Marjolin and Cadine were peacefully eating their supper, seated on a stone block used for slaughtering chickens. The two young waifs had found a way of hiding in the basement and living there after the gratings were closed.

“What an animal, an extraordinary beast!” Claude repeated with both admiration and envy of Marjolin. And to think that animal is happy. If they want their treats, they just hide together in one of those big baskets full of feathers. At least that's a life! My God, you're right to stay at the charcuterie. Maybe that will fatten you up.”

Suddenly he left. Florent climbed up to his garret, troubled by the anxiety of uncertainty. The next morning, he avoided the shop, taking a long walk along the banks of the Seine. But when he returned for lunch he was struck once again by Lisa's kindness. She again mentioned the position of fish inspector, without pushing too hard but as something worth thinking about. As he listened to her, a plate full of food in front of him, he could not help being influenced by the comfort of the dining room. The mat beneath his feet felt soft, the hanging copper lamp glowed, the wallpaper had a yellow tint, and the light oak furniture—all filled him with a sense of well-being that threatened his sense of right and wrong. But he still had the strength to refuse, explaining his reasons once again, though at the same time realizing what bad taste it was to be making such a crude show of his stance in a place such as this.

Lisa did not get angry but instead smiled, that beautiful smile that embarrassed Florent far more than her suppressed irritation the evening before. At dinner they spoke only of winter pickling, which would keep everyone in the charcuterie busy.

The evenings were getting cold. As soon as dinner was over, they all went to the kitchen because it was warm there. It was so spacious that several people could sit there without getting in anyone's way. The gaslit walls were covered in white and blue tiles up to the height of a man. On the left was a huge iron stove with three deep wells in which were set three pots whose bottoms were blackened by coal soot. At the end a small chimney rose over a cooking range used for grilling with a smoker above. Above the stove, higher up the wall than the skimmers, the long-handled cooking spoons, and the grilling forks, was a row of numbered drawers containing bread crumbs, grated crusts—both fine and coarse—and spices—cloves, nutmeg, peppercorns. On the right, the chopping table, a huge oak block, leaned against the wall, all cut and scarred; various pieces of equipment attached to it—an injection pump, a stuffer, a food mill, with their cogs and cranks—gave a sense of mystery and the disturbing impression of a kitchen in Hell. All around the walls, on boards, even under tables, were heaps of pots, terrines, buckets, platters, tin tools, a battery of deep pans, tapered funnels, racks of knives and chopping tools, skewers and larding needles, a whole world of things that lived on fat.

Despite the excessive cleanliness, grease dominated; it oozed from the white and blue tiles, shone on the red floor tiles, gave a gray sheen to the stove, polished the chopping block to the glow of varnished oak. And in the vapor from the three continuously steaming pots of melting pork, the condensation, falling drop by drop, ensured that there was not, from floor to ceiling, so much as a nail that did not drip grease.

The Quenu-Gradelles made everything themselves. The only items they bought from outside were potted meats from celebrated houses, rillettes, conserves in jars, canned sardines, cheeses, and escargots. Starting in September, the cellar, which had been emptied in the summer, had to be refilled. After the shop closed they worked late into the evening. With the help of Auguste and Léon, Quenu stuffed saucisson, prepared hams, melted saindoux, and prepared the poitrine, lard, and strips for larding. It made an impressive clatter of pots and grinders, and the scent of the kitchen rose and filled the entire house. All of this had to be done in addition to the daily preparation of fresh pork, pâté de foie gras, galantines, hare pâté, fresh sausages, and boudin.

By eleven that evening Quenu had two pots of saindoux working and was starting on the boudin. Auguste was helping him. At a corner of the square table Lisa and Augustine were mending linen, while across from them sat Florent, his face turned toward the stove, smiling. Little Pauline had stepped onto his feet and wanted him to send her “jumping in the air.” Behind him Léon was chopping sausage meat with slow and even strokes on the chopping block.

Auguste went to look for two jugs of pig's blood in the courtyard. He had bled them himself at the slaughterhouse. He brought the blood and entrails back to the shop and left the pig carcass for the kitchen boys to dress and cart over in the afternoon. Quenu claimed that no one in all of Paris bled a pig better than Auguste. In truth, Auguste was an expert judge of blood and the boudin was good anytime Auguste said, “The boudin is going to be good.”

“So, are we going to have good boudin?” Lisa asked.

Auguste put the two jugs down and slowly answered, “I think so, Madame Quenu, yes, I think so … The first sign is the way the blood flows. When I pull out the knife, if the blood runs off too slowly, that's not a good sign. It shows that the blood is poor quality.”

“But,” Quenu interrupted, “doesn't that also depend on how far in the knife was pushed?”

Auguste's pale face showed a smile. “No, no,” he answered. “I always stick the knife in exactly four fingers. That's how you measure it. But you see, the best sign is when the blood runs out and I beat it with my hand in the bucket. It has to be a good, warm temperature, smooth but not too thick.”

Augustine had put down her mending needle and raised her eyes to look at Auguste. On her ruddy face, framed by frizzy chestnut brown hair, was a look of absorbed fascination. Lisa and even little Pauline listened with considerable interest. “I beat and beat and beat, you see?” the young man continued, whisking his hand through the air as though it were beating cream. “Then, when I pull the hand out and look at it, it should be completely lubricated by the blood, like a red glove of even color all around. Then you can safely say, ‘The boudin will be good.’”

He kept his hand in the air for another instant, looking pleased. Against the white cuff of his shirt his hand, which frequented buckets of blood, was deep rose, the nails at the ends of the fingers bright red. Quenu nodded his approval.

Now there was silence. Léon was still chopping. Pauline, looking dreamy, climbed back on her cousin's feet and shouted, “Tell me, cousin, tell me that story of the man who was eaten by wild animals.” In the child's mind, the idea of pig's blood stirred up the story of “the man eaten by wild animals.” Not understanding, Florent asked which man that was. Lisa laughed.

“She wants that story of that poor man, you know, the one you were telling Gavard the other night. She must have been listening.”

Florent became morose. The little girl took the fat yellow cat in her arms and carried it to her cousin, placing it in his lap and explaining that Mouton would also like to hear the story. But Mouton jumped onto the table and remained seated there with his back arched, contemplating the tall, scrawny man who over the past fifteen days had been a continual object of fascination. But Pauline tapped her feet angrily. She wanted the story.

Since the little girl was becoming unbearable, Lisa said, “Oh, Florent, tell her the story she wants so we can have some peace and quiet.”

Florent remained silent another few seconds, staring at the floor. Then, slowly raising his head, he fixed his gaze first on the two women with their mending needles, then on Quenu and Auguste, preparing a pot for boudin. The gaslight was burning, the heat from the stove was comforting, and all the kitchen's fat produced the kind of peaceful feeling that accompanies good digestion. Then he placed Pauline on his lap and, smiling a sad smile, addressed the child:

“Once upon a time there was a poor man. He was sent far, far away to the other side of the ocean. The boat that carried him held four hundred convicts, and he was thrown among them. He was forced to live for five weeks among those thieves, dressed like them in rough sailcloth and eating from their trough. Big fat lice preyed on him, and fever took all his strength from him. The kitchen and bakery and ship engines so heated the bottom deck that ten convicts died from it. During the day they were sent topside, fifty at a time, to catch a breath of sea air. The crew of the ship feared them and trained the cannons on them. The poor man was very happy when his turn to go up came. But although his terrible sweating let up, he still felt too sick to eat. At night, when he was again shackled in irons and the rolling of the ship on the rough sea made him bump into the two men next to him, he broke down and began to cry, relieved to be crying where he could not be seen …”

Pauline listened with big eyes and her two little hands crossed dutifully in front of her. “But,” she interrupted, “but this isn't the story of the man who was eaten by the animals. This is a different story, isn't it, cousin?”

“Wait and see,” Florent answered gently. “We'll get to the story of that gentleman. I'm telling you the whole story.”

“All right,” said the child happily. But she looked pensive, apparently struggling to resolve some problem. Finally she asked, “But what had the poor man done that he was sent away and put on the boat?”

Lisa and Augustine were smiling, enthralled by the child's vision. And Lisa, without answering the question, used the opportunity to teach the child a lesson, smacking her soundly and asserting, “Bad children are sent on boats like that.”

“So really,” Pauline replied judiciously “it served my cousin's poor man right to be crying all night.”

Lisa picked up her sewing again, slumping her shoulders. Quenu had not been listening. He had just cut and thrown into the pot a few onion slices that began to crackle in the heat, chirping like crickets on a hot day. It smelled good. When Quenu plunged his big wooden spoon into the pot, they sang all the louder, filling the kitchen with the penetrating scent of cooked onions. Auguste was preparing pork fat. Léon's chopper came down faster and faster, occasionally scraping across the block to gather the sausage meat, which was turning into a paste.

Florent continued, “As soon as they arrived, they took the man to an island called Devil's Island. He found that he was there with other men like himself who had all been taken away from their country. They were all very unhappy. They were made to work like convicts. The gendarmes who guarded them counted them every day to make sure that no one was missing. Later they were left to do as they liked. They were locked up at night in a large wooden building where they slept in hammocks hung from two bars. By the end of a year they were all going barefoot. And their clothes were so ragged that their skin showed. They had built some huts with tree trunks for shelter from the sun, which broiled everything. But the huts could not protect them from the mosquitoes, which covered them with welts and inflammations. It killed a number of them. The rest became yellow, so wretched and lost, with their bushy beards, that they were pitiful to look at.”

“Auguste, hand me the fat!” shouted Quenu. Then he slowly let the chunks slide into the skillet and stirred them with his spoon. The fat melted. An even richer steam rose from the stove.

“What did they get for food there?” asked Pauline, engrossed in the story.

“Wormy rice and bad-smelling meat,” Florent answered, his voice lower. “You had to pick the worms out to eat the rice. If the meat was roasted and very cooked, you could manage to eat it. But if it was boiled it stank so badly, just the smell could make you sick.”

“I'd rather live on dry bread,” said Pauline after mulling the matter over.

Léon, having finished chopping, carried the platter of sausage meat to the square table. Mouton, who had remained sitting, his eyes fixed on Florent as though shocked by his story, had to back off a few steps, which he did clumsily. Then he rolled himself into a ball with his nose by the sausage meat and began purring.

But Lisa could not conceal either her shock nor her disgust: wormy rice and foul-smelling meat seemed scarcely believable obscenities and a disgrace for those who had eaten them. And on her handsome calm face, in the swell of her neck, rose a wave of fear, facing this man who had eaten unspeakable things.

“No, it was not a land of delicacies,” Florent continued, forgetting Pauline, his eyes wandering to the steaming stove. “Every day brought its own annoyances, a continual crushing oppression, a violation of all justice, contempt for all human kindness, that exasperated the prisoners and slowly burned them into a fever of bitter rancor. You lived like animals with the whip forever held over your back. They would have liked to have killed the man. You can't forget such things. It's just not possible. Such suffering cries out for vengeance someday.”

He had lowered his voice, and the lardoons, hissing merrily in the skillet, drowned out the bubbling of the boiling pots. But Lisa heard Florent and was frightened by the determined expression that had suddenly come over his face. She judged him to be a pretender who wore a sweet and gentle mask.

The deadened tone of Florent's voice had enchanted Pauline, who bounced on her cousin's lap, excited by the story.

“And the man, what about the man?” she urged.

Looking at little Pauline, Florent seemed to find himself again, and his sad smile returned.

“Well, the man was not at all happy to be on the island. He had but one idea, to get out and cross the sea to the mainland, whose white coastline could be seen on a clear day. But it wasn't easy. He'd have to build a raft. Because several prisoners had already escaped that way, all the trees on the island had been chopped down so there would be no wood available. The island was so stripped and bare, so scorched by the broiling sun, that life on it had become even more dangerous and unbearable than before. That was when the man and two companions got the idea to use the tree trunks from which their huts were built. One night they put to sea on two rotting beams held together by dry branches. The wind carried them toward the coast. But as day was breaking the raft struck a sandbar with such violence that the two tree trunks broke away and were carried off by the waves. The three poor men were nearly swallowed up by the sand. Two were stuck up to their waists, and one up to his chin. The other two had to pull him out. At last they reached a boulder barely big enough for the three to sit on.

“When the sun came up, they could see the coast, a row of gray cliffs reaching to the horizon. Two of them, knowing how to swim, decided to go to the cliffs. It was better to drown quickly than starve to death slowly on a rock. They promised the third they would come back for him, when they reached the shore and could find a boat.”

“Oh, I've got it!” shouted little Pauline, clapping her hands happily. “Now comes the story of the man who was eaten by the wild animals!”

“They managed to reach the coast,” Florent continued. “But it was deserted, and it took them four full days to find a boat. When they got back to the rock, they found their companion lying on his back, his hands and feet eaten away, his face gnawed up, and his stomach full of a swarm of crabs that shook the skin along his sides, making it look as though a death rattle still shuddered the half-eaten corpse.”

A moan of revulsion slipped from Lisa and Augustine. Léon was preparing the casings for the blood sausage. Quenu stopped his work and looked at Augustine, who seemed overtaken by a bout of nausea. Only Pauline was laughing. The image of the belly crawling with crabs seemed to have strangely appeared in the middle of the kitchen, mixing its dubious odors with the perfume of lard and onions.

“Can I have the blood?” shouted Quenu, who was not paying attention to the story. Auguste brought the two jugs and slowly poured the blood into the skillet in thin red streams, while Quenu frantically stirred the thickening liquid in the pan. Once the jugs were emptied, Quenu reached up to one of the drawers above the stove and took some pinches of spice. He seasoned especially abundantly with pepper.

“They left him there, right?” asked Lisa. “And got back safely?”

“As they were going back,” Florent answered, “the wind shifted and they were blown out to sea. A wave carried off one of their oars, and they took on water so rapidly with each gust of wind that they were completely occupied with trying to bail out with their hands. They rolled around, carried off by the squall and then driven back by the tide, without anything to eat, having used up their meager provisions. It continued like that for three days.”

“Three days!” exclaimed the stupified Lisa. “Three days without eating anything!”

“Yes, three days without any food. When the east wind finally washed them to shore, one of them was so weak he remained on the beach all morning. He died that evening. His companion had tried in vain to feed him leaves from trees.”

At that point Augustine let out a little chuckle, but then, embarrassed and not wishing to appear heartless, she stammered, “No, no. I wasn't laughing about that. It was Mouton … Look at Mouton, Madame.”

Lisa too began to smile. Mouton, who had remained with his nose by the sausage meat, had probably decided all that meat was too much and had gotten up and was clawing the table with his paw as though trying to bury the platter, the way cats try to bury their mess. Then he turned away from the platter and lay on his side, stretching himself out, half closing his eyes, and rubbing his head against the table. They all paid compliments to Mouton for not having tried to steal any meat. Pauline related, not exactly in keeping with the conversation, that he licked her fingers and washed her face after dinner without trying to bite her.

But Lisa wanted to get back to the question of whether it was possible to go three days without food. It wasn't possible. “No! I don't believe it! No one can go three days without eating. When someone says, ‘I'm dying of hunger,’ that's just an expression. You always get something to eat, more or less. You would have to be one of the world's most miserable, a completely abandoned wretch, a lost person …”

She was doubtless going to add something like “worthless rabble,” but after looking at Florent she held back. But the scornful pout on her lips and the hard look in her eyes clearly indicated her belief that only lowly, disreputable people fell into such circumstances. To her, any man who was capable of lasting three days without eating was a dangerous person. After all, honest folk would never put themselves in such a situation.

By now Florent was suffocating. He was seated opposite a stove into which Léon had just tossed several shovelfuls of coal and that was snoring like a choirmaster sleeping in the sun. It was becoming quite hot. Auguste, who had taken charge of the pots of saindoux, was sweating as he watched, and Quenu mopped his forehead with his shirtsleeve as he waited for the blood to be ready. The kitchen had an air of indigestion, the sleepiness that follows overeating.

“When the man had buried his companion in the sand,” Florent slowly began again, “he walked off alone straight forward. Dutch Guiana, where he had ended up, is a country of forests carved up by rivers and marshes. The man walked for more than eight days without seeing a dwelling of any kind. All around him he could feel death waiting for him. Though his stomach ached with hunger, he did not dare eat most of the brilliant-colored fruit that hung from the trees. He was afraid even to touch the metallic, glowing berries for fear they were poisonous. For entire days he did not see a glimpse of sky but pushed on under the thick branches of a green cover swarming with living horror. Huge birds flew over his head with roaring flapping sounds and sudden cries that resembled death rattles. Monkeys leaped, and wild animals charged through the brush, bending branches and causing deluges of green leaves to fall, as though a sudden windstorm were blowing through. But more than anything, it was the snakes that turned his blood to ice, when he stepped on a clump of dry leaves and it suddenly moved and he could see little lean heads slithering through monstrous entanglements of roots.

“In some dark, wet crannies, swarming clusters of reptiles suddenly popped out and scurried away—some black, some yellow, some purple, some striped, some spotted, and some looking like dead grass. Then the man would stop, seeking out a rock on which he could escape the mushy earth into which he kept sinking. He would rest there for hours, dreading a boa suddenly appearing in the next clearing, tail coiled and head erect, perched like a giant gold-spotted tree trunk.

“At night he slept in the trees, frightened by the least rustling, imagining he could hear snakes sliding through the darkness. He was drowning in endless leaves. He was gripped by stifling heat as though from a furnace, a dripping humidity, a pestilent sweat infused with the coarse smells of odiferous wood and rank-smelling flowers. And when at last the man made it out at the end of a very long march and saw the sky, he was in front of a series of wide rivers that barred him from going any further. He went down the banks, keeping an eye on the gray backs of caimans and clumps of drifting greenery, until he found safer-looking water and swam across. On the other side, the forest began again. But there were also stretches of vast grassy plains, places covered with thick vegetation, and sometimes far off he could see the reflecting blue of a little lake. The man then took a giant detour, going forward only after testing the ground, having nearly been killed, swallowed up in one of those pleasant plains that he could hear cracking with every step. The giant grass, fed by the amassed humus, concealed infested marshes with deep pools of liquid mud, and over the huge grassy expanses stretching to the horizon, there were only narrow jetties of firm ground, which had to be found to avoid disappearing forever.

“One evening the man sank up to his waist. With each effort to pull himself out, the mud seemed to rise to his mouth. He remained quietly for almost two hours. Just as the moon rose, he was fortunately able to grab a tree branch over his head.

“When he finally reached a dwelling, his hands and feet were bruised and bleeding and swollen with poisonous bites. He was so piteous and starving a figure that he was frightening to look at. They tossed some food for him fifty steps away from their house, and the owner stood guard at the doorway with a rifle.”

Florent stopped talking his voice cut off, his eyes with a far-off stare. He seemed to no longer be talking to anyone but himself. Little Pauline was falling asleep and had tried to prop her head back while lying in his arms, trying to force her wondering eyes to stay open. Quenu was irritated.

“You dumbbell!” he shouted at Léon. “Don't you know how to hold a sausage casing? What are you looking at me for? Don't look at me. Look at the casing! There! Just like that. Now, don't move!”

Léon was holding up a long ribbon of casing with his right hand. A funnel had been inserted into one end. With his left hand he coiled the boudin on a round metal platter as rapidly as Quenu could stuff the funnel with big spoonfuls of the filling. The filling ran, black and steamy, from the funnel, slowly filling out the casing, which dropped down filled and softly curled. Quenu had removed the pot from the fire, and Léon and Quenu, the thin-featured boy and the broad-featured man, stood in the stark glow of the stove, which heated their pale faces and white clothing to a rosy hue.

The operation attracted the interest of Lisa and Augustine. Lisa in particular criticized Léon for pinching the sausages too tight and, she said, causing knots to form. When the casing was completely filled, Quenu slid it into a pot of boiling water. He seemed relaxed again, with nothing left to do but let it cook.

“And the man, the man,” Pauline was muttering, opening her eyes again and surprised to find that her cousin was no longer speaking.

Florent rocked her on his knee and began again in a murmur, like a nurse singing a baby to sleep.

“The man,” he said, “came to a large town. He was immediately taken for an escaped convict and spent several months in prison. Then he was released and took up a variety of trades. He kept books and taught children to read and even hired out as a laborer digging earthworks. But always the man dreamed of returning to his country. He managed to save the necessary money. Then he got yellow fever. He was thought to be dead, and everyone divided up his possessions so that when he recovered he did not have so much as a shirt. He had to start all over. The man was very weak and was afraid he would have to stay there, but finally he made it back.”

Florent's voice became lower and lower and at last faded into a last quiver of the lips. Little Pauline was asleep, sent off by the end of the story, her head fallen against her cousin's shoulder. He held her with one arm and gently rocked her on one knee. Since no one seemed to pay any more attention to him, he remained there without moving, holding the sleeping child.

Now for the last round, as Quenu liked to put it. He took the boudin from the pot. So that it would not break or tangle, he drew it out by rolling it around a thick wooden stick and then took it into the courtyard, where it was hung on screens to dry rapidly. Léon helped him, lifting up the ends when a piece was too long. The pungent garlands of blood sausage left a trail of strong steam that thickened the air. Auguste shot one last glance at the pots of melted lard and lifted the lids off, each bursting bubble releasing acrid steam. The haze of grease had been rising slowly since the beginning of the evening. Now it was drowning the gaslight, taking over the room, covering the ruddy pale color of Quenu and his two assistants. Lisa and Augustine had stood up, and they were all huffing and puffing as though they had eaten too much.

Augustine carried the sleeping Pauline upstairs in her arms. Quenu, who preferred to close the kitchen himself, sent Léon and Auguste off to bed, saying that he would put the boudin away himself. The apprentice went off very red-faced, having managed to hide in his shirt almost a yard of boudin, which was doubtless scalding him. Then Quenu and Florent were alone, saying nothing. Lisa, standing up, tasted the boudin, but it was very hot and she took little nibbles, careful not to burn her pretty lips, and the piece vanished bit by bit into her rosy mouth.

“Oh, well,” she said, “the Norman was rude and wrong. The boudin is very good today.”

There was a knock at the back door. Gavard, who spent the evenings until about midnight at Monsieur Lebigre's, had come for a final answer about the job of fish inspector.

“You have to understand that Monsieur Verlaque cannot wait any longer, he's really too sick … Florent has to make up his mind. I promised to give my answer first thing in the morning.”

“But Florent accepts,” Lisa calmly answered, taking one more nibble at her boudin.

Florent, who had still not gotten out of his chair as he felt oddly dejected, tried in vain to raise a hand in protest.

“No, no,” insisted Lisa, “it's settled … You see, my dear Florent, you have already suffered enough. What you have just been telling us makes a person shudder. It's time for you to settle down. You come from a respectable family, you've had a good education, and it is really inappropriate for you to be wandering like a vagrant. You're too old for childishness. You've been foolish, but all that is forgotten and forgiven now. You can return to your social class, the class of respectable people, and finally live the way everyone else does.”

Florent listened, astounded, unable to find words to speak. No doubt she was right. She looked so healthy and serene that she could not possibly want anything but what was good. He was the one, the skinny man with the dark and undependable face, who must be in the wrong, indulging in unworthy dreams. He no longer knew why he had been resisting up until now.

But she was not through with her flood of words, speaking to him as though he were a little boy who had been bad and was being threatened by the police. She was very maternal and found very persuasive arguments.

And the final argument:

“Do it for us, Florent,” she said. “We have a certain standing in the neighborhood that requires us to act appropriately. To be honest, just between us, I'm afraid that people will begin to talk. This job fixes everything. You'll be someone. You'll even improve our standing.”

She became tender, and Florent felt surrounded by prosperity. It was as though he were permeated by the smell of the kitchen, the nourishment of all the food that had been loaded into the air. He slid into the happy lethargy that is brought on by eating well and living in fat, as he had for the past fifteen days. He felt a tingling on his skin, the seduction of fat slowly invading his entire being, rendering him soft and easy like a contented shopkeeper. At this late hour of night, in this overheated room, all his bitterness and determination melted away. He felt so indolent in the calm of the night, adrift in the scent of boudin and lard, by the chubby Pauline asleep in his lap, that he found himself wishing for more, for an endless succession of such evenings, slowly fattening him.

But more than anything, the sight of Mouton made up his mind. Mouton was in a deep sleep, belly up, one paw on his nose, his tail wrapped around his side as though it were a quilt, and he slept with that feline sense of well-being. Florent looked at him and said, “No! In the end it's just too stupid … I accept. Tell him I accept the position, Gavard.”

Lisa finished her piece of boudin, slowly wiping her fingertips on the end of her apron. She readied her brother-in-law's candle while Gavard and Quenu praised him for his decision. After all, there had to be an end to all this. Political fanatics get nothing to eat. And as for her, standing with the candle lit, she looked at Florent with satisfaction in her lovely face, as peaceful as the smile of a golden calf.

CHAPTER THREE

Three days later the formalities were finished and the prefecture accepted Florent on Monsieur Verlaque's recommendation, almost without looking, as his replacement. Gavard had wanted to accompany Florent, and when they were alone again on the sidewalk, Gavard kept poking him in the ribs with his elbow, laughing without saying anything, winking his eye cunningly. The police he met on the quai de l'Horloge suddenly seemed absolutely ridiculous, and he tensed up slightly the way someone does to avoid laughing in a person's face.

The following morning, Monsieur Verlaque began to brief the new inspector on his duties. It was arranged that he would take Florent around for the next few days and introduce him to the stormy arena that he would have to oversee. Poor Verlaque, as Gavard called him, was a pale little man, who constantly coughed and walked on the spindly legs of a sickly child through the cool damp air and puddling water of the fish markets, wrapped in flannels, scarfs, and handkerchiefs.

The first morning, when Florent started at seven o'clock, he felt lost, his head pounding and his eyes dazed. Stall keepers were already stalking the auction pavilion, clerks arrived with ledgers in hand, and shipping agents with leather bags hung around their necks sat backward in chairs against the sales booths while they waited to get paid. The fish was being unloaded and unpacked in the enclosure, spreading out to the sidewalks, where there were piles of small baskets. Hampers, bins, and bags of mussels trailing water arrived without end. The auction checkers, very businesslike, leaped over the piles, yanked off the straw coverings, emptied the baskets, then tossed them aside with a sweep of the hand that shook up the fish in their two-handled round baskets and showed them to their best advantage. Once the baskets were all out, it looked to Florent as though a huge school of fish had run aground on the sidewalk, still quivering in opalescent pink, bloodred coral, milky pearl, all the greenish silken pastels of the sea.

Jumbled together by the chance scoop of a fishing net, in the mysterious depths the great sea had given up everything: codfish, haddock, flounder, plaice, dabs—common fish, murky gray with white splotches; eels—thick murky blue snakes with black slits for eyes, so slimy they seemed to still be alive and slithering. The wide, flat skates had a pale underbelly edged with soft red and an upper side marbled along a bumpy back down to the ribbing of the fins, a cinnabar red striped with Florentine bronze, in the somber palette of toads and poisonous flowers. There were roundheaded, horrible dogfish with their mouths gaping like Chinese gargoyles and short fins the shape of bat wings—fitting monsters to stand guard over treasures in ocean grottoes.

Then came the deluxe fish, displayed individually on wicker trays: the salmon, gleaming like well-buffed silver, each scale with its outline seemingly etched by a burin on a polished metal plate; the mullets with the cruder markings of larger scales; the large turbots and mullets with tight white patterns like curdled milk; the tunas, smooth and lustrous, like bags of sleek blackened leather; and roundish bass with huge mouths torn wide open, as though to let an oversize spirit escape at the agonizing moment of death. And everywhere there were soles, beige or gray in pairs. Stiff, slim sand eels looked like pewter shavings. The herring were slightly twisted, with the bruises on their bleeding gills showing against the silver skin. Fat porgies were tinged with a touch of carmine red, whereas the mackerel were golden with green-striped backs and sides with a mother-of-pearl glow, and the pink gurnard,[1] with their white bellies, lay with their heads in the center of the baskets so their tails radiated around and made an odd blossom of pearly white and vibrant red. There were also red mullets with exquisite flesh, with the blush of pink characteristic of the Cyprinid family, and the opalescent glow of boxes of whiting. And there were smelts in small, clean baskets like the pretty little ones used for strawberries, which released a strong scent of violets. Meanwhile, the little pink shrimp and the gray shrimp sharpened the softness of their piles with sharp little black dots of a thousand eyes. The spiny lobsters and the clawed lobsters striped black, still alive, made a grating sound as they tried to crawl off with their broken limbs.

Florent only half listened to Monsieur Verlaque's lengthy explanations. A sunbeam streamed through the glass roof of the covered lane, lighting up the rich colors, washed and softened by the waves, the iridescent hues of the shellfish, the opalescence of the whiting, the pearly mackerel, the gold of the red mullets, the lamé suits of the herring, the great silvery salmon. It was as though the jewelry boxes of a sea nymph had been opened there—a tangle of unimaginable baubles, heaps of necklaces, monstrous bracelets, gigantic brooches, huge barbaric gems of no imaginable purpose. On the backs of skates and dogfish seemed to be huge dull green and purple stones set in some dark metal, while slender sand eels and the tails and fins of smelts suggested the delicacy of fine jewelry.

But what struck Florent most was a fresh breeze, a whiff of the sea, that he recognized, bitter and salty. He recalled the Guianese coast and the fine days of his crossing. He half imagined staring at some bay in high tide with its algae baking in the sun, the bare rocks drying, and the strong breath of the sea. All around him, the fresh fish smelled good, with a sharp, bitter perfume that disturbed the appetite.

Monsieur Verlaque coughed. The dampness was going through him, and he wrapped himself more tightly in his muffler. “Now,” he said, “we're going to go by the freshwater fish.”

This pavilion, next to the fruit market, was the last one before rue Rambuteau. On either side of the auction space were circular tanks divided into compartments by iron gratings. Brass faucets in the shape of swans spouted thin streams of water. And the compartments were full. There was a tangled swarm of shrimp, constantly moving carp with black backs, and tangles of eels perpetually knotting and unknotting themselves. Monsieur Verlaque was taken by a stubborn coughing bout. The dampness was milder here, and there was a soft scent of rivers and of tepid water asleep on the sand.

That morning, a huge quantity of crayfish had arrived in crates and baskets from Germany. The market was also flooded with whitefish from England and Holland. Some workers were unpacking shiny carp from the Rhine, all bronzed in beautiful rust-colored metallic, each scale like a piece of cloisonné enamel; others with huge pike, the coarse iron gray brigands of the water with long, protruding savage jaws; or magnificent dark tench,[2] red copper stained with the blue green of corroded copper. Amid the glow of metallic skins, the baskets of gudgeon,[3] perch, and trout—the dull flat-netted fish—took on a brilliant white appearance, the steel blue of their backs gradually fading away to the soft transparency of their bellies, and the fat snow white barbel[4] providing the shimmer to this vast still life.

Bags of young carp were being gently emptied into the tanks; the carp flipped over, then remained still for an instant before darting away and disappearing. Little eels were dumped from their baskets in a clump and fell to the bottom of the boxes like a single knot of snakes, while the big ones, thick as a child's arm, raised their heads and then slid under the water, slick as snakes hiding in the brush. Meanwhile, the rest of the fish, whose agonizing death in the soiled wicker trays had been lasting the entire morning, at last perished with great silent gasps every few seconds, opening their mouths as though trying to suck in the humidity from the air amid the shouts and cries of the auction.

But Monsieur Verlaque had brought Florent back to the saltwater fish, where he walked him around and explained intricate details to him. Along three sides of the pavilion, where there were desks for nine salesmen, the crowd surged with swaying heads, and clerks appeared above them, perched in high chairs from which they marked entries in their ledgers.

“Are all these clerks working for the same salesmen?” Florent asked. In reply, Monsieur Verlaque took a detour along the sidewalk outside, which led him to one of the enclosures used for auctioning. He explained to him how the large office made of yellow wood, stained in splotches and stinking of fish, was staffed. At the top of the glassed-off room, the municipal fee collector took notes on the sale prices of the different lots of fish. A little lower down, seated on raised chairs with their wrists resting on high little desks, were two women clerks who monitored the transactions on behalf of the salesmen. At each end of a stone table in the front of the office was an auctioneer who brought out the straw trays and stated prices per lot or per fish, while above him the women clerks, pen in hand, waited to hear the final prices. Monsieur Verlaque showed Florent the cashier, a fat old woman outside the enclosure, shut up in another yellow wooden office, arranging piles of coins.

“You see,” said Monsieur Verlaque, “there's a double control, the Prefecture of the Seine and the Prefecture of Police. The latter licenses the salesmen and maintains the right of supervision over them, while the local prefecture has an interest in the transactions since they are taxable.”

He continued in his cold, feeble voice, explaining the competing interests of the two prefectures. But Florent was barely listening; his attention had been drawn to one of the female clerks in front of him on a high chair. She was a tall, brown-haired woman of about thirty with big black eyes and a great deal of composure. She wrote with outstretched fingers, like a young woman who had been carefully instructed.

But his attention was again diverted by the bellowing of the auctioneer holding a magnificent turbot.

“I hear thirty francs! That's thirty francs! Thirty francs … at thirty francs!”

He repeated these words in various voices, up and down a strange scale of notes with abrupt changes. Hunchbacked, with a crooked face and disheveled hair, he wore a huge blue apron with a bib. With eyes aflame and arms outstretched he shouted, “Thirty one! Thirty-two! Thirty-three! Thirty-three fifty! Thirty-three fifty!”

Then he paused to catch his breath and, turning the tray, shoved it farther over on the table. The women fish sellers bent forward and gently touched the turbot with their fingertips. Then the auctioneer began again, hurling figures at the buyers with a thrust of his hand and responding to the most subtle sign of a bid—a finger raised, an eyebrow arched, lips beginning to purse, an eye winking—and this with such a jumble of words and such speed that Florent, completely incapable of following it, felt uneasy when the hunchback, in a singsong voice like that of a priest chanting a psalm, said, “Forty-two! Forty-two! The turbot is sold at forty-two francs!”

It was the Beautiful Norman who made the final bid. Florent recognized her in the line of women selling fish pressed against the iron rail around the auction space. It was a cool morning. There was a row of fur stoles above the assortment of large white aprons, covering the plentiful stomachs and bosoms and formidable shoulders. With her bun twisted high on her head, adorned with curls, and her white, delicate flesh, the Beautiful Norman showed off her lacy bow amid the tangle of locks covered with dirty kerchiefs, the red noses of heavy drinkers, the scornful mouths and faces like cracked pottery.

The Beautiful Norman, for her part, recognizing Madame Quenu's cousin, was surprised to see him and started gossiping about him to the women around her.

The roar of voices became so loud that Monsieur Verlaque gave up on his explanations to Florent. Nearby, men were calling out deluxe fish with prolonged shouts that sounded as though they came out of bullhorns. One man bellowed out, “Mussels! Mussels!” in such a loud, hoarse voice that it vibrated the roofs of the market. Some of the bags of mussels were dumped upside down, the shellfish poured into hampers, while other bags were emptied with shovels. An unending parade of straw trays with skates, soles, mackerel, eels, and salmon were carried back and forth to the cackling cries of pushing fish women getting louder and louder and leaning so hard on the iron rails that they were starting to creak under the weight. The auctioneer, the hunchback, now in his stride, protruded his jaw and flailed the air with his thin arms. And then, as though driven wild by the avalanche of numbers that shot from his mouth, he leaped onto a stool, where, with his twisted mouth and his hair flying behind him, he could wrench nothing more from his parched throat than unintelligible hisses. Meanwhile, up above, a little old man, his voice muffled in a collar of fake astrakhan,[5] the collector of municipal fees, sat with nothing but his nose showing from beneath a black velvet cap. The tall brown-haired clerk, with flashing eyes in her calm face, slightly reddened by the cold, sat on a high wooden chair, peacefully writing, apparently undisturbed by the commotion of the hunchback, who seemed to ripple the edges of her skirts.

“That man Logre is fantastic,” Monsieur Verlaque said softly with a smile on his face. “He's the best auctioneer in the market. He could sell a pair of shoe soles as a pair of choice flounder.”

Then he and Florent went back into the pavilion. Passing by the fresh fish auction where there was less passion to the bidding, Monsieur Verlaque explained that river fishing in France was not doing well. The auctioneer, a light-haired, sorry-looking man without hand gestures, was auctioning off some lots of crayfish and eels in a monotonous voice while his helpers kept him in supply by scooping out the tanks with short-handled nets.

Meanwhile, the horde gathering around the sales desk was still growing. Monsieur Verlaque conscientiously served as Florent's instructor, elbowing a path, guiding his successor through the most crowded sections where the major retailers congregated, quietly waiting for the best fish and loading the porters' shoulders with tuna, turbots, and salmon they had bought. At ground level the street merchants were divvying up the herring and dabs they had bought together. And there were a few upper-middle-class gentlemen, small property owners who had come at four in the morning from the far corners of the city in search of one truly fresh fish but had ended up with an entire lot bid down to them, forty or fifty francs' worth of seafood, and were spending their day trying to sell off the ones they could not use. From time to time some rough shoving would break out in one corner of the crowd or another. A saleswoman who had gotten too pressed in would push her way free, raising her fists and cursing ferociously. Then the crowd would re-form tightly. Florent, feeling suffocated, announced that he had seen enough and now he understood everything he needed to know.

While Monsieur Verlaque was helping him extricate himself, they found themselves face-to-face with the Beautiful Norman. She stood with her feet planted firmly in front of them and asked, with her regal air, “Is it definite, Monsieur Verlaque, that you're leaving us?”

“Yes, yes,” said the small man. “I'm going to rest in the country, in Clamart. It seems that the smell of fish is bad for my health … By the way, here's my replacement.”

With that he turned to show her Florent. The Beautiful Norman nearly choked. As Florent walked away, he thought he could make out her whisper to the women nearby, “Now we're going to have some fun, I think.”

The saleswomen were beginning to set up their stalls. There was a great rush of water from the faucets at the corners of the marble slabs. There was a gurgling sound, the hiss of jets of water sloshing along the edges of the tables with a line of drops rolling down with the hush of a stream, slopping into the alleys where little rivers coursed, filling holes and indents, turning them into miniature lakes and then into a thousand tributaries that ran downhill to rue Rambuteau. A haze, a dust cloud of rain, rose up, refreshing Florent's face, a breath of sea air, the air both bitter and salty, that he remembered well. He once more saw, in the fish that were being spread out, opalescent pinks, brilliant corals, and milky pearls, all the colors and pastels of the sea.

This first morning left him feeling uncertain. He already regretted having given in to Lisa. Ever since his escape from the fatty repose of the sleepy kitchen, he had been accusing himself of cowardice with such vehemence that he almost wept. But he could not go back on his word. He was intimidated by Lisa and could picture the curl of her lips, the silent reproach on her beautiful face. She seemed too imposing a woman and far too confident to argue with. Fortunately Gavard had given him a comforting idea. On the evening of the day on which Monsieur Verlaque had given him his tour, Gavard pulled him aside and explained to him hesitantly that “the poor devil” was not happy. Then, after tearing into the miserable government that worked its people to death without even assuring them the means to die well, he suggested that it would be a charitable thing to donate part of his salary to the former inspector. Florent agreed enthusiastically.

It was so perfectly fair. After all, he was supposed to be a temporary replacement for Monsieur Verlaque. Besides, Florent ate and slept at his brother's and didn't need anything. Gavard added that fifty francs out of a monthly salary of one hundred fifty francs would seem quite generous and added in a low voice that he wouldn't have to give it for very long because the man was consumptive to his bones. It was agreed that Florent would arrange everything with Verlaque's wife so as not to upset her husband.

This largesse made Florent feel better about the position, and he could now take it on as a way of helping someone else, reestablishing himself in his customary role. But he made the poultry dealer swear not to tell anyone about the arrangement, and Gavard, who was a bit afraid of Lisa, kept the secret.

Now the entire charcuterie was happy. Beautiful Lisa was very warm toward her brother-in-law. She made sure that he got to bed early so that he would get up good and early and she would have a hot breakfast waiting. And now that he wore his official braided cap, she was no longer embarrassed to be seen chatting with him in the doorway. Quenu, thrilled by all these positive signs, sat at the evening table between his wife and his brother, more content than ever. Dinner often continued until nine o'clock, with only Augustine manning the shop. They lingered over their digestion with neighborhood gossip and Lisa's opinionated judgments on the politics of the day. Florent was made to tell how things had gone at the fish market that day.

Bit by bit Florent succumbed and developed a taste for the stable life. The light yellow dining room's middle-class tidiness softened him whenever he crossed its threshold. Beautiful Lisa's care wrapped him in a warm comforter and softened both his body and mind. It was an atmosphere of mutual esteem and serenity.

But Gavard thought that things at the Quenu-Gradelles' were just a bit too sleepy. He forgave Lisa her fondness for the emperor because, he said, you cannot argue politics with women and the beautiful charcuterie woman was, after all, an honest person who managed her business well. Personally, he preferred to spend his evenings at Monsieur Lebigre's, where he had a circle of friends who shared his views. When Florent was named fish inspector, Gavard began to corrupt him, taking him away for hours, arguing that now that he had established himself he should start living the bachelor's life.

Monsieur Lebigre ran a handsome establishment done in the latest modern style. Located on the right-hand side of rue Pirouette with a view of rue Rambuteau, the doorway flanked by four Norwegian pines in green planters, it was a worthy neighbor to the big Quenu-Gradelle charcuterie. The interior could be seen through the clear windows that were decorated with paintings of leaves, vines, and grapes against a muted green background. The floor was covered in large black and white tiles. At the far end yawned the entrance to the basement, above which a spiral staircase draped in red curtains rose to the second-floor billiard room. The bar on the right looked especially luxurious, glittering like well-polished silver. The bulging border of the zinc hung over red-and-white marble, edged with rippling metal like embroidery. At one end, porcelain pots decorated with brass rings stood over gas burners, heating punch and wine. At the other end, an ornately sculpted marble fountain continually spilled a stream of water into a basin, flowing so perfectly that the water appeared to be motionless. In the center, surrounded on three sides by sloping zinc, was a cooling basin where partially emptied green bottles showed their necks. Armies of glasses, arranged in rows by size, stood on both sides—little eau-de-vie glasses, thick goblets for table wine, cups for fruit, absinthe glasses, beer mugs—the long stems upside down with their butts in the air, shining in the pale bar light. On the left, a metal urn bristled with a fan of spoons.

Usually Monsieur Lebigre was enthroned behind the counter, seated on a tufted red leather bench. The cut-glass liqueur decanters half concealed in the wells of a cabinet were within easy reach. His round back rested against a huge mirror that filled the entire panel behind him. Across the panel ran two glass shelves filled with an assortment of bottles and jars. One of the shelves held jars of preserved fruit—cherries, plums, peaches—in dark colors. On the other, between symmetrically arranged packages of cookies, were bright flasks—soft green, yellow, and warm red— suggesting unknown exotic liqueurs from flower extracts. On the glass shelf against the white glow of the mirror, these flasks seemed to be suspended in midair.

To give his establishment the ambience of a café, Monsieur Lebigre had placed two little tables and four bronzed metal chairs against the wall facing the counter. A chandelier with five lights in frosted globes hung from the ceiling. At the left, a gilded clock hung from a rotating mount on the wall. At the far end was a private section shut off by a partition of small squares of frosted glass. During the day a window let in a little light from rue Pirouette. In the evening a gaslight burned over the two tables, which were painted to resemble marble.

It was here that Gavard and his political friends met after dinner every night. They all felt perfectly at home there and had convinced the owner to reserve their spot. When Monsieur Lebigre closed the doors of the partition, they felt sealed from intrusion and spoke without reservation of “the big housecleaning.” No unauthorized customer would have dared intrude.

The first day, Gavard gave Florent some details about Monsieur Lebigre. He was a good man who sometimes came and had a coffee with them. You didn't have to be uneasy in front of him since he said that he had fought in '48. He didn't speak much and even seemed a bit stupid. As they passed in front of him to enter, each one grasped his hands in silence across the glasses and the bottles. Usually a small blond woman was at his side on the red leather couch, a girl he had hired to work at the bar along with the whiteaproned waiter who tended to the tables and the billiard room. Her name was Rose, and she was a sweet, obedient girl. Gavard winked as he told Florent how obedient she was with her employer. The men in the back room were served by Rose, who entered and exited with a humble, happy air in the middle of the most stormy political disputes.

The day the poultry merchant introduced Florent to his friends, the only one they found in the glassed-in room was a fiftyish man, who seemed quiet and thoughtful. He wore a somewhat seedy-looking hat and a long chestnut-colored overcoat, and he sat resting his chin on the ivory knob of a thick walking stick in front of a glass mug of beer. His mouth was hidden by a bushy beard, which gave his face a mute, lipless appearance.

“Robine, how are you?” Gavard asked.

Robine silently offered his hand without answering, but his face softened with a slight smile to greet him. Then he replaced his chin on the knob of his walking stick and looked at Florent over the top of his beer. Florent had made Gavard swear not to tell anyone his story for fear someone might be dangerously indiscreet, and he was not displeased to detect a little distrust in this gentleman with the thick beard. But in truth Robine was rarely any more talkative than he was just now. He was always the first to arrive just as the clock struck eight, always installing himself in the same corner, never letting go of his cane or removing his hat or overcoat. No one had ever seen Robine bareheaded. He sat there, listening to the others until midnight, taking four hours to empty one mug of beer, studying each speaker in his turn as though listening with his eyes. Later, when Florent asked Gavard about Robine, the poultry merchant seemed to have a high opinion of the man without being able to offer any reasons why but said that he was one of the government's most ardent opponents.

No one ever entered Robine's apartment on rue Saint-Denis, but Gavard claimed actually to have been inside it once. The polished floors were protected with green canvas runners. The furniture was covered, and there was a clock on alabaster pillars. He thought he had caught a glimpse of Madame Robine's back between two doors; she seemed to have been a very proper older woman with her hair done in English ringlets—but he couldn't be sure. It wasn't known why they lived in the commotion of a commercial district. The husband did absolutely nothing, spending his days who knew where, living on who knew what, and showing up every evening looking weary but excited by his journey to the pinnacle of the political scene.

“So,” said Gavard, picking up a newspaper, “have you read the speech from the throne?”

Robine shrugged. But the glass-paneled partition slammed noisily and a hunchback appeared. Florent recognized him from the market, now with washed hands and clean clothes, wearing a big red muffler, one end draped over his hump like the corner of a Venetian cape.

“Ah, here's Logre,” Gavard continued, “and he's going to tell us what he thought of the speech from the throne.”

Logre was furious. He almost yanked the hook off the wall as he hung up his hat and muffler. He sat down violently, banging the table with his fist and shoving away the newspaper as he demanded, “Did I read that pack of lies?” Then he exploded: “Did you ever hear of an employer treating his staff like this? I waited a good two hours. There were ten of us in the office biding our time. Finally, Monsieur Manoury arrived in his carriage, straight from some tramp, no doubt. Those agents do nothing but steal and cheat. And then the pig paid me with nothing but small change.”

Robine made a slight movement of his eyelids to show sympathy for Logre. The hunchback quickly found his victim. “Rose! Rose!” he called, leaning out of the room. When the girl was facing him, trembling, he snapped, “What's going on? You saw me come in. Where's my coffee?”

Gavard ordered two more glasses of black coffee. Rose hurried to serve the three under the glare of Logre, who seemed to be studying his coffee and the little trays of sugar. After a sip he calmed down a bit.

“Charvet ought to come have a seat,” he quickly said. “He's out on the sidewalk, waiting for Clémence.”

Just then Charvet entered, followed by Clémence. He was a tall, bony youth with a pinched nose and thin lips who shaved carefully and lived behind the Luxembourg Gardens on rue Vavin. He called himself a freelance teacher, and politically he was an hébertiste.[6] With his long, curly hair and the wide lapels on his threadbare coat, affecting the manner of a politician, he would unleash a flood of bitter words and demonstrate such a strangely lofty erudition that it instantly defeated most of his adversaries. Gavard was afraid of him, though he didn't admit it. Instead he would declare, when Charvet wasn't there, that he thought he went too far.

Robine agreed to everything with a slight movement of his eyebrows. Logre would occasionally take on Charvet on the subject of salaries. But Charvet remained the despot of the group, the most authoritative and the best informed. For more than ten years Clémence and he had lived together under a mutual agreement strictly observed by the two of them. Florent, who was slightly thrown by the sight of the woman, finally remembered where he had seen her. She was none other than the tall, dark secretary at the fish market, who wrote with long, graceful fingers, like a well-taught young woman.

Rose appeared on the heels of these two newcomers and without saying a word deposited a stein of beer in front of Charvet and a tray in front of Clémence, who began preparing grog, pouring hot water over the lemon, which she crushed with a spoon, adding sugar and rum with a measure to avoid exceeding the correct amount.

Now it was time for Gavard to introduce Florent to the group, especially Charvet. He presented them to each other as fellow teachers and very capable men who would understand each other. But apparently Gavard had earlier let slip some indiscretion, for they all shook hands tightly, squeezing fingers in the manner of Masonic lodge brothers. Even Charvet was almost friendly.

“Did Manoury pay you in small change?” Logre asked Clémence.

She said that he had and showed a roll of one- and two-franc bills. Charvet looked at her and watched her movements as she rerolled the bundles of bills one by one in her pocket.

“We'll have to settle up,” he said in a half whisper.

“Sure, this evening,” she murmured. “I'd think this is about even. I had lunch with you four times, didn't I? But last week I loaned you a hundred sous.”

Florent, surprised, turned his head away so as not to intrude. Clémence, removing the last roll from view, took a sip of her grog, leaning against the glass paneling as she listened to the men talk politics. Gavard had again picked up the newspaper and was reading fragments of the speech from the throne that morning at the opening of Parliament, in a voice he tried to make sound comical. Charvet began to have fun at the expense of the official language. He didn't spare a line. They were particularly entertained by the sentence “We have every confidence, gentlemen, that, supported by your light and the conservative sentiments of the country, we shall succeed in increasing the public prosperity day by day.”

Logre stood up and pronounced this sentence, mimicking the emperor's drawling voice by speaking through his nose.

“Isn't it great, this prosperity,” said Logre. “Everyone's starving to death.”

“Trade is bad,” said Gavard.

“And what in the world is it supposed to mean, ‘supported by your light’?” continued Clémence, who prided herself on her literary background.

Even Robine released a little snicker from the depth of his beard. The conversation began to heat up. The group took on the Corps Législatif, tearing it apart. Logre did not let up. To Florent he was exactly the same as when shouting fish prices at the auction, his jaw stuck out, his waving hands hurling words into midair, and the posture of a snarling animal; he served up politics the way he would a tray full of sole.

Charvet, on the other hand, grew colder and quieter amid the pipe and gas fumes that were now filling the little room. His voice became dry and razor sharp, whereas Robine gently nodded his head without ever removing his chin from the head of his stick. Then Gavard turned the conversation toward women.

“Women,” Charvet declared authoritatively, “are the equal of men and being so ought not to inconvenience men with the daily affairs of life. Marriage is a partnership in which everything should be divided in half. Isn't that so, Clémence?”

“Of course,” the young woman answered with her head against the paneling, looking into space.

Florent noticed Lacaille the grocer and Alexandre the fort, the friend of Claude Lantier. The two men had been at the other table of the little room, apparently belonging to a different world from the other gentlemen. But at the mention of politics their chairs had drawn nearer until they became part of the group. Charvet, in whose eyes they represented “the people,” tried to indoctrinate them with his political theories, whereas Gavard played the prejudice-free shopkeeper, clinking glasses with them. Alexandre was a handsome cheerful giant who seemed like a happy child. Lacaille, embittered, already gray-haired, his shoulders stooped by his endless walking in the streets of Paris, sometimes cast a suspicious glance at all this bourgeois complacency, at Robine's good shoes and fine coat. Each of them was brought a small glass, and the conversation continued, more heated and tumultuous than ever, now that the social order was complete.

That evening, through the half-open door of their section, Florent glimpsed Mademoiselle Saget standing at the counter. She had pulled a bottle from under her apron and was watching Rose fill it with a great deal of black-currant liqueur and a touch of eau-de-vie. Then the bottle vanished back under her apron and Mademoiselle Saget, her hands hidden, chatted in the bright light of the counter in front of the mirror where bottles and jars hung like Viennese lanterns. In the evening all the crystal and metal gave the place a warm glow. The elderly woman, standing there in the gaudy light in her black skirt, looked like a strange large insect.

Florent noticed that Mademoiselle Saget was trying to entrap Rose in a conversation and cunningly suspected that she had noticed him through the half-open door. Since he had started working at Les Halles, he had seen her every time he took a step, dawdling in one of the covered streets and usually accompanied by Madame Lecœur and La Sarriette, the three of them studying him and completely confounded when he had become an inspector. But this particular evening Rose did not want to converse with the old lady, for she finally turned around, apparently planning to approach Monsieur Lebigre, who was playing piquet[7] with a customer at one of the bronze tables. Sneaking softly along, Mademoiselle Saget at last managed to install herself beside the partition, where she was noticed by Gavard, who detested her.

“Would you close the door, Florent?” he said harshly. “Can't we have a little privacy?”

On leaving at midnight, Lacaille whispered a few words to Monsieur Lebigre. As Lebigre shook his hand, he slipped him four five-franc coins without anyone noticing. “Remember,” he said in his ear, “that we'll need twenty-two francs to pay tomorrow. The person who loaned the money wants it back in full. And remember that you still owe three days with the cart. And you have to pay it all off.”

Then Monsieur Lebigre wished all of them a good night. He was going for a good night's sleep, he declared with a yawn that showed his large teeth, while Rose looked at him deferentially. He gave her a little shove and told her to turn off the gas in the little room.

Gavard stumbled and nearly fell on the sidewalk. But with a laugh he said, “Oh, darn, I should have supported myself on someone's lights.”

That made everyone laugh, and on that note they parted. Florent returned to lean against the glass paneling where he could still feel the silence of Robine, the outbursts of Logre, and the icy enmity of Charvet.

Even later, when he finally got home, he still did not go to bed. He liked his attic, this girl's room where Augustine had left bits of ribbon, sweet and frilly female things. A few hairpins were still on the mantel, along with gilded cardboard boxes of buttons and hard candies, some pictures clipped from publications, empty jars of lotion still smelling of jasmine. In the drawer of the sad white wood table were needles, thread, a prayer book, a tattered old copy of The Guide to Dreams.[8] A yellow-dotted white summer dress hanging forgotten on a hook. Behind a water pitcher on the board that served as a dressing table there was a large stain from a spilled bottle of lotion. Florent might have been miserable in a woman's dressing nook, but this room, with its narrow iron bed, the two caned chairs, even the faded gray wallpaper, gave a sense of simple innocence, a sense of an awkward, childish girl. The whiteness of the curtains, the juvenile gilded boxes, the book on dreams, the clumsy coquettishness of the walls—it was all somehow refreshing, taking him back to his own youthful dreams. It would have been better had he not known Augustine with her frizzy hair, so that he could imagine himself in the room of a sister, a lovely girl whose budding womanhood shone in all the little things around him.

Another great pleasure of this room in the evening was to lean out the window, which cut a narrow balcony into the roof. It was enclosed by a tall iron balustrade where Augustine was cultivating a pomegranate plant in a window box. Since the weather had turned cold, Florent had taken the plant in at night and kept it by the foot of the bed. He would remain at the window for several minutes, deeply inhaling the fresh air from the Seine that blew in above the buildings on the rue de Rivoli. Below, the confusion of roofs of the Les Halles market spread into the grayness. They looked like sleeping lakes on which occasional lit windows cast the glow of a silvery ripple. In the distance the roofs of the meat market were dark shadows on the horizon. He delighted in the enormous stretch of sky before him, the great expanse of Les Halles, which seemed, amid Paris's strangled streets, like a faint vision of a seashore, the still, gray bay barely moving against the distant rolling tide. He would lose himself in this every night and imagine a new coastline. It saddened him to reflect on the eight wretched years he had spent away from France, but he nevertheless enjoyed the reflection. Then, shivering, he would pull the window shut. Often as he stood in front of the fireplace removing his collar, he was disturbed by the photo of Auguste and Augustine. As he undressed, he studied their bland smiles, standing there hand in hand.

The first few weeks in the fish market were extremely hard. He had run into the open hostility of the Méhudin family, which put him at odds with the entire market. The Beautiful Norman was determined to have her vengeance on Beautiful Lisa, and her cousin was the anointed victim.

The Méhudins came from Rouen. Louise's mother still told the story of how she had come to Paris with a basket of eels and had been in the fish business ever since. She had married a toll collector who later died, leaving her with two young daughters. It was she who had originally, with her ample hips and a wonderful ripeness, worn the nickname “the Beautiful Norman,” which her daughter had inherited. Today, she was a squat, shapeless sixty-five-year-old matron; the dampness of the fish market made her voice hoarse and gave her skin a bluish hue. A sedentary life had made her flabby and thick-waisted, and a rising tide of blubber from her bosom forced her head back. She had never been willing to renounce the fashions of her youth and still wore her flower-print dress, her yellow kerchief, and the turbanlike headgear once customary for fishmongers, which matched her loud voice and fast gestures as she stood, hands on her hips, a litany of standard market vulgarities flowing from her lips.

She missed the Marché des Innocents, reminisced a lot about the ancient rights of the women of the old market, told stories about brawls with police inspectors, described visits to the court in the times of both Charles X and Louis-Philippe, dressed in silk and carrying a large bouquet. Mère Méhudin, as she was called, was the long-standing standard-bearer of the Sisterhood of the Virgin at Saint Leu. For church processions she wore a dress and a tulle[9] bonnet with satin ribbons and held high in her chubby fingers the fringed banner embroidered with the image of the Mother of God.

Mère Méhudin, according to neighborhood gossip, must have earned a large fortune, although this was evident only on holidays, when she appeared with solid gold jewelry around her neck, arms, and waist.

Later, her two daughters quarreled. The younger one, Claire, a lazy blonde, complained of the viciousness of her sister, Louise, saying in a leaden voice that she would never submit to being her sister's maid. Since this was going to end up with the girls coming to blows, the mother separated them. She gave Louise her stall in the fish market, and Claire, whom the smell of skates and herring gave coughing fits, set up a booth in the freshwater fish section. Although the mother then claimed to be retired, she would go from one stall to the other, getting involved with sales and continually annoying the daughters with her crude way of dealing with customers.

Claire was an unusual creature, very soft and yet somehow always fighting with everyone. She listened only to herself, people said. She had a dreamy, virginal face but a silent determination, an independent spirit that drove her to live by herself, never accepting anything from other people, exhibiting great righteousness one day and infuriating unfairness the next. Some days she would throw the market into chaos by suddenly raising or lowering her prices without explanation. By the time she reached thirty, her delicate build and fine skin, which the water in the tanks seemed to keep forever fresh, her small and undistinguished face, and her agile limbs would all thicken like those of a saint who had stepped down from a stained-glass window and was degraded by the company of market vendors. But at twenty-two she was a Murillo, to use Claude Lantier's term, among the carp and eels—a Murillo, however, with disheveled hair, clunky shoes, and badly cut dresses that rendered her shapeless. She was not a coquette and showed her contempt when Louise, all festooned in ribbons and bows, teased her about her clumsily knotted scarf. It was said that the son of a wealthy shopkeeper in the neighborhood had angrily taken off on a long trip after failing to get one word of encouragement from her.

Louise, the Beautiful Norman, was of a gentler nature. She had been engaged to marry a worker in the grain market, but the unlucky young man had died when a falling sack of flour broke his back. Seven months later Louise had given birth to a large baby boy. In the Méhudin circle, she was regarded as a widow. Her mother would sometimes say in conversation, “When my son-in-law was alive …”

The Méhudins were powerful. When Monsieur Verlaque had finished training Florent for his new position, he advised him to appease certain vendors if he wanted life to be bearable, and he was even so helpful as to share little tricks of the trade such as at which violations to wink, at which to fake extreme displeasure, and under what circumstances he should accept a small gift. A market inspector is both a policeman and a government official, maintaining both order and cleanliness and resolving in a conciliatory manner any disputes between vendors and customers. Florent, who was soft at heart, wore an artificial sternness when exercising his duties and generally overplayed his part. His somber nature, the result of long suffering, and his outcast mentality worked against him.

The Beautiful Norman's strategy was to find a way of dragging Florent into an argument. She swore that he wouldn't keep his job fifteen days.

“I'm telling you,” she said to Madame Lecœur, whom she ran into one morning. “If that fat Lisa thinks we want any of her leftovers … We have better taste than she does, and he's just awful, that man.”

After the auction, when Florent would begin his rounds, taking mincing steps along the dripping alleyways, he could clearly see the Beautiful Norman watching him and laughing defiantly. Her stall, in the second row on the left, near the freshwater fish section, faced rue Rambuteau. She would turn, never taking an eye off her victim, belittling him to her neighbors. And when he passed in front of her, slowly examining the stone slabs, she pretended to be uncontrollably amused, slapping the fish as she turned her jets of water on full blast and flooded the passage. But Florent remained impassive.

Inevitably, one morning war broke out. That day, when Florent arrived at the Beautiful Norman's stall, he smelled an unbearable stench. There on the marble slab were a magnificent salmon, cut into and showing its rosy flesh, some creamy white turbots, a few conger eels stuck with black pins to mark their sections, a few pairs of soles, some red mullets, some sea bass, a fine display of fresh fish. But in the midst of all these fish with clear, gleaming eyes and bright red gills lay a large skate, reddish with dark spots, extraordinary in its exotic markings, but unfortunately rotten. Its tail was falling off, and the bones on the wings were sticking through the skin.

“You have to throw this skate away,” said Florent, walking up to her.

The Beautiful Norman emitted a little chuckle. Florent looked up and saw her standing against a bronze lamppost that held the gaslight for the stalls in her row. She seemed very large because she was standing on boxes to keep her feet out of the puddles. Her lips were pursed, her hair set in tight curls, her head held at a devious slant, slightly lowered, and her hands a little too red against her white apron—and Florent thought she looked even more beautiful than usual. He had never before seen her so decked out in jewelry Long pendants hung from her ears, she wore a chain around her neck, there was a brooch, and an imposing collection of rings on two fingers of her left hand and one right-hand finger.

Since she continued looking slyly at Florent and not answering him, Florent said, “Did you hear me? You have to get rid of that skate.”

But he hadn't noticed Mère Méhudin sitting in a chair, like a pile in a corner. Now she got up, ready for combat, and, planting her fists on the marble slab, insolently said, “And why does she have to throw out this skate? I don't suppose you're going to pay her for it.”

Then Florent understood. The other market women began to snicker. He could feel a revolt building around him, and one wrong word would set it off. So he held himself in, picked up the waste bucket from under the slab, and dumped the skate in himself. Mère Méhudin had already planted her fists on her hips, but the Beautiful Norman broke into a vicious laugh as Florent sternly marched off amid jeers that he pretended not to hear.

Every day there was a new trap, and he had to stalk the alleys with the caution of someone in enemy territory. He was splattered with water from the sponges used to clean the slabs. He slipped and nearly fell on scraps deliberately placed in his path. Even the porters bumped the back of his neck with their baskets. One morning when he hurried to intercede between two women who were about to come to blows, he had to duck to avoid being slapped in the face by dabs that were being tossed overhead, which led to much laughter. Florent believed that the two women had conspired with the Méhudins. But his former trade as a teacher had taught him the patience of an angel. He knew how to maintain a magisterial coolness, even if anger was rising within him and his whole being shook with a sense of humiliation.

The waifs of rue de l'Estrapade had never had the ferocity of the women of Les Halles, the relentlessness of these huge women whose bellies and bosoms bobbed with the glee of giants whenever they could trick him in any way. They stared him down with their red faces. In the inflections of their hoarse voices, the swaying of their hips, the flips of their hands, he could read the obscenities being hurled at him. If Gavard had been confronted with these impudent and redolent females, he would have been perfectly comfortable, whacking a few posteriors here and there if they got too close. But Florent, who had always been intimidated by women, felt increasingly lost in a nightmare in which giant women of prodigious charms and enormous breasts surrounded him with their husky naked wrestler arms.

Among these savage women, Florent had one friend. Claire unabashedly declared that the new inspector was a good man. When he passed by, amid the abuse of the others, she smiled at him. She stood nonchalantly in her stall, her blond curls falling around her temples and neck, her dress on crooked. He usually saw her there, her hands submerged in the tanks, moving the fish from one tank to another, taking pleasure in repositioning the little copper dolphins that shot streams of water from their mouths. The streams of water gave her the quivering grace of a bather at the water's edge, albeit a sloppily dressed one.

One morning she was especially friendly. She called the inspector over to show him a huge eel that had amazed the entire market at the morning auction. She lifted the grating that she had cautiously placed over the basin. The eel, resting on the bottom, appeared to be asleep.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “Watch this.”

She put her naked arm into the water, a slightly skinny arm with silken skin revealing the blue of her veins. As soon as the eel felt her touch it began rolling itself in knots, filling the narrow tank with its glittering green rings. When it calmed down, Claire pestered it some more with the tips of her fingernails.

“It's huge,” Florent felt obliged to say. “I've hardly ever seen such a beauty.”

Claire admitted that at first she had been afraid of eels. Now she had learned how to tighten her grip so they could not slide away. She reached into the next tank and pulled out a smaller eel. The eel wriggled on both sides of her tightly closed hand. It made her laugh. She threw it back in, took another one, and stirred up the tank, agitating the mass of serpents with her slim fingers.

She stopped a minute to chat about business, which was not going well. The grain merchants down the way in the covered street were hurting them. Her bare arms were still dripping, refreshed by the coolness of the water. Large drops of water were falling from her fingers.

“Oh,” she suddenly said, “you have to take a look at my carp too.” She lifted off another grating and with both hands grabbed a carp that was lashing with his tail. She looked for a smaller one that she could hold with one hand. Its sides puffed out a little with each gasp. She decided that it would be funny to force her thumb into its panting mouth.

“It won't bite,” she said with a soft laugh. “It's not mean … It's like crayfish. They don't scare me at all.”

She had already plunged her arm back into the water and pulled up from a section chaotic with activity a crayfish that had grabbed her little finger with its claw. She shook it for a moment, but it seemed that the crayfish squeezed too hard, because her face turned red and she broke off its claw with an angry blow, all the while still smiling.

“On the other hand,” she said, trying to conceal her outburst, “I'd never trust a pike. He'd cut my fingers like a knife.” She pointed at an area on the scrubbed board where pikes were laid out sorted by size next to bronze-colored tench and piles of gudgeon. By now her hands were coated with slime from the carp, and she held them over the fish. She seemed enveloped in the scent of spawn, the thick scent that rises from reeds and water lilies when fish, dreamy in the sunlight, discharge eggs from their bellies. Still smiling, she wiped her hands on her apron. Her face had a peaceful cold-blooded look from the thrill she felt when playing heartlessly with river creatures.

Claire's friendliness was only a small consolation for Florent. Whenever he stopped to chat with her, it provoked even cruder treatment from the others. Claire would only shrug her shoulders and say that her mother was an old bat and her sister was worthless. The unfairness of the way the market people treated the new inspector outraged her. But the war grew more bitter every day. Florent longed to quit. He would not have lasted twenty-four hours were he not afraid of appearing cowardly to Lisa. He worried about what she might say or think. She was always up to date on the great battle of the fishmongers versus their inspector because it echoed throughout Les Halles and each move was discussed and interpreted by everyone in the neighborhood.

In the evening, after dinner, Lisa would often say, “Well, I'd bring them to their senses pretty quickly if it were me. They're a bunch of women I wouldn't touch with a pole, the sluts. That Norman is the lowest of the low. I'd give her my boot. You need to show them who's in charge, Florent. You deal with it completely wrong Take charge, Florent, and they'll get in line fast.”

The latest crisis was particularly bad. In the morning the maid of Madame Taboureau, the baker, went to the fish market to find a brill. After watching her wandering around for a few minutes, the Beautiful Norman sidled up to her.

“Come over and see me, I'll take care of you. Do you want a pair of soles? Maybe a beautiful turbot?”

When she finally did come over and started to examine a brill, wearing the sour face customers use when they are trying to lower the price, the Beautiful Norman went on, “Feel the heft of this,” and she put the brill, wrapped in a thick sheet of yellow paper, into the woman's hand.

The maid, a meek little woman from the Auvergne, felt the weight in her hand, opened the gills, still wore the sour face, and said nothing. Then, in a reluctant tone, she asked, “How much is this?”

“Fifteen francs,” the Beautiful Norman answered.

The other woman quickly put the fish back on the slab. She seemed anxious to escape, but the Beautiful Norman detained her. “What's your price?”

“No, it's too expensive.”

“Make an offer anyway.”

“If you want. How about eight francs?”

This seemed to wake up Mère Méhudin, who gave a menacing chuckle. What did people think, that they stole the fish? “Eight francs for a brill of that size? We'll give you one, sweetie, just to keep your skin soft at night.” The Beautiful Norman turned away as though offended. The servant twice offered nine francs and then went up to ten.

After that it seemed the maid was really going to walk away, so the Beautiful Norman said, “All right, give me the money.”

The maid stood in front of the stall, chatting amicably with Mère Méhudin. Madame Taboureau was so difficult. She was having a lot of people to dinner tonight, cousins from Blois, a notary and his wife. Madame Taboureau's family was very respectable. Even she herself, the wife of a baker, had a good education.

“Can you clean it for me?” she asked, interrupting her own story.

With the thrust of a finger the Beautiful Norman gutted the brill and tossed the entrails into a bucket. She slid a corner of her apron into a gill to remove a few grains of sand. Then she placed the fish in the maid's basket herself.

“There it is, honey, to be presented with my compliments.”

But after a quarter of an hour the maid ran back, red in the face. She had been crying, and her little body shook with anger. She threw the brill on the slab and showed a long gash across the belly that cut the flesh to the bone. A flood of disjointed words poured from her throat, which was still constricted from crying.

“Madame Taboureau doesn't want it. She said she couldn't serve it. And she said I was an idiot who let everyone rob me. Look at it! It's ruined! I didn't turn it over. I trusted you … Give me back my ten francs.”

“You can look at the merchandise before you buy it,” the Beautiful Norman answered calmly.

Then, since the maid was about to raise her voice again, Mère Méhudin got up and said, “Why don't you shut your mouth? We don't take back fish from people's homes. Who's to say you didn't drop it and damage it yourself?”

“Me! Me!” She was choking on her words. Then she started crying. “You're a couple of thieves, yes, two thieves. Madame Taboureau warned me.”

Then matters grew even worse. Mother and daughter, wild with anger, fists raised, hurled abuses. The little maid, lost and confused, trapped between a hoarse voice and a screeching one and batted back and forth like a ball, sobbed ever louder.

“Get out of here! Your Madame Taboureau ought to be half as fresh as this fish is. Are we supposed to patch it up for her?”

“A whole fish for ten francs! That's enough out of you!”

“How much did those earrings cost? I bet you earned that lying on your back.”

“You bet she did. She probably works the corner of rue de Mondétour.”

The market guard fetched Florent, who arrived at the height of the quarrel. The pavilion was in revolt. The fishmongers, who would tear at each other over two sous' worth of herring joined ranks when challenged by a customer. They chanted a popular song: “The baker's wife has pots of gold that cost her almost nothing.” They were stamping their feet, egging on the Méhudins, as if urging dogs to attack, and some, from the other end of the alley, jumped out of their stalls, as though they were about to leap at the little maid's hair. And the maid was lost, drowning in the enormity of her mistreatment.

“Give the young lady back her ten francs,” Florent ordered sternly when the situation was explained to him.

But Mère Méhudin was in a state. “As for you, you little nothing, I am going … the hell with it. This is how I'm giving back the ten francs.” As she spoke she hurled the brill with all her might at the little maid from Auvergne, and it smacked her full in the face. Her nose started bleeding as the brill became unstuck and fell to the ground with the sound of a wet dishcloth. Florent was enraged by the brutality of this act. The Beautiful Norman became frightened and stepped back as he shouted, “I'm suspending you for eight days! I'll have your license suspended, do you hear me?”

Booing broke out behind him, but he spun around with such a menacing look that the fishmongers tried to look innocent. After the Méhudins gave back the ten francs, he had them close up their stall immediately. The mother suppressed her anger. The daughter remained silent and pale. She, the Beautiful Norman, driven from her stall! Claire said in her calm voice that it served them right, which almost brought the two sisters to blows at home on rue Pirouette.

After eight days, when the Méhudins came back to the market, they were correct, pulled in, very curt with an icy anger. They found the market calm and orderly. From that day on, the Beautiful Norman nurtured thoughts of terrible vengeance. She felt that the blow had come from the hand of Lisa. She had run into her the day after the fight, and Lisa had held her head so high that she vowed to make her pay for that look of triumph.

Endless debates took place in the market with Mademoiselle Saget, Madame Lecœur, and La Sarriette. But when they were at last worn out by tales of Lisa's carryings-on with her cousin and hairs found in Quenu's andouilles, they couldn't really go any further with it. She was looking for some cruel blow that would strike her rival in the heart.

The Beautiful Norman's child was growing up wild in the fish market. He had been brought there when he was only three and spent his days squatting on a rag surrounded by fish. He slept as though he were a brother of the great tunas, and he woke up among mackerel and whiting. The ragamuffin smelled so fishy that people almost wondered if he hadn't emerged from the belly of some giant fish. For a long time his favorite game when his mother wasn't looking was to build walls and houses of herring. He also had play soldiers arranging gurnard on the marble slab in opposing front lines, pushing the fish against one another, battering their heads into one another, while imitating trumpets and drums with his lips, after which he would throw all the fish back into a pile and pronounce them all dead. Later, he started hanging around his aunt Claire's stall for the purpose of gathering pike and carp bladders, which popped when he smashed them on the ground. That was great fun for him.

At the age of seven, he ran through the alleyways, crawled under the stalls, clambered over the tin-lined boxes, and was the spoiled pet of the fish women. Whenever they showed him something new to amuse him, he would clap his hands and stammer, “That's so muche!”[10] The word “muche” stuck to him: “Come over here, Muche.” “Over there, Muche.” It was what everyone called him. He turned up in every cranny, in the recesses of the auction office, between stacks of baskets, among buckets of fish guts. He was like a rosy white barbel gliding through deep water. He was drawn to running water like a small fish. He splashed through puddles in the alleys and stood under drips from tables. Often he would surreptitiously turn on a faucet to have the pleasure of a stream of water. But most of all, when his mother went to find him in the evening, she knew to look by the springs beneath the cellar stairways. She would lead him away, soaked, his skin blue, and his shoes, even his pockets, filled with water.

The seven-year-old Muche was a solid little boy pretty as an angel and crude as a wagon driver. He had curly chestnut hair, beautiful soft eyes, and a sweet, innocent-looking mouth out of which came language that even a policeman wouldn't use. Raised amid the trash of Les Halles, he could recite the vocabulary of the fish trade with his hands on his hips just like Mère Méhudin when she was angry. So “slut” and “whore” and worse danced off his tongue in a sweet, crystalline voice fit for a boys' choir. He tried to make his voice sound gruff even though he looked the smiling babe in the Virgin's arms. The fish women laughed until they cried, which so encouraged him that he would not say more than two words without belching out “goddamn it.” But there was something lovable about him, the way he didn't understand his own vulgarity and the breezes and strong smells of the fish market kept him healthy. He recited his repertoire of curses with deep pleasure, as though they were prayers.

Winter was coming, and Muche was bothered by the cold. As soon as the chill set in, the inspector's office became his hangout of choice. It was located at the left-hand corner of the pavilion on the rue Rambuteau side. It was furnished with a table, a filing cabinet, an easy chair, two other chairs, and a heating stove. For Muche the attraction was the stove. When Florent, who adored children, saw the small child, his legs dripping wet, staring longingly from the window, he invited him to come in. His first conversation with the boy shocked him. It was in front of the stove, and the boy said in his gentle voice, “I'll just warm up my paws, okay? It's goddamn freezing out there.”

Then after a laugh he said, “My aunt Claire looks a little off this morning. Hey, mister, is it true that you warm her feet for her at night?”

Florent was both shocked and fascinated by this waif. The Beautiful Norman remained curt to him but said nothing about her son visiting him. Florent took this as permission to receive him and encouraged him to come visit in the afternoons, thinking he could civilize the child a bit. It was almost as though his brother, Quenu, had become small again and they were in their room on the rue Royer-Collard once again. It was Florent's nature to be at his happiest with some young person who would never grow up, whom he could go on teaching forever, and through whose innocence he could feel love for mankind.

On the third day of his relationship with Muche he brought an alphabet primer to work, and he was thrilled to note a great deal of intelligence in the boy. Muche learned his letters with the quick mind characteristic of Paris street urchins. The boy found the alphabet tremendously entertaining.

He also found many other amusements in Florent's office. The stove remained the grand attraction, an object of endless pleasure. It was good for cooking potatoes and chestnuts, but that got a bit dull. Then he stole some gudgeons from his aunt Claire, which he roasted one by one by hanging them on a string in front of the roaring mouth of the fire. He ate these delicacies without bread. One day he tried a carp, but he could not get it to cook and it sent out such a foul odor that he had to open the window and door. When the smell became too strong, Florent threw the fish out into the street. But most of the time he just laughed. After about two months, Muche could write fairly well.

At night the boy talked his mother's head off about his adventures with his good friend Florent. His good friend Florent had drawn him pictures of trees and of men in huts. His good friend Florent waved his hand like this when he said that people are better off if they know how to read. Eventually the Beautiful Norman came to feel almost an intimacy with this man she dreamed of strangling. She made Muche stay home one day so that he could not go see the inspector, but he cried so hard that the next day she gave in.

Despite her broad build and air of toughness, she did not have a strong will. When the boy came home and told her how warm and cozy the office had been and his clothes were dry, she felt a vague gratitude, a satisfaction in knowing that he was protected, his feet in front of a warm fire. Later, she was moved when the boy read her a passage from a torn piece of newspaper wrapped around a slice of eel. Slowly she began to realize, though never admitting it, that Florent was not such a bad man. She respected his education and had a growing curiosity to look at him more closely and see what he was about. Then, suddenly, she told herself that some pretext to get closer to Florent was part of her plan to exact revenge. Wouldn't it be fun to befriend Florent and turn him against that fat Lisa?

“Does your good friend Florent ever talk about me?” she asked Muche one morning while dressing him.

“No, he doesn't,” Muche answered. “We just have fun.”

“Well, you can tell him that I have no more bad feelings toward him and I very much appreciate his teaching you to read.”

From then on the child was sent each day to the inspector with a message and back to his mother with a friendly message from the inspector, answers and requests that the boy repeated without understanding. He could have been entrusted with the most sensitive communications. But not wishing to appear shy, one day the Beautiful Norman went to the inspector's office and sat herself down on the second chair while Florent was giving Muche his writing lesson. She was very sweet and complimentary, and Florent ended up more embarrassed than she was. When Florent said that he was afraid they might not be able to go on giving lessons in his office, she invited him to come to her house in the evening. She also mentioned payment, but he blushed and insisted that he wouldn't come over if there were any mention of that. So the Beautiful Norman resolved that she would give him fresh fish.

And so there was peace. The Beautiful Norman even took Florent under her protection. But even without this, the new inspector was becoming accepted in the market. The fish women decided that he was better than Monsieur Verlaque, despite his spooky-looking eyes. Mère Méhudin shrugged, keeping her grudge against “the big beanpole,” as she liked to refer to him unkindly.

One morning Florent stopped by Claire's freshwater tanks with a smile. Claire dropped the eel she was holding and turned her back, so angry her face was red. Florent was so surprised that he asked the Norman about this.

“Just forget it,” she said. “She's crazy. She always wants to do the opposite of everyone else. She just does it to make me mad.”

The Norman was triumphant. She strutted around her stall, more coquettish than ever, with elaborate hairstyles. Running into Beautiful Lisa one day, she returned her look of disdain. Then she burst into laughter right in her face. The certainty that she would drive the mistress of the charcuterie into despair by winning over her cousin gave her a happy, melodious laugh, a laugh from the diaphragm that rose up and jiggled her plump neck. On a whim she decided to dress Muche fancily with a little Scotch jacket and a velvet bonnet. Muche had never worn anything but a worn-out old shirt. By an unfortunate coincidence, at about the same time, he had renewed his interest in the water faucets under the stairs. The ice had melted, and the weather was mild. So he gave his Scotch jacket a bath, turning the faucet on full and letting the water run down his arm from his elbow to his hand. He called this game “gutters.” When his mother found him, he was with two other strays watching two little white fish, which he had stolen from his aunt Claire, swimming around in his hat, which he had filled with water.

For almost eight months Florent lived in Les Halles, in a constant state of sleepiness. After seven years of suffering, he had fallen into such a state of calm, in a life so perfectly ordered, that he barely felt alive. He simply drifted mindlessly, each morning caught by surprise to find himself in the same armchair in his cramped office. He enjoyed the bare little room. Here he found a quiet refuge, far from the world, amid the ceaseless racket of the market that made him dream of a swelling sea surrounding him and isolating him. But little by little, an uneasiness began to eat at him. He became dissatisfied, accusing himself of all sorts of indefinable faults, and began to rebel against both a physical and a mental emptiness. And the putrid smells of the fish market started to nauseate him. Gradually he was disintegrating. His vague distress was turning into raging anxiety.

All his days were the same, passed among the same sounds and smells. In the morning the shouts of the auction rang in his ears like distant bells. Sometimes when some of the fish deliveries were delayed, the auction would continue until late. On such days he stayed in the pavilion until noon, disturbed at every interval by arguments and fights that he tried to resolve fairly. It could take hours to dispatch some petty crisis that consumed the entire market. He would pace up and down amid the pushing and shouting of the selling, slowly strolling the alleys, occasionally stopping at a fish stall along rue Rambuteau. There were a great pile of shrimp, red baskets of little cooked langoustines[11] with their tails curled under, and live lobsters crawling on the marble as they died. He would watch affluent men in silk hats and black gloves bargaining with the fish women and eventually leaving with a cooked lobster wrapped in a newspaper stuffed in a coat pocket. Farther away he would recognize the neighborhood women, their heads bare, always shopping at that hour at the movable stalls, where the less deluxe fish were sold.

Sometimes his attention would be drawn to a well-dressed lady dragging her lacy petticoats over damp stones, a maid with a white apron following behind. He would follow her at a distance and watch how the fish women would shrug off her haughtiness. The bedlam of baskets, leather bags, and hampers, the frenzy of skirts swirling through damp alleys, held his interest until lunchtime. He was happy to be around running water and breezes that blew, as he passed the bitter odor of shellfish and the biting smell of salt fish. He always finished his inspection at the cured fish—cases of pickled herring, Nantes sardines on beds of leaves, rolled salt cod, which made him dream of distant voyages in need of these salted provisions—all displayed by fat, dull saleswomen.

Then, in the afternoon, Les Halles would calm down and get sleepy, and Florent would retire to his office, make out his reports, and enjoy the best hours of the day. If he went out and crossed the fish market, he would find it nearly deserted. The crushing, the pushing, the commotion of ten in the morning had vanished. The fish women sat behind their stalls, leaning back and knitting, while a few late housewives stalked around, casting sideways glances at the remaining fish, looking slowly, with thoughtful eyes and pursed lips, calculating the cost of dinner.

Finally twilight came, with the sound of boxes being moved. The fish was iced down for the night, and then, after watching the gates being closed, Florent left and seemed to carry the fish market with him, in his clothes, his beard, his hair.

For the first few months he had not been bothered by the penetrating odor. It had been a harsh winter; the ice had turned the alleys into mirrors and icicles had formed lacy edgings on the tables and water faucets. In the morning little heaters had to be lit under the faucets to get water. The frozen fish had twisted tails, dull and hard like unfinished metal, and when you snapped one, it made a ringing sound like a sheet of iron. The pavilion remained in this sorry state until February, deserted and wrapped in a spiky shroud of ice. But come the thaw, the milder months, the fog and rain of March, the fish also softened, drowning in the melt, the smell of rot blending with the dull scent of mud wafting in from the streets, still only an unpleasant hint in the air, tempered by the humidity clinging to the ground. But in the blazing June afternoons, a foul stench rose up and the air was weighted with a hazy pestilence. The upper windows of the market were opened and enormous gray canvas shades were drawn to block the burning sky. A rain of fire fell on Les Halles and heated it like an oven, and there was not a breath of air to sweep away the fishy smell. Steam rose from the stalls.

Florent was upset by the magnitude of food that he lived with. The sense of disgust he had felt at the charcuterie returned even more forcefully. He had experienced smells this bad before, but not associated with the stomach. His own stomach, the small stomach of a thin man, was turned when he passed the heaps of wet fish, which decayed at the first sign of warm weather. They filled him with their powerful odors, suffocated him. The smells alone gave him indigestion. Even shutting himself in his office, he could not escape this discomfort, for the insidious odor crept through the woodwork of the window and door. When the sky was gray and heavy the little room was dark and the day was like a long twilight in a fetid swamp. He often felt attacks of anxiety in which he had a strong urge to walk, and then he would descend into the cellars by the broad stairway in the middle of the pavilion. In the stuffiness down there, in the dim light of sporadic gas lamps, he found the pure, cool water to be refreshing. He would stand in front of the large tank where the stock of live fish was kept and listen to the continual melody of streams of water falling from each corner and then spreading into a broad stream that glided beneath the grating of the locked tanks in a soft, endless flow. This underground spring, this stream rippling the shadows, calmed him.

In the evenings he enjoyed the beautiful sunsets that silhouetted the frilly steelwork of the pavilions black against the red glow of the sky, the evening light of five o'clock, the dust drifting in the last sunbeams, pouring in through the windows, through the shutters. It was like a luminous but cloudy window on which pillars like thin fishbones, the elegant curve of the girders, the geometrical patterns of the roof were drawn with Chinese ink. Florent feasted his eyes on the glowing parchment and recalled his old dream of a colossal machine with cogs and levers and balances, only half visible in the burning embers of a dark oven. Every hour the changing light would alter the shape of Les Halles—the forceful blue sky of morning, then the black shadows of noon, the flames of a setting sun that died in the gray ashes of dusk. But on the flaming-sky evenings, when the stink rose, crossing the bright beams of sunlight like warm smoke, he was again shaken by an ill feeling and his dreams would go awry, and he would imagine giant ovens where human fat was being melted down.

Nor was he comfortable in this vulgar neighborhood, among crass people whose every word and gesture seemed to have absorbed the smell of the place. He tried to be open-minded and avoid false modesty, but these women embarrassed him. He felt comfortable only around Madame François, whom he happened to see again. She was very pleased to see that he had a good job and that he was happy and out of trouble, as she put it, and that touched him. But Lisa, the Beautiful Norman, and all the others worried him with their laughter. There was no irony in the way Madame François laughed. She had the laugh of a happy woman who enjoyed the good fortune of others. And she was just as tough, she worked a hard job—even harder in the frost of winter or the rain.

Florent saw her some mornings when it had been raining hard since the day before. Between Nanterre and Paris the cart wheels had sunk up to the axle in mud, and Balthazar was encrusted in it up to his belly. She would take pity on him and wipe him down with old aprons.

“These animals are very fragile,” she said. “It takes nothing for them to get sick. Oh, my poor old Balthazar. When we were crossing the pont de Neuilly it was raining so hard I thought we were going to fall into the Seine.”

Balthazar went to the stable at an inn, but Madame François stayed out in the downpour to sell her vegetables. The road had become a sea of liquid mud. The cabbage, the carrots, the turnips, were pelted by gray water, drowned in the muddy deluge that rushed down the sidewalk. There was no trace of the dazzling greens that were there on a clear morning. The market men huddled in their heavy coats and cursed the market authorities, who, after looking into the matter, had decided that rain did not harm vegetables and therefore there was no need to build a shelter for them.

Those rainy mornings depressed Florent. He thought about Madame François and always slipped away for a brief exchange with her. She was never melancholy. She shook herself like a poodle and declared that she was used to such weather and, after all, it was not as though she were made of sugar and would melt in a few raindrops. But he made her duck under one of the covered ways for a few minutes and often took her to Monsieur Lebigre's for a mulled wine together. When she looked at him warmly with her tranquil face, he was charmed by the healthy smell of the fields that she carried with her into the foul air of Les Halles. She smelled of the earth, the hay the fresh air and wide-open sky.

“My boy you must come to Nanterre,” she said, “and see my garden with borders of thyme everywhere. My God, Paris has an evil smell.”

Then she was off, dripping wet. Florent always felt rejuvenated when he left her. He resolved to try to use work to fight off his depression. He was a very methodical man, and once he had devised a plan for the allotment of his time, it became an obsession. He locked himself away two nights a week to work on an exhaustive study of Cayenne. He found his little room to be an excellent place to work. He lit his fire, checked that the pomegranate at the end of the bed was doing well, then sat down at the little table and worked there until midnight. He had pushed the prayer book and the book on dreams back in the drawer and little by little filled the drawer with his notes, memos, and manuscript pages.

The work on Guiana barely made progress because he was constantly distracted by other projects, plans for grand, ambitious projects that he sketched out in a few lines. He drafted a plan to reform the administrative system of the markets, a scheme for transforming the fees the city charged for produce as it entered Paris into a tax on sales at the market. He also devised an improved system for provisioning the poorest neighborhoods and a humanitarian law— the idea was still not fully formed—for managing the food that arrived each day in a way that would guarantee a minimum of nutrition to every Paris household. Sitting there bent over the table, immersed in these weighty issues, his figure cast a dark shadow on the gentle little garret. And sometimes a finch Florent had rescued one snowy day in the market would mistake the lamplight for daybreak and interrupt the silence with its chirp, the only interruption in the scratching noise of Florent's pen on paper.

As was his destiny, Florent returned to politics. He had been through too much not to make it his life's preoccupation. If things had gone differently, he might have been a very good provincial schoolmaster, content in the peace of a small town. But having been treated like a savage animal, he felt marked by exile to engage in some great struggle. His depression was a result of his years of yearning in Cayenne, the bitterness he felt due to having suffered so deeply for no reason, and the vows he had secretly made to avenge people who had been beaten and justice that had been trampled underfoot. The giant market with its mountains of food had hastened the crisis. To Florent it was a metaphor for some satiated, gluttonous beast, a bloated Paris wallowing in fat and propping up the empire. He felt surrounded by oversize bosoms and bloated faces, which continually attacked him for his thinness and his unhappy face. It was the belly of shopkeepers, the belly of ordinary people puffing themselves up, celebrating in the sunshine, declaring that everything was for the best, since passive people had never been so well fattened.

As Florent had these thoughts he clenched his fist, ready for the struggle, angrier about his years of exile than he had been since his return to France. He was overtaken by hatred. He often put down his pen and began to dream. The dying fire cast a hot light on his face, the lamp smoked, and the finch fell back asleep on one foot with his head tucked under a wing.

Sometimes, at eleven o'clock, Auguste, seeing the light under the door, knocked on his way to bed. Impatiently Florent would open the door. The charcuterie apprentice would sit down in front of the fire, barely speaking and never explaining why he had come. All the while, his eyes would remain fixed on the picture of Augustine and himself all dressed up. Florent decided that he liked to come to the room because it used to be occupied by his girlfriend. One day Florent asked him if he was right.

“Well, maybe,” answered Auguste, surprised by discovering this about himself. “I never thought of that before. I came to see you without really knowing why … Well, if I tell Augustine, she'll laugh … when you're going to get married, you don't think about such things.”

When he was feeling talkative, his singular theme was the charcuterie he was going to set up with Augustine in Plaisance. He seemed so perfectly certain that everything would work out exactly the way he planned it that Florent couldn't help but feel a certain respect for him, albeit mixed with irritation. The young man was resolved. Though every bit as stupid as he looked, he went straight for his goal and would probably attain it without problems.

Once Florent had had one of these visits from the young apprentice, he could not settle back to work again until he admitted the thought “What a dummy this Auguste is.”

Every month Florent went to Clamart to see Monsieur Verlaque. These visits were almost a pleasure for Florent. The poor man still hung on, to the amazement of Gavard, who had predicted six months at most. Every time Florent went, the sick man told him that he was feeling much better and was hoping to go back to his job. But the days slipped by, and Verlaque had serious relapses. Florent would sit by his bed, chat about the fish market, and try to cheer him up. He would place the fifty francs he paid him every month on the pedestal table, and though it was prearranged, the former inspector would invariably protest and seem not to want to take the money. Then they would change the subject and the coins would remain on the table.

When Florent left, Madame Verlaque would accompany him to the front door. She was a small, kindly woman with a tearful manner. Her only conversational subject was the expenses incurred from looking after her husband: the high price of chicken broth, red meat, Bordeaux, medicine, and the doctor. Florent was embarrassed by this sad conversation, and for the first few visits, he failed to grasp its meaning. But finally, since the poor woman was always crying and carrying on about how happy they had been when her husband had brought home his full salary of eighteen hundred francs a year, he meekly offered to give her a regular sum, which her husband was not to know about. But she turned down the offer, paradoxically insisting that the fifty francs was enough. Yet during the month, she would regularly write to Florent, calling him their “savior.” In her small, fine handwriting, she would manage to fill three pages with meek pleas for the loan of ten francs, and she did this often enough that most of Florent's hundred and fifty francs made its way to Verlaque. Her husband doubtless knew nothing of this, though the wife kissed Florent's hands. But this charity gave Florent great pleasure, and he concealed it as though it were a prohibited act of self-indulgence.

“That Verlaque is making a fool of you,” Gavard sometimes said. “He's living easy now that you are paying all the bills.”

Finally one day Florent said, “We've worked it out. I'm only giving him twenty-five francs from now on.”

After all, Florent didn't have any needs. He got his room and board free from the Quenus. He needed only a few francs so that he could go to Monsieur Lebigre's some evenings. Little by little his life became set like a clock. He worked in his room, continued his lessons with Muche twice a week between eight and nine o'clock, left one night free for Beautiful Lisa so as not to anger her, and passed the rest of his time in the glass-paneled room with Gavard and his friends.

When he went to the Méhudins', he kept a professorial distance. He liked the old house on rue Pirouette. On the ground floor he passed the bland odors of the cooked-vegetable seller. Large pans of spinach and sorrel were cooling in the little backyard. Then he climbed a dark, greasy staircase with worn, warped steps twisted at frightening angles. The Méhudins occupied the entire second floor. Even after they could afford it, the mother always refused to move, despite the pleas of her daughters, who dreamed of life in a new house on a wide, handsome street. The old woman could not be moved on this issue. She said that she had lived there and intended to die there. Besides, she was perfectly happy in her dark closet, leaving the more spacious bedrooms for Claire and the Beautiful Norman. The Norman, by right of being the older, had taken the room with a street view, the largest and best. Claire, annoyed by this, refused to take the adjoining room overlooking the yard and instead insisted on staying across the landing in little more than a garret, which she did not even have whitewashed. She maintained her independence by having a separate key, and whenever she was displeased she could lock herself in her room.

Florent generally arrived just as the Méhudins were finishing dinner. Muche would leap on him, and Florent would take a seat while the boy was still clinging to him and chattering away. Once the oilcloth table covering had been cleaned, they began the lesson at a corner of the table. The Beautiful Norman welcomed him. She would knit or mend linen, seated at the table working by the same light as the lesson, and she would often stop working to listen to it, as she found it intriguing. She soon began to feel a warm appreciation for this clever man, who could speak to her child with the gentleness of a woman and showed the patience of an angel in repeating the same material over and over again. She no longer considered him unattractive and even felt a little jealous of Beautiful Lisa. She would pull her chair even closer and study Florent with an embarrassing smile.

“Mama, you're bumping my elbow and I can't write,” Muche would say irritably. “There's the blot you made me do. Can't you move back?”

More and more, the Beautiful Norman said mean things about Beautiful Lisa. She claimed that she lied about her age, that she laced her corset so tight that she couldn't breathe, that if she appeared in the morning so perfectly put together without a hair out of place, it must be because she looked horrendous before she got dressed. Then the Norman would raise her arms to show that she was not wearing a corset. She would smile as she puffed out her breasts, round and alive, under a thin, badly fastened camisole. Florent would listen and even laugh, thinking what funny creatures women were. How the rivalry between the Beautiful Norman and Beautiful Lisa entertained him.

Muche, meanwhile, had finished his page of writing. Florent, who had good penmanship, wrote large, round letters on pieces of paper. He chose long words that took an entire line, with a notable preference for such words as “tyrannically,” “liberticide,” “unconstitutional,” and “revolutionary.” He sometimes had the boy copy such sentences as “The day of justice will come” or “The suffering of the just man is the condemnation of the oppressor” or “When the hour strikes, the guilty will fall.” In preparing these writing samples, he was simply following the ideas that were swirling in his mind. He forgot about Muche, the Beautiful Norman, everything around him. Muche would have copied The Social Contract[12] had he been told to copy it. He filled pages, line after line, with “tyrannically” and “unconstitutional,” carefully tracing each letter.

The whole time Florent was there, old Madame Méhudin would circle the table, fidgeting. She continued to nurse a fearsome grudge against him. According to her, it was ridiculous to make a child work at night at an hour when he should be in bed. She almost certainly would have thrown the big beanpole out the door if the Beautiful Norman, after a tempestuous fight, had not threatened to move to another home if she were not allowed to choose her guests. After that, the same fight started up every night.

“Say what you want,” said the old woman, “he has shifty eyes. Besides, you can't trust skinny people. A skinny man will do just about anything. I've never met a good one yet. His stomach looks like it slipped into his butt, that's for sure, because he's flat as a board. And he's ugly. I may be past sixty-five, but I still wouldn't want him by my night table.”

She said all this because she could see what was happening. Then she started praising Monsieur Lebigre, who in fact showed a great interest in the Beautiful Norman. Aside from the huge dowry that he imagined she would bring, he thought the young woman would be fantastic for his business. The old woman never missed a chance to praise him. At least he wasn't skinny as a rail. He was strong as a Turk. She even praised his calves, which, actually, were a bit fat.

But the Norman only shrugged and said sourly, “I don't care about his calves. I don't need anybody's calves. I do as I like.”

If the old woman pushed too hard, her daughter would say, “It's none of your business, and besides, it isn't true. And if it were true, I wouldn't need your permission, so just leave me alone.” With that she would go to her room and slam the door. In the household she had achieved a certain measure of power that she was now abusing. At night, if the old woman imagined she heard an odd noise, she would get up and walk barefoot to her daughter's door and listen, trying to hear if Florent was in there with her.

But Florent had an even more vehement enemy in the Méhudin household. As soon as he arrived, Claire would get up without saying a word, take a candle, and go to her room on the other side of the landing. She could be heard locking her door in a fit of icy anger. One evening when her sister invited the teacher to dinner, Claire fixed her own food on the landing and ate it in her room. Often she closed herself in so adroitly that she wasn't seen for a week. She usually remained soft and easygoing in appearance, but sometimes she turned to iron, her eyes glaring under her pale, wild locks like the stare of a distrustful animal. Mère Méhudin, thinking she would be free to express her feelings about Florent in Claire's presence, only enraged her when she talked about him. So the exasperated old woman would tell people how she would have liked to have gone off by herself but was afraid that her daughters would devour each other without her supervision.

One evening as he was leaving, Florent passed in front of Claire's door, which was wide open. She was looking at him, which made his face turn bright red. The girl's hostility saddened him, and it was only his shyness in front of women that kept him from demanding an explanation. On this particular evening, however, he would probably have walked into her room if he hadn't noticed Mademoiselle Saget's small white face peeking over the banister of the floor above. So he continued on his way out and had not taken ten steps when Claire's door slammed shut behind him so violently that it rattled the entire staircase. It was then that Mademoiselle Saget reached the conclusion that Madame Quenu's cousin slept with both Méhudin girls.

But Florent barely thought about those two beautiful women. His usual attitude toward women was that it was a field at which he was not very good. He had wasted his virility on dreaming. Yes, he had come to feel a real friendship for the Beautiful Norman, who had a good heart when she wasn't putting on airs. But that was as far as he would ever go. In the evening, when she pulled her chair to the lamp as though to lean across Muche's page of writing, he did feel a certain uneasy sensation from her warm, powerful body next to his.

She seemed colossal, weighty, troubling, with her great breasts. He withdrew his pointy elbows and thin shoulders, fearing that he would inadvertently stab this flesh. His thin bones felt anguish in contact with her fat bosom. He lowered his head and shrank even thinner, incapacitated by the strong scent that rose from her. When her camisole was open a bit, he thought he saw the breath of health and life rise up between her two white breasts and pass over his face, still warm as if mingling for an instant with the stench of Les Halles on a hot July evening.

It was an insistent perfume, clinging to smooth, silken skin, a sea sweat running from her fine breasts, her regal arms and supple waist, bringing a strong, distinct dimension to her womanly scent. She had tried all kinds of aromatic oils, but as soon as the freshness of bathing wore off, her blood carried to her very fingertips the bland scent of salmon, the violet musk of smelts, and the pungency of herring and skates. The swing of her skirts released this mist. She walked as though through an evaporation of slimy seaweed. She was, with the body of a goddess, with her fantastic paleness and purity, like a fine ancient marble statue rolled in the sea and brought back in a sardine net. Florent suffered from it, but he did not desire it. His senses had been revolted by afternoons in the fish market. He found it upsetting, too salty, too bitter with a beauty that was too grand and smelled too strong.

Mademoiselle Saget, on the other hand, swore by all the gods that he was the Beautiful Norman's lover. She was still holding a grudge against her over ten sous' worth of dabs. Since that clash, she had become extremely friendly with Beautiful Lisa, hoping to become acquainted with what she termed “the game plan” of the Quenus. Since Florent continued to avoid her, she felt like a body without a soul, as she put it, without letting on about the cause of this grief. A young girl desperately chasing after a boy could not have been more upset than this horrid old woman feeling the secret of the cousin slipping from her fingers. She spied on the cousin, followed him, mentally undressed him, looked him up and down, furious because her overstimulated curiosity could not be sated.

Since he had begun visiting the Méhudins, she no longer moved from the stairs. Then she realized that Beautiful Lisa was very annoyed at the way Florent was always visiting “those women.” So she made a point of dropping by the charcuterie every morning with news from rue Pirouette. In cold weather she would walk in, shriveled by frost, and warm her hands on the heating stove. Thawing her fingers, standing by the counter but buying nothing, she would say, in her reedy voice, “He was at their place again yesterday. He barely seems to leave anymore. Oh, and the Norman called him ‘my dear’ when they were on the stairway.”

She would embellish in order to linger at the heater a little longer. The morning after the evening when she had heard Claire slam her door on Florent, she managed to spend a good half hour stretching out her story. What a disgrace, the cousin hopping from one bed to another!

“I saw him,” she said. “When he's had enough of the Norman, he tiptoes over to the little blonde. Yesterday he was leaving the blonde, no doubt going back to the big brunette, when he spotted me and changed course. It goes on all night. And the old lady sleeps in a closet between the two daughters' rooms.”

Lisa showed her contempt. She said very little, and Mademoiselle Saget was encouraged by the silence. But she listened closely. When the details were too sordid, she would mutter, “No, no, it's not acceptable. I can't believe that there are women like that.”

Then Mademoiselle Saget would answer, “My God, did you think all women were as decent as you?” Then she would feign great understanding for Florent. Men chase every skirt that passes their way. And maybe he's not even married? She slipped the question out without appearing to question. But Lisa refused to be judgmental about her cousin. She just shrugged her shoulders and pursed her lips. After Mademoiselle Saget had left, she would look with disdain at the spot on the metal heater where the old lady had left a mark with her grubby little hands.

“Augustine!” she shouted. “Bring a rag to wipe off the heater. It's disgusting.”

The rivalry between Beautiful Lisa and the Beautiful Norman intensified. The Beautiful Norman fantasized that she had snatched away a lover from her enemy, and Beautiful Lisa was furious that this lowlife, by luring Florent to her home, would end up compromising the standing of her entire family. Each pursued the conflict in a manner suiting her own temperament. One was calm and contemptuous, with the demeanor of a woman who hikes up her skirts to avoid soiling the hem. The other swaggered, flouncing down the street with the defiance of a duelist, daring someone to challenge her. The slightest skirmish between them would be the topic of the fish market gossip for an entire day. When the Beautiful Norman sighted Beautiful Lisa in the charcuterie doorway, she would go out of her way to walk by her, brushing her apron against her; then the two would glare at each other like two swords crossing with the flash and thrust of sharpened steel.

For her part, when Beautiful Lisa went to the fish market she always approached the Beautiful Norman's stall wearing an expression of disgust. Then she would make a major purchase, a turbot or a salmon, at the neighboring stall, spreading her money out on the marble slab, an act that she noticed greatly pained the “lowlife,” who would stop laughing. Listening to the two rivals, one would have had the impression that they sold nothing but rotten fish and tainted sausages.

The principal combat took place with the Beautiful Norman at her stall and Beautiful Lisa at her counter, glaring ferociously at each other across rue Rambuteau. They were enthroned in their great white aprons, coiffed and bejeweled. Battle commenced at dawn.

“Look at that, the cow has stood up!” shouted the Beautiful Norman. “She's encased as tight as her sausages, that woman. Oh my, she's wearing the same collar she wore on Saturday. And she's still wearing that poplin dress.”

At the same moment, on the other side of the street, Beautiful Lisa was telling her shopgirl, “Just look at that creature over there, staring at us. The kind of life she leads is beginning to show on her. See those earrings she's wearing. I think they're those big pears, aren't they? What a shame, such jewels on a girl like that.”

“Just think what they must have cost,” answered Augustine, playing along.

Any time one of them had a new piece of jewelry it was a victory and the other nearly died of chagrin. Every morning they would count and analyze each other's customers and become irritable if it seemed that “The big thing across the way” was doing a better business.

Next came lunchtime espionage. Each knew the other's eating habits in detail, down to digestion. In the afternoon, the one seated among prepared meats and the other among her fish, they posed, taking great pains to be devastating in their beauty. The Beautiful Norman embroidered, choosing the most delicate and demanding needlework, which exasperated Beautiful Lisa.

“She'd be better off,” Lisa said, “mending her son's socks so he wouldn't go barefoot. Just look at that fine lady with her red hands stinking of fish.”

Lisa, on the other hand, usually knit.

“She's still on the same sock,” the other one commented. “She eats so much that she dozes off while working. I feel sorry for her poor cuckolded husband if he's waiting for those socks to warm his feet.”

Into the evening the two remained implacable, each noting the other's customers with keen eyes down to the most minute details, while other women said they could see none of this at such a distance. Mademoiselle Saget could not help but admire Madame Quenu's extraordinary eyesight when she noted a scratch on the left cheek of the fish vendor one day. “With eyes like those,” she said, “you could see through a door.” Often night fell without a decisive victor. Sometimes one was clearly down, but the next day she would get her revenge. Neighbors started waging bets, some putting their money on Beautiful Lisa and others on the Beautiful Norman.

They ended up forbidding their children to speak to each other. Pauline and Muche had been good friends despite Pauline's stiff petticoats and perfect-little-lady demeanor and Muche's foul mouth and tendency to act like a wagon driver. When they played together on the sidewalk by the fish market, Pauline always pretended to be a handcart. But one day when Muche went to Lisa's house looking for his playmate, with no idea that there was a problem, Lisa sent him away, saying that he was a street tramp.

“You never know what children brought up like that might do,” she said. “He's such a bad example that I worry what his influence might be on my child.”

The child was seven years old.

Mademoiselle Saget, who happened to be there, said, “You're absolutely right. He's always running around with little girls in the neighborhood. Once he was found in a basement with the coal seller's daughter.”

When Muche came home crying, the Beautiful Norman was furious. She wanted to run over to the Quenu-Gradelles' and wreck their shop immediately. Instead she gave Muche a beating. “If you ever go back there,” she shouted in a rage, “you'll answer to me for it!”

But the real victim of these two women was Florent, who in truth was the one who had set off this war. They wouldn't even be fighting if it wasn't for him. Ever since he had arrived, things had gone badly. He was the one who had compromised, angered, and disturbed this world, which until then had been sleepily peaceful. When he spent too much time with the Quenus, the Beautiful Norman wanted to claw him. Simply because of her rivalry with Lisa, she had to win Florent over. Meanwhile, Beautiful Lisa presented a judicial bearing when confronted with her brother-in-law's bad conduct, allowing his relationship with the Méhudins to become a neighborhood scandal. She was extremely annoyed, though she tried not to let her jealousy show. It was an odd jealousy, considering her disapproval of Florent and the appropriate coldness toward him that decency required. Yet she became exasperated every time he left the charcuterie to go to rue Pirouette, and she imagined the forbidden pleasures that he tasted there.

Dinner at the Quenus' became less cordial. The prim dining room took on an acidic character. Florent could sense reproach, a kind of condemnation in the white oak setting, the too-polished lamp, the too-new carpet. He could barely bring himself to eat for fear of dropping bread crumbs. Still he had a bright-eyed simplicity that prevented him from seeing clearly. He still told everyone how sweet Lisa was, and in fact, on the surface, she did still appear to treat him with great kindness.

One day she said to him with a smile as though she were about to tell a joke, “It's funny, you've been eating fairly well but you don't get any fatter. The food isn't doing you much good.”

Quenu laughed loudly and patted his brother's stomach, claiming that all the food in the shop could pass through Florent's stomach and not leave enough fat to cover a small coin. But in Lisa's inquiry the distrust and dislike of thin people could be heard, the same sentiment that Mère Méhudin expressed more harshly. There also was a subtle allusion to the wayward life she imagined Florent to be leading. But she never referred directly to the Beautiful Norman in front of him. Quenu alluded to her in a joke one evening but Lisa's response was so icy that the good-natured husband dropped the subject. They lingered at the table after dessert. Florent, who had noticed his sister-in-law's displeasure when he left too soon after dinner, tried to start a conversation. He was right next to her. He did not find her warm and alive with a scent of the sea, tasty and spicy. Instead she smelled of fat—the blandness of good meat. There was no thrill to her tight-fitted bodice, which showed not a wrinkle. Contact with the firm presence of Lisa threw him even more than the tender approaches of the Beautiful Norman. Gavard once told him, in strict confidence, that Madame Quenu was most certainly a beautiful woman but he liked them “less armored than that.”

Lisa avoided talking about Florent with Quenu. Usually she made a great show of being patient. But she also believed that it was not a good idea to come between the two brothers without a serious reason to do so. As she liked to say, she could put up with a lot but should not be pushed too far.

She was in her tolerant mode with a blank expression and a severe politeness, an affected indifference, carefully avoiding even hinting at the fact that though he ate and slept there, they had never seen his money, not that they would dream of accepting any payment whatsoever because she was certainly above such a thing, though he could at least go somewhere else for his lunch. One day she mentioned this to Quenu, saying, “We're never alone anymore. If we want to speak in private now, we have to wait until we go to bed.”

And one night she whispered in his ear, “Doesn't he earn a hundred fifty francs? Isn't it strange he can't put a little aside to buy some linen? I just had to give him a few more old shirts.”

“Aw, that's not a big problem,” said Quenu. “My brother's easy. Let him keep his money.”

“Oh, sure,” said Lisa, not wanting to push too hard on the subject. “I didn't mean to say … How he spends his money is his business.”

She became convinced that he must be spending his salary at the Méhudins'. One time she lost her composure, the calm that was partly her natural temperament and partly a calculated tactic. The Beautiful Norman had given Florent a magnificent salmon. Florent, embarrassed by the gift but not daring to refuse it, had brought it to Beautiful Lisa.

“You could make some kind of terrine with it,” he said ingenuously.

Lisa stared at him, her lips turning pale, and in a voice that she struggled to control said, “Do you think we don't have enough food here? My God, there's plenty to eat around here. Take it back!”

“But couldn't you cook it for me?” asked Florent, surprised by her sudden anger. “I'll eat it.”

Then she exploded. “This house is not an inn. Tell whoever gave it to you that she can cook it. I'm not about to smell up my frying pan with it. Take it back. Do you hear me?”

She was about to throw it into the street.

Florent took it to Monsieur Lebigre's, where Rose was ordered to prepare a salmon terrine. And so one evening in the glass-paneled room, they ate it. Gavard bought everyone oysters.

Florent went there more and more, until he hardly ever left the glass-paneled room. He found there an overheated atmosphere where he could vent his political rage freely. Sometimes when he shut himself in his attic to work, he became impatient with the peacefulness of the room. His study of the theory of freedom was not enough, and he had to go down to Monsieur Lebigre's to steep himself in Charvet's sweeping statements and Logre's tirades.

At first, the uproar, the deluge of words, had been disturbing. He still had a feeling of emptiness, but also a need to be slapped into excitement, to be swept away by some extreme resolution that could calm his troubled soul. The smell of the room, the smell of alcohol warmed by tobacco smoke, intoxicated him, raising him to an ecstatic state where he could lose himself and accept the most radical ideas without question. He grew attached to those he met there and anxiously awaited their arrival with the pleasure of a growing habit. Robine's gentle, bearded face, Clémence's grave profile, Charvet's lean pallor, Logre's hump, and Gavard, Alexandre, and Lacaille—they all entered his life and were playing an ever-larger role.

Florent took a sensual pleasure in these meetings. The moment his fingers wrapped around the little copper knob of the room, it seemed alive, warmed his fingers, turned of its own accord. It would not have been a more stimulating sensation if his fingers had been touching the supple palm of a woman's hand.

In truth, serious things were going on in that little room. One evening Logre, who had been railing on even more violently than usual, pounding his fist on the table, declared that if they were really men, they would bury this government. He added that they should come to an understanding without delay, to be ready for action when the time came. Then they all bowed their heads and, in hushed voices, formed a little group that would be ready. From that day on, Gavard considered himself a member of a secret conspiratorial society. The circle was not in complete agreement, but Logre promised to put them in touch with other circles that he knew, and then, once all of Paris was within their grasp, they would make the crowd at the Tuileries dance. Then a series of endless discussions began and continued over a period of several months; questions of organization, questions of ends and means, questions of strategy and of the future government. As soon as Rose had brought Clémence's grog Charvet's and Robine's beer, coffee for Gavard and Florent, and little liqueur glasses for Lacaille and Alexandre, the door was carefully secured and the meeting began.

Charvet and Florent were the most compelling and most listened to. Gavard could not hold his tongue and little by little revealed the entire story of Cayenne, which cast Florent in the glory of martyrdom. His words became testaments of faith. One day the poultry merchant, angry at hearing his friend, who happened to be absent, attacked, shouted, “Lay off Florent! He went to Cayenne!”

But Charvet was annoyed that Florent had this advantage and muttered through his teeth, “Cayenne, Cayenne. Turns out they were not so badly off there.” And he tried to make a case that exile was easier than staying in the country under oppression, mouth gagged in the face of a triumphant despot. Besides, if he hadn't happened to be arrested on December 2, that was not his fault. He implied that those who had let themselves be caught were imbeciles.

This underlying jealousy led to a systematic opposition to Florent. The discussion always ended with the two of them facing off for hours while the others sat in silence and neither one ever admitting defeat.

One of their favorite topics was the reorganization of the country after victory.

“We're the victorious ones, aren't we?” Gavard would begin. And, no one doubting the victory, each gave his opinion on the next step. There were two camps. Charvet, who claimed to be an hébertiste, was supported by Logre and Robine. Florent, always lost in his dream of humanitarian utopia, labeled himself a socialist and was backed by Alexandre and Lacaille. As for Gavard, he did not back off from advocating violence, but since he was often teased about his fortune with sarcasm, which annoyed him, he declared himself a communist.

“We have to wipe the slate clean,” Charvet would say as though delivering a chop with a cleaver. “The trunk is rotten, and we have to cut it down.”

“Yes, yes,” declared Logre, standing up to appear taller and shaking the paneling with the excited motion of his hump. “Everything will be leveled to the ground. Remember, I said it first. Then we will decide what to do.”

Robine waved his beard in agreement. His silence seemed to imply delight whenever violent revolution was proposed. His eyes showed a soft glow at the mention of the word guillotine. He half closed them as though staring off at the machine itself and was filled with a pleasant feeling from this sight; then he would rub his chin against the knob of his cane and purr with contentment.

“However,” Florent pointed out, taking his turn, his voice still revealing a hint of sadness, “if you cut down the tree, you have to save some seed. Personally, I think the tree should be spared in order to graft new shoots. The political revolution has already happened. Today we have to think of the laborer, the worker. Our movement must be a social movement. I challenge you to embrace the demands of the people. The people are weary. They want their share.”

These words thrilled Alexandre. His face beaming, he confirmed that it was true. The people were weary.

“And we too will have our share,” declared Lacaille, in a more threatening tone. “All revolutions advance the middle class. We've had enough of that. The next one is going to be for us.”

Now there was no more consensus. Gavard offered to divide up his property, but Logre declined, swearing that he had no interest in money. Then Charvet gradually got control of the bedlam, until his was the only voice heard.

“The self-interest of the different social classes is the great strength of tyranny,” he said. “The selfishness of the people is wrong. If you work with us, you will get your share. But why should I fight for the workers if the workers won't fight for me? That's not the question. It will take ten years of revolutionary government to accustom a country like France to the ways of liberty.”

“All the more reason,” said Clémence bluntly, “why the workingman is not ready and needs to be directed.”

She seldom spoke. This tall, serious girl, lost among all those men, had a professorial way of listening to political discussion. She leaned against the partition, sipping her grog, studying the speakers with a furrowed brow and enlarged nostrils, using them to silently indicate her approval or disapproval, demonstrating that she understood and held opinions on everything. Occasionally she would roll a cigarette, blowing thin streams of smoke from the corners of her mouth while intensifying her scrutiny of the debate. It was as though she were judging the debate and would award a prize to the winner after it was over. She believed in keeping her place as a woman, holding back her opinions and not growing agitated when the men did. But now and then she would let a word or two escape to “drive home the nail,” as Gavard liked to say. In her heart, she believed herself to be far ahead of the men. She had no respect for any of them, accept Robine, and she would watch his silence with her large black eyes.

Neither Florent nor any of the others paid any special attention to Clémence. To them she was one of the boys, and they shook her hand so roughly it nearly dislocated her arm. One evening Florent was present at one of the chronic settling of accounts between Charvet and her. They lived together with a mutual understanding, each controlling their own earnings and responsible for their own expenses. That way, they said, no one owed anything and they were not slaves. Rent, food, laundry, entertainment, everything was written down and added up. On this particular night, after checking the accounts, Clémence proved to Charvet that he still owed five francs. Then she handed him the ten he wanted to borrow and said, “Make a note that you now owe me fifteen. You can pay me back on the fifth, when you get paid for teaching little Léhudier.”

When it came time to pay Rose for the drinks, each would pull out a few sous. Charvet joked that Clémence was an aristocrat because she drank grog. He said that she was trying to humiliate him because he earned less money, which in fact was true. Underneath the joke was a note of protest that she was better off, for despite his theory of sexual equality, he felt wounded by this.

Though the discussions never accomplished much, they did help them to vent. This produced a great deal of noise in the little room, and the frosted glass vibrated like drum skins. Sometimes it became so loud that Rose, languidly serving a customer a drink outside, would turn her head nervously.

“Good God, it's getting rough in there,” the customer would say, putting his glass back down on the zinc counter and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Nothing to worry about,” said Monsieur Lebigre calmly, “it's just some gentlemen having a discussion.”

Monsieur Lebigre, normally very strict with his other customers, let these debaters shout to their heart's content and never said a word about it. He would sit for hours in his vest on the bench behind the counter, his big head nodding drowsily against the mirror, watching Rose uncorking bottles and wiping the counter with a towel. When he was in a good mood and she was in front of him, plunging glasses into the washbowl, her hands bare, he would pinch the fleshy parts of her legs without anyone being able to see him, and she would accept it with a pleasant smile. Even when he pinched her almost to the bone, she did not betray the familiarity with a sudden jump. She simply said that she wasn't ticklish.

Amid the scent of wine and warm liquors, he would turn his ear toward the ruckus coming from the little room. When he heard them getting loud, he would get up and walk over to lean against the divider. Sometimes he even pushed open the door, walked in, and sat down for a moment, giving Gavard a friendly slap on the leg. It was his nod of approval for everything said in the room. The poultry merchant said that Lebigre was not much of an orator, but he could be counted on when the time came.

One morning at the market a terrible quarrel erupted between Rose and a fish vendor when Rose accidentally knocked over a basket of herring with her elbow and was called a “sneak” and a “police stooge.” After Florent restored calm, he got an earful of tales about Monsieur Lebigre. The fish woman said that he worked for the police and everyone in the neighborhood knew it. Before Mademoiselle Saget was a customer of his, she had run into him walking into the prefecture to give his report. It was also asserted that he was a money-grubber, a usurer, and lent petty cash by the day to grocers and hired carts out to them, all at scandalous interest rates.

Florent was deeply shaken. That very evening in a low voice he whispered to the others what he had heard. They shrugged and laughed.

“Poor Florent,” said Charvet a little maliciously. “Because he was in Cayenne he imagines the entire police force dogging his heels.”

Gavard swore on his word of honor that Lebigre was “good and true.” But Logre was angry. His chair creaked as he babbled agitatedly that it was not possible to go on like this. If everyone was going to be accused of being with the police, he would rather just stay home and forget about politics. He reminded them that even he had once been accused of being mixed up with the police, he who had fought in both '48 and '51 and had twice escaped deportation only narrowly. As he proclaimed all this he stared at the others, his jaw jutting forward as though he wanted to hammer them with his conviction that he was not working for the police. Under his angry glare the others made gestures of protest. But when Lacaille heard Monsieur Lebigre accused of usury, he silently lowered his head.

The discussion continued, and the incident was forgotten. Ever since Logre had called for a conspiracy, Monsieur Lebigre had been particularly friendly to the regulars in his little room. The truth was that he didn't make much money from them because they never ordered more than one round of drinks. When they were ready to leave, they drank the last drops, having been careful even in the throes of the most heated political and sociological debates to make sure that they never completely emptied their glasses.

Farewells, in the damp night, were done with a great deal of shivering. They lingered a moment on the sidewalk, eyes burning and ears deafened, as though taken aback by the darkness of the street. Behind them Rose was putting up the shutters. After each one had shaken everyone's hands, exhausted and unable to find one more word to say, they went their separate ways, still chewing over the debate and regretting that they had not been able to do a better job of jamming their own beliefs down the others' throats. The rounded shoulders of Robine vanished in the direction of rue Rambuteau, while Charvet and Clémence went side by side along the market to the Luxembourg Gardens, their heels ringing out a martial beat, continuing to discuss some point of politics or philosophy and never taking each other by the arm.

The plot slowly ripened. At the beginning of summer they had only agreed that they should attempt to strike a blow. Florent, who at the beginning had approached the plot with mistrust, ended up believing in the possibility of a revolutionary movement. He took it all very seriously, taking notes, making written plans. The others just talked. Little by little he focused his whole life on this one idea, and he battered his brain with it every evening. He even took Quenu with him to Monsieur Lebigre's, doing it as though this were the most natural thing in the world to do. He still treated him like his student and tried to guide him in the right direction.

Quenu was completely new to politics. But after five or six evenings, he was agreeing with them. He was docile and, if Lisa was not present, showed great respect for his brother's ideas. But what appealed to him most was the bourgeois debauchery of walking out of his charcuterie and shutting himself up in a small room of shouting men, and the presence of Clémence provided a forbidden and delicious undertone. Now he would hurry through his andouille to get there sooner, not wanting to miss a single word of argument that seemed to him deep, even though he was sometimes unable to follow it. Beautiful Lisa was quick to notice his hasty departures, but she said nothing. When Florent led him off, she would stand in the doorway, slightly pale, a stern look in her eyes, and watch them go off to Monsieur Lebigre's.

One evening Mademoiselle Saget looked out the casement window of her garret and recognized the shadow of Quenu on the frosted glass of the tall window on rue Pirouette. She had found herself an excellent observation post. She faced the milky glass window on which the gaslight showed the silhouettes of the men with their sharp noses, the sudden thrusts of their jaws, huge arms stretching out with no sign of a body attached. This unexpected dislocation of limbs, the silent angry profiles, betrayed to the outside world the ferocity of the discussions in the little room. It riveted the attention of Mademoiselle Saget behind her muslin curtain until the transparency turned black. She suspected that something was amiss. By studying carefully, she had come to recognize the various shadows of hands and hair and clothes. As she observed the bedlam of clenched fists, enraged heads, and swaying shoulders, they seemed to have become detached, bobbing around one on top of the other. She would shout, “Oh, there's that big dodo of a cousin, there's that cheapskate Gavard, there's the hunchback, there's that maypole Clémence.”

Then, when the shadows became more lively and they all seemed to have lost their self-control, she felt an irresistible urge to go downstairs and take a look. So she bought her black-currant liqueur at night, claiming that she was feeling under the weather and needed to have a few sips to get out of bed in the morning. The evening that she identified Quenu's giant head crossed by the nervous thrusts of Charvet's skinny arm, she showed up at Monsieur Lebigre's out of breath. Stalling for time, she made Rose rinse out her bottle but was finally about to return to her room when she heard the voice of the charcutier say with naive candor, “No, we won't take it anymore. With one blow we'll drive them all out, that gang of clowns, the deputies and the ministers, at last send them all running.”

The next day Mademoiselle Saget was at the charcuterie at eight o'clock sharp. There she found Madame Lecœur and La Sarriette, their noses diving into the heating stove as they bought warmed sausages for their lunch. Since the old woman had dragged them into the feud with the Beautiful Norman over the ten sous' worth of dabs, they had befriended Beautiful Lisa again. Now that fishmonger wasn't worth a brick of butter. And they derided the Méhudins as worthless girls who were interested only in men's money. The truth was that Mademoiselle Saget had let Madame Lecœur believe that Florent sometimes shared the Beautiful Norman and her sister with Gavard and that the four of them had nighttime orgies at Baratte's, arranged at the poultry dealer's expense. Madame Lecœur was visibly upset, her eyes yellow and watery.

That morning it was Madame Quenu the old girl was aiming for. She looked around the counter, and then, in a sweet voice, she murmured, “I saw Monsieur Quenu last night. I must say, they seem to enjoy themselves in that little room. They certainly make noise.”

Lisa had turned toward the street, listening carefully but trying not to show it. Mademoiselle Saget paused, hoping for a question. Then, lowering her voice, she added, “They had a woman with them. Oh, I don't mean Monsieur Quenu. I'm not saying that, I don't know …”

“It's Clémence,” La Sarriette interrupted. “A cold fish who puts on airs because she went to boarding school. She lives with a shabby-looking teacher. I've seen them together. They always look like they're turning each other in to the police.”

“I know, I know,” said the old woman, who knew both Charvet and Clémence well and was only trying to upset Lisa.

But Lisa did not flinch. She gave the impression that she was watching something tremendously interesting in the market. So the old woman had to use more drastic means. She turned to Madame Lecœur. “I want to tell you that you would be wise to advise your brother-in-law to be more careful. They shout alarming things in that room. Men aren't rational once they start on politics. If they were overheard, it could be very bad for them.”

“Gavard does what he wants,” sighed Madame Lecœur. “He doesn't worry about it. But I will die of worry if he is ever thrown in prison.” And a spark shot out of her foggy eyes.

La Sarriette laughed, shaking her head, her little face as fresh as the morning air. “Jules is the one,” she said, “who takes care of anyone who says anything bad about the empire. They should all be thrown in the Seine, because, as he explained it to me, there isn't one good man among them.”

“Oh,” said Mademoiselle Saget, “it doesn't do any harm if an imprudent remark is overheard by someone like me. I'd sooner have my hand cut off. You know that. For example, last night Monsieur Quenu was saying …”

She stopped again, detecting a slight movement in Lisa.

“Monsieur Quenu was saying that the deputies and ministers, the whole gang, ought to be shot.”

This time Lisa turned abruptly, her face turned white, her hands gripping her apron. “Quenu said that?” she asked curtly.

“And other things that I don't remember. You understand, it was just me who heard them. No need to worry about it, Madame Quenu. You know that with me nothing goes any further. I'm old enough to understand the harm that could be done if something like that got out. It stays between us.”

Lisa regained her equilibrium. She took pride in a happy home, and she would not acknowledge the least shadow of a disagreement between herself and her husband. She just shrugged her shoulders and said with a smile, “Silly stories for children.”

As soon as the three women were out on the sidewalk, they all agreed that Beautiful Lisa had looked peculiar. This whole business with the cousin, the Méhudins, Gavard, Quenu, and their stories, which no one understood, was all going to end badly. Madame Lecœur asked what they did to people who were arrested for their politics. All Mademoiselle Saget knew was that they were never seen again, never. This led La Sarriette to say that they were probably thrown into the Seine, just as Jules had told her. At the charcuterie, during both lunch and dinner, Lisa avoided any reference to the matter. In the evening, when Florent and Quenu started off for Monsieur Lebigre's, she seemed to have lost the hard look in her eyes. It happened that this same evening, the question of the new constitution was being discussed, and it was one in the morning before the debaters managed to leave the little room. The shutters were already in place, and they had to exit by a small door, ducking down one at a time to clear the door frame.

Quenu returned home with a troubled conscience. He opened the three or four doors on the way to his bedroom as quietly as he could. He tiptoed across the living room with his arms stretched out to avoid bumping into furniture.

Everyone was asleep. When he reached the bedroom, he was annoyed to find that Lisa had left the candle burning. It burned in silence, with a tall, sullen flame. As Quenu slipped off his shoes and placed them on a corner of the rug, the clock struck half past one with such a clear ring that he turned in panic, almost afraid to move, and saw, glaring with a look of reproach, the gilded Gutenberg standing there with his finger on a book.

He could see only Lisa's back. Her head was buried in a pillow. But he could sense that she was not asleep, and her eyes were probably wide open, staring at the wall. Her broad back, chubby at the shoulders, was pale and smooth. He exhaled and remained motionless, aware of the accusation for which he had no response.

Unnerved by the back that seemed to accuse him with the somber face of a judge, he slipped under the covers, blew out the candle, and lay motionless. He lay at the edge of the bed to avoid touching his wife. He could have sworn that she was awake. Then he slipped into sleep, in despair over her silence and not even daring to say “good night.” He was pinned helplessly against this massive back, which blocked his apologies from crossing to the other side of the bed.

He slept late the next morning. When he woke up, he was spread across the middle of the bed, the eiderdown comforter pulled up to his chin. He saw Lisa sitting at the desk, putting papers in order. In the deep sleep brought on by the previous night's debauch, he had not stirred when she got up. He mustered the courage to speak from the depth of the alcove. “Well! Why didn't you wake me up? What are you doing?”

“I'm organizing these drawers,” she said calmly in her ordinary voice.

He felt relieved. But Lisa added, “You never know what will happen. If the police were to come …”

“The police? Why the police?”

“Why not, since you have become political.”

He sat straight up in bed, completely thrown by this harsh, unforeseen attack.

“I've become political? All right, I've become political. But it doesn't have anything to do with the police. I'm not in any trouble.”

“Oh no,” Lisa answered, shrugging her shoulders. “You just talk about having everyone shot.”

“Me! Me!”

“And you shout this at a wine shop … Mademoiselle Saget heard you. Now the whole neighborhood knows you're a red.”

He lay back in the bed. He was not yet awake. Lisa's words echoed back from the door of the bedroom, as though he were already hearing the stamping of policemen's boots. He studied her, enclosed in her corset, her hair done, her usual circumspect self, and was even more thrown by finding her so carefully composed for such a dramatic moment.

“You know,” she said, “I leave you free to do what you want.” She went on arranging her papers and, after a pause, continued, “I don't want to wear the pants, as the saying goes. You're the master of your household. You can put us in danger, damage our credit, ruin us … As for me, I only look after Pauline's interests.”

He started to protest, but she cut him off with a hand gesture. “I'm not saying a thing. I'm not starting an argument or even asking for an explanation. If only you had asked my advice, if we had talked about it together. It's wrong to think that women don't understand politics … Do you want to know what I think, what my politics are?”

She stood up and walked from the bed to the window, removing specks of dust with her finger from the polished mahogany armoire and the dressing table. “It's the politics of respectable people. I support the government when my business is going well, when I can earn my living peacefully, and when I can sleep undisturbed by gunshots. That was a fine time in '48, wasn't it? Uncle Gradelle, a good man, showed us his books for that period. He lost more than six thousand francs … Now that we have the empire, everything's going well, business is prospering. You can't say that it's not. So what do you want? What more will you have after you have shot everyone?”

She stood with her hands folded in front of the night table opposite Quenu, who had disappeared under the quilt. He tried to explain what his colleagues wanted, but he stumbled over the political and social systems of Charvet and Florent. He spoke of little-understood principles, the advent of democracy, and the regeneration of societies, jumbling it all up in such a strange way that Lisa shrugged her shoulders without understanding. Finally he extricated himself by attacking the empire as a regime of debauchery, scandal, and armed robbery.

“You see,” he said, remembering a phrase used by Logre, “we're the victims of a gang of pirates who plunder, rape, and murder all of France … They have to go!”

Lisa still only shrugged.

“Is that all you have to say?” Lisa responded in her cold-blooded splendor. “What does that have to do with me, those things you're talking about? And even if they were true, what next? Am I urging you to be dishonest? Do I tell you not to pay your bills or to cheat the customers, and hoard ill-gotten money? You're going to make me mad! We're good people, and we don't plunder or murder anyone. That's enough. I don't care what others do. They can be as bad as they want.”

She was spectacular and triumphant. She started pacing the room again, puffing out her chest. “To please those who have nothing, are we supposed to give up earning a living? Of course I take advantage of every opportunity, and I support a government that's good for business. If they commit acts of evil, I don't want to know. As for me, I know that I don't commit them, and I have nothing to fear from finger-pointing in the neighborhood. It's just too stupid to be charging at windmills. Remember during the elections Gavard said that the emperor's candidate had gone into bankruptcy and was involved in all kinds of unsavory affairs? That might have been true, I'm not saying it wasn't. But still you voted for him, and you were right to do so because that wasn't the point. You weren't being asked to go into business with him or lend him money but to show the government that you were happy to see the charcuterie prospering.”

Meanwhile Quenu remembered another phrase, this time from Charvet, who had declared that “The bloated bourgeoisie, the fattened shopkeepers who support government by gluttony, should be the first to be taken to the wall.” It was thanks to them, thanks to their selfish worship of the belly, that despotism had seized hold of the nation. He was trying to get to the end of the statement when Lisa cut him off, full of indignation.

“Enough of this. My conscience is not troubled. I don't owe one sou, I'm not involved in any swindles, I buy and sell good merchandise, I don't charge any more than my neighbors. What you say may apply to our cousins, the Saccards. They pretend not to even know that I'm in Paris, but I have more pride than they have, and I don't care about all their millions. They say that Saccard is involved in destroying other businesses, that he steals from everyone. That wouldn't surprise me, he was already headed that way. He loves money so much he wants to roll around in it, throw it out the window like an idiot. I agree with criticizing people like that, who build up fortunes that are too large. That I understand. Personally, if you want to know, I have little regard for Saccard. But we who live quietly, working fifteen years to make a comfortable living, never getting involved in politics, wanting only to raise our daughter in peace and have our business prosper—you must be joking. We're honest people.”

She came and sat on the edge of the bed. Quenu was shaken.

“Listen to me carefully,” she said in a deeper voice. “You don't want, I imagine, to have your shop raided, your cellar cleaned out, your money stolen? If those men at Monsieur Lebigre's won, do you think that the next day you would be warmly snuggled in your bed the way you are now? And when you went down to the kitchen, do you think you would merrily start making your galantines like you will in a few minutes? No, you wouldn't, would you? So why do you talk about overthrowing the government that protects you and lets you prosper? You have a wife and a daughter. You should put them first. You would be to blame if you risked their well-being. It's only the people without hearth and home, with nothing to lose, who want the shooting to start. You don't want to be anyone's clown, do you? Then stay home, you big dope, sleep well, eat well, make money, keep a pure conscience, and let France work out her own problems, even if she is troubled by the empire. France does not need you!”

Then she laughed a lovely laugh, and Quenu was completely convinced. She was right, after all, and she was a beautiful woman, sitting on the edge of the bed, even so early in the morning, so clean and fresh and crisp in her white linen. While listening to her, his eyes fell upon their portraits on either side of the fireplace. Of course they were honest people. They had an aura of respectability, dressed in black and framed in gold. The bedroom too was the room of notable people. The lacy antimacassars gave the chairs an air of respectability. The rug, the curtains, the porcelain vases with country scenes bespoke their hard work and their taste for a good life. He wriggled deeper under the quilt, where he warmed himself as though taking a hot bath. It seemed to him that he had barely escaped losing all of this at Monsieur Lebigre's—his huge bed, his cozy bedroom, his charcuterie, to which his thoughts now returned with a sense of remorse. And from Lisa, from all the lovely things around her, arose a suffocating—but pleasant—sense of well-being.

“What a fool,” said his wife, seeing that she had won the argument. “Look at the path you were taking. But you see, you could have gone down that road only by trampling us, Pauline and me. Now, don't worry about judging the government. In the first place, all governments are the same. If you don't support one, you end up supporting another. It's inescapable. The main thing, when you grow old, is to spend your earnings in peace, with the knowledge that you came by the money honestly.”

Quenu nodded in approval. He wanted to explain himself. “It was Gavard …”

But she became serious and abruptly interrupted him. “No, it isn't Gavard. I know who it is. And he would do well to look after his own safety before compromising the security of others.”

“Are you talking about Florent?” Quenu timidly asked after a long pause.

She did not respond right away. She got up and turned to her desk, as though trying to control herself. Then in a clear voice she said, “Yes, Florent. You know how patient I am. I wouldn't make trouble between you and your brother for anything in the world. Family ties are sacred. But I have come to the end of my rope. Since he came here, things have steadily gotten worse. Besides … no, I won't say any more. I better not.”

Silence fell again. Then, while her husband stared at the ceiling in embarrassment, she continued more aggressively, “The truth is that he seems not to understand how much we've done for him. We've put ourselves out for him. We gave him Augustine's bedroom, and the poor girl sleeps in a stuffy closet without a complaint. We feed him morning and night and look after his every need. But no, he just takes it all as his due. He earns money, but no one knows what he does with it—or rather, everyone knows all too well.”

“He's entitled to a share of the inheritance,” Quenu hazarded. It was painful for him to hear his brother attacked.

Lisa suddenly turned straight as a pole as though jolted, and her anger left. “You're right, the inheritance. There's the account in that drawer. He didn't want it. You were there, don't you remember? That alone proves that he is both aimless and brainless. If he had anything going on in his head, he would have done something with that money by now. If it were up to me, I would not still have it, I would gladly be rid of it. I've told him so twice, but he refuses to listen to me. You ought to talk to him about it.”

Quenu responded with a grunt. Lisa, believing she had done what she had to, did not press him further.

“No, he's not like other men,” she started up again. “He's not a comfortable person to have around. I wouldn't have said this if you hadn't brought it up. I don't concern myself about his conduct even though it causes the entire neighborhood to gossip about us. The fact that he eats and sleeps here doesn't bother me. I can accept it. What I cannot tolerate is him dragging us into his politics. If he tries to lead you astray again or in any way put us in danger, I'm warning you, I'll get rid of him. I'm warning you, you understand!”

Florent had been denounced. It was with great effort that she restrained herself, holding back her rancor. Florent and his ways irritated her every instinct. He wounded her, scared her, and made her unhappy.

“This is the disreputable record of a man who has never managed to make a home. I understand why he wants to hear gunshots. He can go stand in their path for all I care, but let him leave decent folk and their families alone. Then too, I just don't like him. At night at the table he smells of fish. I can't eat my food. He, on the other hand, never skips a bite, for all the good it does him. His bad instincts feed on him so that he can't even gain a few pounds.”

While she was speaking, she went to the window. And now she saw Florent crossing rue Rambuteau on his way to the fish market. A huge shipment of fish had arrived that morning. Baskets were filled with rippling silver, and the auction room roared with the commotion of selling it all. Lisa kept her eyes fixed on her brother-in-law's bony shoulders as he made his way through the overwhelming smells of the market, stooped by the nauseating odors. Her stare as she followed his steps was that of a fighter ready for combat and determined to win.

When she turned around, Quenu was getting up. Still warm from the pleasant shelter of the quilt, he sat at the edge of his bed in his nightshirt, his feet resting on the fluffy rug. He looked pale and upset by the misunderstanding between his wife and brother. But Lisa gave him one of her loveliest smiles. And he was moved when she handed him his sock.

CHAPTER FOUR

Marjolin had been found at the Marché des Innocents asleep on a pile of cabbages under an enormous white cabbage whose broad leaves had flopped over, hiding his rosy face. No one knew whose wretched hands had placed him there. He was already a sweet little boy of two or three when he was found, chubby and full of life, but so backward, so slow, that he barely managed a few words. All he could do was smile. When a vegetable seller found him underneath the big white cabbage, she let out a shriek that was so loud, her neighbors rushed over to see what was wrong and watched with wonder as the child, still in baby clothes and wrapped in a scrap of old blanket, reached out his arms to embrace her.

He wasn't able to say who his mother was. His eyes were wide with astonishment as he clung to the shoulder of the tripe merchant who had picked him up. He was the focus of the market until nightfall. He felt reassured and ate buttered bread, and he smiled for all the women. The hefty tripe seller took him for a while, then gave him to a neighbor, and a month later a third woman took him in.

When someone asked, “Where's your mama?” he would make an adorable gesture, a sweep of his hand that included every woman in sight. He was a child of the market, always clinging to the skirts of one woman or another, eating where he found a meal, clothed by the grace of God, and somehow he always had a few sous in the bottom of his threadbare pocket. A handsome redheaded girl who sold medicinal plants named him Marjolin, though no one knew why.

When Marjolin was nearly four years old, Mère Chantemesse happened to find a child, a little girl, on the sidewalk of rue Saint-Denis by the corner of the market. The little thing looked to be about two years old. She was already chattering like a magpie, strangling words in her incessant childish babble. But Mère Chantemesse was able to glean that her name was Cadine and that her mother had left her sitting in a doorway the night before with instructions to wait for her return.

The child had slept there and did not cry. She said that she had been beaten at home, and she seemed happy to follow Mère Chantemesse, enchanted by the large square full of so many people and so many vegetables. Mère Chantemesse, who sold retail, was a kind old witch, nearly sixty years old. She loved children and had lost three boys of her own when they were babies. She thought, “This little character is far too tough to die on me.” So she adopted Cadine.

But one evening, as Mère Chantemesse was leaving, holding Cadine's right hand, Marjolin came up and unceremoniously took the little girl's left hand.

“Well, young fellow,” said the old woman, stopping. “This place is taken. Have you given up Thérèse? You're getting a reputation as a flirt, you know.”

The boy looked at her, smiling and not letting go of the girl's hand. But he looked so pretty with his curly hair that she couldn't remain stern. “Well, come along then, you little rascal. I'll put you to bed too.”

And so she arrived at rue au Lard, where she lived, with a child in each hand. Marjolin made himself at home at Mère Chantemesse's. She smacked the two children when they got too noisy. She delighted in having them to shout at and get angry with and tuck into bed beneath the blankets. She had made them a little bed in an old street vendor's wheelbarrow with the wheels missing. It resembled a big cradle, a little bit hard and still smelling of vegetables that had long been stored there, cool and fresh under a damp cloth. And there, only four years old, Marjolin and Cadine slept in each other's arms.

They grew up together, always seen with their arms around each other's waists. At night Mère Chantemesse would hear them chatting softly. For hours Marjolin listened with gasps of astonishment to endless tales told in Cadine's melodious voice. She was very mischievous, inventing stories to scare him, telling him that the other night she had seen a man all in white at the foot of their bed staring at them and sticking out a large red tongue. Marjolin, breaking into a sweat, asked for details. Then she laughed at him, calling him a “big dodo.”

Other times they were silly and kicked each other under the bedding, Cadine snickering as she pulled her legs up to her chest so that Marjolin, striking with all his might, missed her and struck the wall. When that happened, Mère Chantemesse had to go and straighten out the covers, sending them both off to sleep with little smacks around the ears.

For a long time their bed was a playground. They took their toys into it along with stolen carrots and turnips. Every morning their adopted mother was surprised to find various strange objects there, including stones, leaves, apple cores, and dolls made of rags. On the most bitterly cold days, she would leave them there sleeping all day, Cadine's shock of black hair mingled with Marjolin's blond curls, their mouths so close to each other that they seemed to keep each other warm with their breath.

This room on rue au Lard was a big, shabby attic with only one window, which was clouded with rain spots. The children played hide-and-seek in the tall walnut wardrobe and under Mère Chantemesse's colossal bed. There were also several tables under which they would crawl on all fours. There was a charm to the place, dimly lit, its dark corners littered with vegetables.

Rue au Lard was also fun. It was a narrow street with little traffic and a large arcade that opened onto rue de la Lingerie. Their house was actually right next to the arcade with a low doorway and a door that only half opened to show the greasy steps of a winding staircase. This gabled house, which swelled outward at every story stained dark with dampness and adorned with greenish casing around the drainpipes, was, to them, one more huge toy.

Cadine and Marjolin spent their mornings tossing stones up into the gutters and listening to the happy clanking as they fell down the drainpipes. But they broke two windows and clogged the gutters with rocks, so that Mère Chantemesse, who had lived in the building for forty-three years, was nearly thrown out.

Then Cadine and Marjolin moved on to the delivery vans, pushcarts, and wagons parked on the deserted street. They climbed on the wheels, balanced on the chains, and gallivanted among the piles of boxes and hampers. This was also the back lot of the commissioners on rue de la Poterie, opening onto huge, somber storage rooms that smelled of dried fruit, oranges, and fresh apples. When they had enough of all this, they went off to find Mère Chantemesse in the Marché des Innocents.

They arrived there arm in arm, laughing as they crossed the streets through the traffic without the least fear of being run over. They knew the pavement well, burying their little legs up to the knees in vegetable refuse but never slipping. They made fun of the heavy-booted porters who would slip on an artichoke stem and be sent sprawling on the ground. They were rosy-cheeked elves, habitués of the slimy streets, and they were seen everywhere.

When it rained, they walked somberly under a tattered parasol that had shaded Mère Chantemesse's stall for twenty years. Planting it at a corner of the market, they called it their house.

On sunny days they galloped with so much energy that by the end of the day they could barely move. They bathed their feet in the fountain, dammed up the gutters, hid themselves in piles of vegetables, and stayed there chatting away, just as they did in bed at night. People passing a huge pile of smooth-leaved lettuce or romaine often heard their muffled chitchat. And when the greens were removed, the two children would be revealed lying side by side on their salad couch, eyes glistening nervously like those of birds caught in a bush.

By this time Cadine could not bear to be without Marjolin and Marjolin cried if he was apart from Cadine. If they became separated, they looked for each other behind every vendor's skirt, behind every box, under every cabbage. It was most especially under the cabbage that they grew up and where they came to love each other.

When Marjolin was nearly eight and Cadine six, Mère Chantemesse started scolding them for their laziness. She told them that she would take them into her vegetable business and pay them a sou a day if they would trim the vegetables. At first the children were very enthusiastic. They set up on either side of the big basket, with slender knives and eagerly worked away. Mère Chantemesse specialized in peeled and trimmed vegetables. On a table spread with a damp black wool cloth, she lined up potatoes, turnips, carrots, and white onions, arranged in pyramids, three at the base and one on top, all ready to be tossed into the pot of a busy household. She also had bundles tied with string for pot-au-feu[1]— four leeks, three carrots, one parsnip, two turnips, two ribs of celery. There were also thinly chopped vegetables laid out on sheets of paper, and quartered cabbages, piles of tomatoes, and slices of pumpkin looking like red stars and gold crescents next to all the other pale vegetables washed in running water.

Cadine proved to be much more skillful than Marjolin, even though she was younger. She could cut such a thin peel from a potato that you could see daylight through it. She tied the pot-au-feu bundles so prettily that they looked like bouquets of flowers. And she knew how to make a pile of vegetables look large even though it contained only three carrots and three turnips. Passersby would stop and laugh when she called out in her little waif's voice, “Madame, Madame, come over here. Only two sous a pile.”

She had her regulars, and her little piles were well known. Mère Chantemesse, seated between the two children, laughed a private laugh that made her bosom rise almost to her chin, to see them working away with such earnestness. She religiously paid them their daily sou. But in the end they grew bored with making the little pyramids. They were growing up and looking for more lucrative work. Marjolin remained a child for a long time, which tried Cadine's patience. “He has the brains of a cabbage,” she would say. And, if truth be told, it was pointless for her to come up with a money-earning plan for him, as he never earned any. He could not even do a simple errand. But she was extremely shrewd. When she was eight, she was hired by one of the women who sat on a bench in the Les Halles neighborhood with a basket of lemons and enlisted street children to work the area, hawking them. She held the lemons in her hands, selling them two for a sou, running after passersby shoving the merchandise under women's noses. When her hands were empty, she hurried back for more. She earned two sous for every dozen lemons she sold, and in good weather she could earn five or six sous a day.

The following year she sold bonnets for nine sous, which was an even better business except that she had to be on her guard because that kind of street vending was illegal without a license. But she could smell the police a hundred steps away, and the bonnets vanished under her skirts while she nonchalantly munched on an apple.

Then she started selling cakes, cookies, cherry tarts, almond croquets, little corn cakes, thick and yellow, on wicker trays. But Marjolin ate most of her inventory.

Finally, at the age of eleven, she carried out the big idea that she had long contemplated. She saved up four francs in two months' time and with it bought a basket to carry on her back, and she started selling chickweed.[2]

This was a lucrative business. She got up early in the morning and bought chickweed from the wholesalers—birdseed on stalks and seed cakes. Then she set out, crossing the river, touring the Latin Quarter from rue Saint-Jacques to rue Dauphine up to the Luxembourg Gardens. Marjolin went with her. She did not want him even to carry the basket. She said he was fit only to call out, so he shouted in his thick drawl, “Chickweed for the li'l birdies!”

Then Cadine, her voice melodious as a flute, would take up the call in a strange musical passage ending on a clear deep note, “Chickweed for the li'l birdies.”

They took to opposite sides of the street, both looking up in the air. At the time Marjolin had an oversize red jacket that went down to his knees. It had belonged to the late Monsieur Chantemesse, a cabdriver. Cadine wore a blue-and-white plaid dress, made from an old skirt belonging to Mère Chantemesse.

They were known to every canary in every garret of the Latin Quarter. As they passed by, repeating their call, all the cages started singing.

Cadine also sold watercress. “Two sous a bunch! Two sous a bunch!” Marjolin would run into the shops and offer “beautiful watercress, good for your health.”

The central market had just been built, and the two would stand and stare awestruck at the lane of flower vendors that ran through the fruit pavilion. There on both sides along the market stalls, like the edges of a garden, blossoms burst in huge bouquets. It was a perfumed harvest, a double hedge of roses, through which the neighborhood girls loved to pass, smiling, faint from the overpowering fragrance, with shelves of artificial flowers above, paper flowers with drops of glue that looked like dew, funeral wreaths with black and white pearly beads that gave off a bluish glow. Cadine widened her rosy nostrils with the sensuousness of a cat, stopping in the sweet air and soaking up all she could from the perfume. When Marjolin caught a scent of her hair, he would say that it smelled of carnations. She claimed that she no longer needed to use anything for her hair, she had only to pass down that alley.

She managed to land a job working for a flower vendor. Once she started the new job, Marjolin found that she had the most wonderful smell from head to toe. She lived among the roses, the lilacs, the lilies of the valley. He would playfully sniff at her skirts, pretending to reflect deeply, and finally pronounce, “Ah, yes, lily of the valley.”

Then he would rise to her waist, sniff even harder, and declare, “This smells of wallflowers.”

Then, at her sleeves and her wrists, “And this smells of lilacs.”

At the back of her neck and at her throat, her cheeks, her lips— “That smells of roses.”

Cadine laughed and called him a dodo, and cried out for him to stop because the tip of his nose tickled her. Her breath smelled of jasmine. She was a warm, living bouquet.

Now the young girl got up at four in the morning to help her employer with the purchases. Every morning they went to suburban gardens to buy armfuls of flowers, packages of moss, and bunches of ferns and periwinkle branches with which to surround bouquets. Cadine was enthralled by the daughters of the wholesale gardeners of Montreuil, with their jewels and lace, surrounded by bouquets.

On the most popular saints' days—Mary, Peter, and Joseph— sales started at two o'clock. More than a hundred thousand francs in cut flowers were sold on the street, and a vendor could make two hundred francs in a few hours. On those days all that could be seen of Cadine was a frizz of hair above the bouquets of pansies, mignonettes, and daisies. She was drowned, lost under the flowers. All day long she was hanging flower arrangements on bamboo sticks.

In only a few weeks she had mastered a skill with her own graceful style. Her bouquets did not suit everyone's tastes. They could make you smile, or they could upset you with an unintended savageness. Reds dominated, mingled with blues, yellows, and purples, creating a barbarous charm.

On mornings when she pinched Marjolin, teased him to the brink of tears, she made ferocious bouquets, the bouquets of an angry girl, with strong perfumes and garish colors. Other mornings, when she felt sad or joyful, her bouquets showed silvery gray, subtle with a soft perfume. Other times she used roses, bloody as a heart slashed open, swimming in a lake of white carnations with irises sticking out wildly like flames among the greens, like a Smyrna carpet with a complicated pattern created flower by flower, like painting a canvas, spreading out with the delicacy of lace. There would be a bouquet of an engaging purity, then a plump nosegay, whatever could be dreamed of, for the hand of a fish seller or a marquise, the awkwardness of a virgin and the sensuality of a girl. In other words, her bouquets revealed all the endearing and quaint fantasies of a twelve-year-old girl in whom womanhood was dawning.

There were only two flowers that Cadine respected: white lilacs, which in winter cost fifteen to twenty francs for a bunch of eight or ten branches, and camellias, which were even more expensive and came in boxes of a dozen on a bed of moss covered with cotton wool. She handled them the way you would handle jewels, gingerly, without breathing, afraid of wilting them with a sigh, and with painstaking care attached their short stems to bamboo sticks. She spoke of them with great gravity.

She told Marjolin that a good white camellia, without any rust spots, was a rare and beautiful thing. One day she held one up for him to admire, and he said, “Yes, that's nice, but I would rather have that spot under your chin there, right there. It's prettier and more delicate than your camellia. The blue and pink veins are like the veins in a flower petal.”

Then he touched her with his fingertip and sniffed her. “Funny. Today you smell of orange blossoms.”

Cadine had a difficult personality. She was not suited for the role of employee. Finally she managed to set up her own business. She was then only thirteen years old and couldn't even dream of having a large-scale enterprise such as her own stall along the flower alley. So she sold bouquets of violets for a sou apiece, which she displayed on a bed of moss in a bamboo tray that hung from her neck. She wandered all day in Les Halles and the neighborhood, carrying her little garden.

That was her joy this perpetual roaming, which exercised her legs after the long hours sitting on a low chair with her knees folded, making bouquets. Now she could bunch her violets as she walked, wrapping them in her fingers with incredible dexterity, counting out six or eight flowers depending on the season, adding a leaf, wrapping a string around it, then cutting the string with her sharp little teeth. She performed this trick so rapidly that the little bouquets seemed to grow on their own out of the moss on the tray. Along the streets, amid the bustling crowds, her swift fingers sprouted flowers without her even glancing at them. Her face was instead raised defiantly, surveying the shops and the passing people.

Occasionally she rested in the shelter of a doorway. There she would bring to the rushing gutters, greasy with dishwater, a touch of spring and blue-flowered woods. Her bouquets reflected her bad moods and her soft moments, some shaggy and prickly, wrapped angrily in an untidy paper cone, others peaceful and amorous, smiling from a crisp paper collar. Wherever she passed she left behind a sweet scent.

Marjolin followed her, mesmerized. Now she smelled of only one thing from head to foot. When he took hold of her and sniffed from her skirt to her bodice, from her hands to her face, he said that she was nothing but a violet, a huge and most lovely violet. He buried his face in her and repeated, “Remember the day we went to Romainville? It's all like that. Especially in your sleeve. Don't ever change work again. You smell too good.”

And she never did change. It was her final choice. But the two children were growing up. Often she neglected her tray of violets just to run around the neighborhood. The construction of Les Halles was an object of endless adventures. They climbed into the construction site through a crack in the wooden fencing. They climbed down into the excavations of the building foundations. And they scaled the first steel scaffolding to go up.

They left a little bit of themselves and their games in every hole that was dug and every structure that was raised. The market was built under their little hands. From this sprang an enduring affection for Les Halles, and the market returned their affection. They were intimate with the buildings, old friends whose every bolt they had seen driven in. They had no fear of the monster and patted its enormity with their skinny fists, treating it like a well-behaved child or a friend with whom they were comfortable. And Les Halles seemed to be smiling at these two ragamuffins, who were an ode to footloose freedom, an idyll that sprang from the market's great belly.

Cadine and Marjolin did not sleep together in the vegetable wagon at Mère Chantemesse's anymore. The old woman, who continued to hear them chattering into the night, made up a separate bed for the boy on the floor in front of the wardrobe. But the next morning she would find the boy back under the old covers. So she sent him to sleep with a neighbor. This made the two children extremely unhappy. During the day, when Mère Chantemesse wasn't there, they lay down fully dressed in each other's arms on the floor as though it were a bed, and there they had fun.

Later on they started misbehaving, seeking out the dark corners of the bedroom or, more often, hidden in the back of the shop on rue au Lard behind the apple pile and the orange crates. They were free and without shame, like sparrows mating on a rooftop.

It was in the basement of the poultry pavilion that they were able to sleep together. It was their special tradition, and finding a way to sleep against each other, the old way they had lost, made them feel warm. There by the slaughtering table and the big baskets of feathers, they could stretch out. As soon as night fell, they slipped in and stayed there all evening, warming themselves, happy in the softness of their bed, with down up to their eyes. They dragged their basket away from the gaslight. They were alone with the strong smell of poultry, awakened by the sudden crowing of roosters in the darkness. And they laughed and kissed, filled with an affection that they were not sure how to express.

Marjolin was very stupid. Cadine beat him, overcome with anger toward him but not knowing why. But with her street-savvy instincts, she was awakening him. Slowly, there in the basket of feathers, they came to know everything. It was a game. The hens and roosters lying next to them did not have a sweeter innocence.

Even later, they filled Les Halles with their love like insouciant sparrows. They lived like happy young animals, ruled by their instincts, satisfying their appetites in the midst of mountains of food, where they had grown like plants made of flesh and blood. At sixteen Cadine was a girl set free, a dark gypsy of the streets, gluttonous and sensual. At eighteen Marjolin was already showing signs of the fat man he would become, devoid of intelligence and living by instinct. Often at night Cadine would leave her bed to join him in the poultry cellar. The next day she would laugh brazenly at Mère Chantemesse, who would chase her around the room, missing with her broom handle, while Cadine mocked her and claimed she had stayed out “to see if the moon grew horns.”

As for Marjolin, he lived like a vagabond. The nights that Cadine left him alone he spent in the pavilions with the night watchmen. He slept in sacks or in crates or in any quiet corner he came across. Neither of them ever left Les Halles for more than a few moments. It was their perch, their stable, the colossal manger where they slept, loved, and lived on a huge bed of meat, butter, and vegetables.

But they always had a special place in their hearts for the big baskets of feathers. They returned there for nights of love. The feathers were completely unsorted. There were long black turkey feathers and goose plumes, white and slick, which tickled their ears when they turned over. They sank into duck down as though it were cotton wool. There were light hen feathers, golden and speckled, which rose in a cloud with each breath they exhaled, looking like a jumble of flies in the sunlight. In the winter they also slept in the purple of pheasants, the ashen gray of larks, in the silky plumage of grouse, quail, and thrushes.

The feathers seemed to still be alive, warm with their scent, and they brushed the children's lips with the quiver of wings and the warmth of a nest. To them, the feathers felt like the great broad back of an enormous bird on which they rested, which swept them away as they swooned in each other's arms.

In the morning, Marjolin looked for Cadine, lost at the bottom of the basket, as though buried in new-fallen snow. Disheveled, she climbed up, shook herself, emerging from a cloud. A few feathers always stuck to her bun.

They found another place for their pleasures, in the wholesale market for butter, eggs, and cheese. Every morning a wall of empty baskets formed there. The two would find a way through this wall to carve out a hiding place. As soon as they had built their room inside, they pulled in a basket to close it off. Then they were at home. They had a house. They could kiss without fear. And their great joke at everyone's expense was that only a thin wall of wicker separated them from the crowds of Les Halles, whose loud voices they heard all around them.

Often they burst into laughter when they heard some unsuspecting person stop only two steps away from them. They would make peepholes to take a look. When cherries were in season, Cadine would throw the pits at the heads of women who came their way. The terrified women could not figure out where the hail of cherry pits came from.

They also crept in the shadows of the cellars, knowing all the darkest corners, able to squeeze through the most carefully sealed gates. A favorite game was to penetrate through to the tracks of the underground railroad that was supposed to connect the cellars of the different pavilions one day. Already connections had been built and were ready to hook up. Cadine and Marjolin had found a loose plank of wood by the railway that they could move to slip in and out.

Once inside, they were cut off from the world, though they could still hear the feet of Paris walking around on the streets overhead. The lines stretched into avenues of deserted galleries, spotted with daylight through the steel grates and lit by gas in the darker parts. They wandered around as though it were their own private castle, certain that no one would disturb them, content in the rumbling silence, dank light, and subterranean privacy, where their chatty childish love took on the suggestion of melodrama.

From the neighboring cellars, fenced off by timbers, came all kinds of smells—the dull scent of vegetables, the pungent smell of fish, the overpowering rankness of cheese, the warm breath of poultry.

Between kisses they were inhaling nourishment, in the dark alcove where they passed hours lying across the rails. At other times, when the night was beautiful, the dawn clear, they would climb over the rooftops by means of ladders in the turrets at the corner of each pavilion. At the top they had a view of sprawling meadows of zinc, with pathways and open spaces, a vast expanse of flowing countryside ruled by them. They toured the square roofs of the market, following the outstretched roofs of the covered streets, climbing up and down the slopes, losing themselves in endless journeys. Then, bored with the foothills, they climbed even higher, ascending the iron ladders where Cadine's skirts fluttered like flags.

Then they ran along the second tier of roofs beneath the open heavens with nothing above them but the stars. All kinds of sounds rose up from the market, clattering, rumbling, and the distant roar of a storm in the night. At that height the morning breeze swept away the foul smells, the fetid breath of the awakening market. They would kiss each other along the gutters like sparrows pecking. The first rays of the sun set them aglow. Cadine laughed to be so high in the air, and her neck reflected iridescent tints like a dove's while Marjolin bent down to look at the streets still murky and dark, his hands clasping the zinc edge like the feet of a pigeon. When they came back to earth again, exuberant from their trip in the open air, they pretended they were returning from a trip to the country.

They met Claude Lantier in the tripe market. They had been going there every day, drawn by the taste of blood, the cruelty of street urchins titillated by the sight of severed heads. A rust-colored stream ran through the pavilion. They dipped the tips of their shoes in it and made dams with leaves, creating little bloody puddles. They were fascinated by the arrival of cartloads of offal, which stank even after thorough washing. They watched the unloading of bundles of sheeps' feet, which were piled on the ground like dirty paving stones; huge stiff tongues still bleeding where they had been ripped from the throat; and beef hearts, like huge church bells, unmounted and silent. But what most made them shudder with pleasure was the big baskets dripping blood, filled with sheeps' heads, their greasy horns and black muzzles and strips of wooly skin left hanging from bleeding flesh. They looked at these bloody hampers and imagined guillotines lopping off countless heads and throwing them into baskets.

They followed the baskets to the bottom of the cellar, watching them glide along the rails laid over the steps and listening to the wheezing cry made by the castors as the wagons went down. Below was exquisite horror. They entered into the scent of death, walked among dark, cloudy puddles that sometimes appeared to be lit by glowing purple eyes. The floor felt sticky on the soles of their shoes as they splashed through, revolted yet entranced by this horrifying muck. The gas jets had low flames like the batting lid of a bloodshot eye. Near the faucets, in the pale light that came through the grates, they came to the chopping blocks. Mesmerized, they watched the butchers, their aprons stiffened with gore, smashing sheeps' heads with mallets. They lingered for hours until all the baskets were empty, held rapt by the crack of bones, until the last tongue was torn out, the last brain knocked loose by blows to the skull. Sometimes a worker walked behind them, hosing down the cellar floor, the water bursting out with the rush of an open floodgate. But although the flood was so powerful that it wore away at the floor, it did not have the power to remove either the stain or the stench of blood.

Toward evening, between four and five, Cadine and Marjolin knew that they would run into Claude at the wholesale beef lung auction. He was always right there, standing where the tripe vendors parked their carts, amid a mob of men in blue work overalls and white aprons, being shoved and jostled, his ears splitting from voices bellowing out bids. But he never felt the jabs of their elbows; he stood in a peaceful stupor in front of the gigantic lungs hanging from the auction hooks.

He often told Cadine and Marjolin that this was the most beautiful sight in the world. The lungs were a gentle pink, gradually deepening in color down the length of the organs until the bottom was bordered in a brilliant crimson. Claude compared them to watered satin, unable to find any other way to describe the supple silkiness of the lengths of flesh, bunched in folds like the gathered skirts of dancers. He spoke of gauze and lace that revealed the thigh of a beautiful woman. When a ray of sunlight fell on the huge lungs and gave off a golden halo, Claude looked enraptured, as if he had seen a host of resplendently naked Grecian goddesses or perhaps fair ladies in their castles dressed in brocaded gowns.

The painter became a close friend of the two children. He was a great admirer of savage beauty and for a long time envisioned a large painting of Cadine and Marjolin as lovers wandering Les Halles amid the vegetables, the seafood, the meat. He would pose them seated on a bed of food, their arms embracing each other, exchanging an idyllic kiss. In this he saw an artistic manifesto, positivism in art,[3] a modern art that was completely experimental and materialistic, but also as satire, as a punch in the mouth of the old school. But for almost two years he constantly redid his sketches, never able to strike the exact right note. He must have torn up at least fifteen canvases.

He judged himself harshly for this failure, but he continued to spend his time with his two models, held by a kind of unrequited love for his unrealized painting. Often when he ran into them, wandering about in the afternoon, he would join them, drifting through the Les Halles neighborhood, killing off time with his hands jammed deep into his pockets, fascinated by the street life around him.

The three ambled together, dragging their heels and scuffling along the pavement, forcing passersby into the street. They inhaled the odors of Paris, their noses in the air. They could have recognized every corner with their eyes shut, just by the scent of alcohol of the wine merchants, the warm breath of bakeries and pastry makers, or the vague impression of fruit. They took long walks. They loved to cross the round hall of the grain market, a huge, weighty stone cage, past the white piles of sacks of flour, listening to the echo of their footsteps in the silent vault.

They had their favorite sections of the neighborhood streets, silent now, sad and dark as the edge of a ghost town—rue Babille, rue Sauval, rue des Deux-Ecus, rue de Viarmes, pale with powder from the many flour mills in the neighborhood but full of life at four o'clock, when the grain exchange was open. Usually this would be their point of departure. Slowly they meandered along rue Vauvilliers, stopping to look into cheap restaurants, laughing loudly at the large yellow number on a house with drawn shades. Where the street narrowed to rue Prouvaires, Claude squinted to examine, in front of him at the end of the covered street, beneath the facade of a building as large as a train station, a side door of Saint Eustache with its glass rosette and its two levels of arched windows. He announced, as though making a challenge, that all of medieval and Renaissance architecture could be found in the Les Halles neighborhood. Then, as they walked along the broad new streets rue du Pont-Neuf and rue des Halles, he explained to the two youths about modern life, the excellent pavement, high buildings, and luxurious shops. He expressed a hopeful belief that a new art would be coming soon and bemoaned his fear that he would never master it.

But Cadine and Marjolin preferred the peaceful, simple life of rue des Bourdonnais, where they could shoot marbles in the street and not worry about getting run over. The young girl nevertheless primped as she passed the wholesale hat and glove stores. At each door, bored young assistant salesmen with pens tucked behind their ears followed her with their eyes. These young people preferred what little of the old Paris was still standing, such as rue de la Poterie and rue de la Lingerie, with their potbellied houses, their shops full of butter, eggs, and cheese, or rue de la Ferronerie and rue de l'Aiguillerie, beautiful old streets from before, with their narrow hidden shops, and especially rue Courtalon, a squalid black alley that ran from place Sainte-Opportune to rue Saint-Denis, peppered along the way with fetid little passageways where they had carried on when they were younger.

Rue Saint-Denis took them to the candy gourmand zone. They grinned at candied apples, licorice sticks, prunes, and rock candy sold at grocery stores and pharmacies. Their meanderings always ended up in thoughts of treats, with the craving to gobble up with their eyes all of the window displays. For them the neighborhood was like a huge table set out before them, perpetual dessert time, and they longed to dip their fingers in it. They barely wasted a moment visiting the clusters of dilapidated hovels on rue Pirouette, rue de Mondétour, rue de la Petite-Truanderie, and rue de la Grande-Truanderie, where their interest was held only briefly by the snail center, the herbalist, the shacks where they sold tripe or liquors.

But in the middle of this foul-smelling neighborhood, there was also a soap factory that gave off a sweet perfume. Marjolin always stopped there and waited for someone to go in or come out so that he could catch a whiff of the air coming out the door. Then they returned quickly to rue Pierre-Lescot or rue Rambuteau. Cadine adored salt-cured food and stood admiring bundles of pickled herring, barrels of anchovies and capers, tubs of cornichons and olives with wooden spoons in them. The smell of vinegar tickled her throat deliciously The pungency of rolled cod and smoked salmon, salt pork and ham, the tartness of a basket of lemons, drew the tip of her tongue, moist and hungry, to her lips. But she also enjoyed the sight of cans of sardines, rising like elaborate metal sculptures amid the sacks and boxes.

Rue Montorgueil and rue Montmartre had even more attractive restaurants and grocery stores with wonderful smells always coming from them, lively displays of poultry and game, preserved foods at the doorways where crates were overflowing with yellow sauerkraut, tangled as old lace. On rue Coquillière they lost themselves in the aroma of truffles. There was a big food store that gave off such a fragrance into the street that Cadine and Marjolin, by closing their eyes, could imagine devouring exquisite things. It would upset Claude, who said it made him feel empty. He would go back to the grain market by way of rue Oblin, examining the lettuces sold in doorways and the kitchen crockery spread out on the pavement, leaving “the two barbarians” on the scent of truffles, the strongest scent in the neighborhood.

This was how their long walks went. When Cadine was walking around by herself with her bouquets of violets, she filled out the itinerary, going back to certain shops she particularly liked, especially the Taboureau bakery, of which an entire window was devoted to displaying cakes. She worked up and down rue de Turbigo, retracing her steps ten times so that she could pass by almond cakes, Saint-Honoré cakes, savarins, flans, fruit tarts, platters of babas,[4] éclairs, and cream puffs. She was especially taken with the pickling jars filled with cookies, macaroons, and madeleines. The bright bakery had large mirrors and marble and gilded ornaments, wrought-iron bread racks, and a second window where long glazed breads stood on one end on a crystal shelf, the other end leaning against a brass rod. When overcome by temptation, she would buy herself a brioche for a couple of sous.

There was another shop across from the square des Innocents that awakened the unrequited longings of her gluttonous searching. The shop specialized in meat turnovers. She would stop to reflect on the classic turnover but also pike turnovers and turnovers of foie gras and truffles. She would stand there motionless, dreaming of how someday she really must try one of them.

Cadine also had her vain moments and then she would imagine fantastic dresses that could be made for her from the window display at Fabriques de France, which adorned the pointe Saint-Eustache with great swaths of bright fabric, draped from the mezzanine to the street. Slightly hampered by her tray of violets among the women of Les Halles, who brushed their dirty aprons against her Sunday-bests of the future, she stroked the wools, the flannels, and the cottons, to make sure of the weave and suppleness of the material. She promised herself a flannel dress in vivid colors or a flowered cotton or a scarlet poplin. Sometimes she even chose from the windows displays. Among the draped fabrics set out by the window dresser, she would choose a soft pale silk in sky blue or apple green and imagine how she would look wearing it with pink ribbons.

In the evening she would stand in the glitter of the big jewelers on rue Montmartre. This harrowing street deafened her with its unending traffic and jostled her with its relentless wave of people. But nothing could make her move from her spot, and her eyes filled with the flaming splendor under the row of lamps in front of the shop. First there were the smooth bright white lights illuminating the silver: rows of watches and hanging chains, silverware displayed in crosses, cups and snuff boxes, napkin rings and combs, laid out on the shelves. She especially liked the silver thimbles, with their domes rising along the porcelain shelves, all covered by a glass dome. Then on the other side the amber glow of gold turned yellow in the mirrors. A panel of long chains hung like a curtain. Small ladies' watches draped over their boxes like fallen stars. Wedding rings were threaded on thin wire. Bracelets, brooches, and valuable jewels sparkled on the black velvet of their cases. Rings glowed with quick flames of blue, green, yellow, or mauve in their chubby square boxes, and all the shelves, in two or three rows, were arranged with earrings, crucifixes, medallions, decorating the glass cases with all the richness of an altar cloth. The reflection of such golden wealth shone out halfway across the street, as bright as sunshine.

To Cadine, there was something holy about this place displaying the emperor's treasures. She spent a long time staring at the kind of jewelry the fish vendors bought, carefully studying the price tag attached to each piece, written in large numbers. She decided on pear-shaped earrings made of artificial coral, dangling from golden roses.

One morning Claude happened upon her, mesmerized in front of a hairdresser's on rue Saint-Honoré. She was fraught with envy as she stared at the hair. High in the window hung manes and tails, unfastened plaits, cascading waves in three tiers, a flood of curls and silks with glowing red locks, thick blacks, and pale blonds, all the way to white hair for sexagenarian lovers. Lower in the window, discreet curls, tight ringlets, combed and scented locks and waves slept in cardboard boxes. In the middle of this picture, as if deep inside a chapel, under the fringe of springing curls, the bust of a woman was revolving. The woman wore a cherry red satin scarf fastened between her breasts with a copper brooch and a high bridal headdress adorned with orange blossom branches. She smiled with her doll mouth. Artificially long lashes stuck out stiffly from her light eyes. Her waxy cheeks and shoulders looked as though they had been smoked over gas. Cadine waited for her to come around again with that smile of hers, and her pleasure grew as the profile sharpened and the beautiful woman slowly turned from left to right.

Claude was indignant. He shook Cadine and demanded to know what she was doing in front of this trash, “this dead woman taken from a morgue.” He ranted against the nudity of the cadaver, the ugliness of this beauty, saying that women did not even wear their hair like that anymore.

But the little girl remained unconvinced and insisted that the woman was beautiful. Then, yanking herself away from the painter, who held her by one arm, and scratching her thicket of black hair with annoyance, she pointed out to him an enormous tail of red hair that had been torn from some sturdy, handsome horse and insisted that that was the kind of hair she wished for.

When all three of them—Claude, Cadine, Marjolin—went on their wanderings around Les Halles, they caught a glimpse of a steel giant at the end of every street. There were sudden glimpses at unexpected angles defining the horizon. Claude would turn around, especially on rue Montmartre after they had passed the church. Seen from a distance at the right angle, Les Halles filled him with enthusiasm. The broad arcade and a tall gaping doorway would appear and the pavilions crowded one on top of another with their two lines of roofs, their row of jalousies. It seemed that the profiles of houses and palaces had been superimposed to create an immense oriental metal structure, as delicate as the hanging gardens of Babylon, crisscrossed by descending terraces of roofs, passageways, and flying bridges.

They always went back to this, the city where they loved to roam, never straying more than a hundred yards from its center. They meandered back to the warm afternoon of Les Halles. Above, the shutters were closed, the blinds lowered. In the covered galleries, the air slept—an ash gray air with yellow stripes of sunlight cutting across it from the high windows. Soft sounds drifted through the market, the footsteps of busy pedestrians rang out from time to time from the pavement, while the porters, wearing their badges, sat in a row on the stone borders in the corners of the pavilions, taking off their heavy boots and tending their aching feet.

This was the peace of a colossus at rest, broken by the occasional cock's crow from out of the darkness of the poultry cellars. They would often go to see the wagons that came in the afternoon to collect the empty baskets and carry them back to the suppliers. The baskets, labeled with black letters and numbers, were piled into mountains in front of the pawnshops on rue Berger. The men built the piles systematically, and when a tower of baskets on a wagon was a story tall, the man on the ground balancing the baskets had to take a wide swing to toss them up to his coworker, who was perched on the top with his arms outstretched to catch them. Claude, who enjoyed displays of strength and dexterity, would spend hours watching the flight of wicker, laughing when an over-ambitious throw sent a basket soaring over the top and landing on the other side.

He also enjoyed the fruit market at the corner of rue Rambuteau and rue du Pont-Neuf, where a few of the vegetable merchants were based. Vegetables in the open air, spread out on tables covered with damp black cloth, delighted him. At four o'clock sunlight streamed across these patches of green, and he walked down the rows, pleased to take note of the different-colored faces of the vendors—the young women with their hair pulled back into nets, already sunburned from their hard lives, and the old ones, broken and shrunken and red-faced under their yellow head scarves.

Cadine and Marjolin stopped following Claude if they saw Mère Chantemesse in the distance, shaking a fist at them, angered at the sight of them dawdling around together. Claude would meet them across the street, where he found a glorious subject for a painting: vendors under their large faded blue, red, and violet umbrellas on poles. They were little knolls of color dotting the market, catching the fire of the setting sun in their domes, a sun that was fading away on the carrots and turnips. One vendor, an old hag about a hundred years old, was sheltering three scrawny lettuce heads under a sad worn-out pink silk umbrella.

One day while Léon, the apprentice at the Quenu-Gradelle charcuterie, was delivering a meat pie in the district, Cadine and Marjolin ran into him. They saw him raise the lid of a baking crock in a dark corner of rue de Mondétour and delicately extract a meatball with his fingers. They grinned at each other, for it had given them a fine and mischievous idea. Cadine devised a plan to fulfill one of her greatest ambitions. When she next met the boy with his baking dish, she was very friendly and she got him to offer her a little meatball. She licked her fingers and laughed. She might have been a little disappointed, for she had imagined that it would taste better than it did. But nevertheless, the boy amused her, dressed all in white like a girl on her way to communion but with a cunning, hungry face.

She invited him to a gigantic lunch that she was giving within the baskets of the butter market. The three of them—Marjolin, Léon, and herself—sealed themselves off from the world in four walls of wicker. The table was set on a large flat basket. There were pears, walnuts, fromage blanc,[5] shrimp, fried potatoes, and radishes. The fromage blanc came from the fruit stand on rue de la Cossonnerie. It was a gift. A fry shop on rue de la Grande-Truanderie had sold them two sous' worth of fried potatoes on credit. The rest—the pears, the walnuts, the shrimp, the radishes— were stolen from all over Les Halles. It was a grand banquet. Léon could not rest until he had returned the favor, so he invited them to dinner in his room at one in the morning. He served cold boudin, slices of dried sausage, a piece of petit salé, some cornichons, and goose fat. The Quenu-Gradelle charcuterie had supplied everything. And that was not all. Fine suppers followed delicate lunches, invitations upon invitations. Three times a week they had intimate little parties amid the baskets or in the attic. On sleepless nights Florent could hear the muffled sounds of chewing and laughter until nearly daybreak.

The love between Cadine and Marjolin was still growing. They were completely content. He played the gentleman and took her dining in a private room, where they crunched on apples or celery hearts in some shadowy corner of a basement. One day he stole a pickled herring, which they savored on the roof of the seafood pavilion, sitting on the edge of a gutter. There was hardly a shadowy recess of Les Halles where they had not enjoyed their tender banquets. The neighborhood, the rows of shops full of fruits and cakes and tidbits, was no longer the forbidden paradise where they displayed their hunger and desire. They passed the displays with a hand stretched out to pilfer a prune, a fistful of cherries, or a chunk of cod. They also got supplies from within Les Halles, keeping an eye out in the rows of the market, grabbing anything that fell, sometimes helping make things fall with a nudge of the shoulder to a basket of merchandise.

But despite these raids, a serious debt was accruing at the fry shop on rue de la Grande-Truanderie. The fry man, whose shop was propped up by a rickety house supported by planks that were green with moss, kept cooked mussels swimming in clear water at the bottom of a large earthen casserole, dishes of little dabs, yellow and stiff with too thick a breading, cubes of gras-double[6] simmering at the bottom of the skillet, and grilled herring, blackened and so hard that it made a sound like a piece of wood.

Some weeks Cadine owed as much as twenty sous, a crushing debt that required the sale of an indeterminable number of bouquets of violets because she could not count on Marjolin for anything. But she had to repay Léon's hospitality. As a matter of fact, she was a little ashamed that she never had any meat to offer him. As for Léon, he stole entire hams. Normally he stashed everything inside his shirt. At night when he went upstairs, he pulled out of his chest pieces of sausage, slices of pâté de foie gras, and bundles of pork cracklings. There was no bread, and they did not drink. One evening Marjolin caught Léon kissing Cadine between two bites of food. It made him laugh. He could have knocked the little boy out with one punch. But he did not get jealous over Cadine. He treated her like an old friend.

Claude did not take part in these parties. He caught Cadine stealing a beet from a little straw-trimmed basket, and he boxed her ear and called her a bum. “That's that,” he then said. He could not help feeling a kind of admiration for these sensual creatures, scroungers and gluttons who lived for the pleasures of the moment, picking up the crumbs that fell from the giant's table.

Marjolin was working for Gavard, content to have nothing to do but listen to an endless stream of stories from his boss. Cadine still sold her little bouquets and was resigned to the griping of Mère Chantemesse. Their childhood continued, shamelessly and indulgently, laced with their innocent vices. They had become a kind of vegetation growing up from the greasy pavement of Les Halles, where even in the best of weather the mud was always black and mucky. The girl at sixteen and the boy at eighteen still retained the great impudence of the young, who can openly urinate on fences.

But troubling dreams stirred in Cadine as she walked down the street twisting the stems of her violets. Marjolin also felt an uneasiness that he could not explain. Sometimes he slipped away from his little girl, skipped their meanderings, even missed some of the parties, to instead go and look at Madame Quenu through the charcuterie window. She was so beautiful, so full, so round that it made him feel good just to look. He experienced a sense of gratification whenever he saw her, as though he had just eaten something delicious or had a good drink. And when he left, he had a hunger and a thirst to see her again. This had gone on for several months.

At first he had shot her the kind of respectful glances he gave to the window displays of grocery stores and markets for salt-cured foods. But then, around the time they started raiding the market for food, when he looked at her he started to imagine taking her thick waist and ample arms into his arms, as though plunging his hands into an olive barrel or a cask of dried apples.

For some time, Marjolin had seen Beautiful Lisa every morning. She walked past Gavard's shop and paused to chat with the poultry seller. She told him that she did her own shopping to make sure she got good prices. But the truth was that she was trying to get Gavard to trust her. In her charcuterie he was very guarded, but in his own shop he held court and told anyone anything they wanted to know. Through him, she believed, she could find out what went on at Monsieur Lebigre's, for she had little confidence in her own secret police, Mademoiselle Saget. The information she got from this horrible old gossip troubled her deeply.

Two days after her scene with Quenu she returned from her shopping trip looking very pale. She motioned for her husband to follow her into the dining room. After shutting the door she asked, “Is your brother trying to send us to the gallows? Why did you hide information from me?”

Quenu swore that he knew nothing. He made a solemn declaration that he no longer went to Monsieur Lebigre's and was never going back there.

But she shrugged and said, “That's a good thing unless you want to lose your head. Florent is mixed up in something bad. I can feel it. I've learned just enough to figure out where he's headed. He'll go back to the penal colony, you know.”[7]

After a silence she continued in a calmer voice, “What a fool. Here he was sitting pretty. He could have become an upstanding citizen again. He was surrounded by good role models. But no, there's something in his blood. He's going to break his neck with his politics. I want all this to stop. Do you understand, Quenu? I've warned you.”

She said the last words with particular emphasis. Quenu lowered his head, awaiting sentencing.

“First of all, tell him that he can no longer eat here. It's enough he gets a place to sleep. But he earns money, and he can feed himself.”

He started to protest, but she cut him off with “Fine, choose between him or us. I swear to you, I will leave and take my daughter with me if he stays. Do you want me to finally say it? He's a man who is capable of anything, and he has come here to wreck our home. But I'll fix that, I promise you. You've heard me. It's him or me.”

She left her husband silenced and went back into the charcuterie, where she served up a pound of foie gras with the friendly smile of the neighborhood charcuterie woman.

Gavard, in the course of a political discussion that she had slyly drawn out, had gotten worked up enough to tell her that she would soon see everything razed to the ground, that it would take only two men of real determination such as her brother-in-law and himself, to burn her shop down. This was the bad thing that she had told Quenu that Florent was mixed up in. There was some conspiracy to which the poultry man was constantly alluding with a furtive look and a sly grin, from which he hoped a great deal would be inferred. She could picture a detachment of sergents de ville forcing their way into the charcuterie, seizing the three of them— herself, Quenu, and Pauline—and throwing them into a dungeon.

That night at dinner she was an iceberg. She didn't even serve Florent, and several times she commented, “Isn't it funny how much bread we seem to be going through lately?”

Eventually Florent understood, feeling like a poor relative being shown the door. For the past few months Lisa had been dressing him in Quenu's old pants and coats, and since he was as skinny as his brother was fat, the clothes looked very odd on him. She had also been giving him Quenu's old linens, handkerchiefs mended in dozens of spots, ripped towels, sheets good only to be torn into dishrags, threadbare shirts stretched out by his brother's potbelly and so short that they would have worked better as jackets. Nor did he sense the warmth of earlier times. The entire household shrugged their shoulders at him, exactly the way they had seen Lisa do. Auguste and Augustine would turn their backs on him, and little Pauline, with the viciousness of a child, ridiculed him for the spots on his clothes and the holes in his linen. For the last few days mealtime had been particularly painful. He would see both mother and daughter glaring at him so hard while he cut a piece of bread that he didn't dare to eat it. Quenu gazed at his plate and avoided looking up so that he would not have to participate.

What was tormenting Florent was that he did not know how to leave. For nearly a week he had been working on a sentence in his mind, something that would say that he would take his meals elsewhere. But this gentle soul lived so far from reality that he feared that his brother and sister-in-law would be hurt if he no longer ate with them. It had taken him more than two months to notice Lisa's raw hostility, and he still worried that he was misreading her. He still thought that she was very kind to him. So unconcerned for his own well-being was he that it could no longer be counted as a virtue. It was more a matter of supreme indifference, a lack of personality. Never, even when he saw himself being pushed out little by little, did he think for an instant about the money left behind by old Gradelle or the arrangement Lisa had made for his money.

He had his budget all mapped out. With the money that Madame Verlaque left him from his salary and the thirty francs for lessons from the Beautiful Norman, he calculated that he could spend eighteen sous on his lunch and twenty-six sous on his dinner. That was sufficent. Finally, one morning, he dared to make his move. He used the excuse of the new classes he was teaching, saying they made it impossible to be at the charcuterie at mealtimes. He blushed while telling the clumsy lie. Then he began making excuses.

“It's not what I want, but the child is only available at those times. Oh, it's not a problem. I'll grab a bite somewhere. I'll come back later to say good night.”

Beautiful Lisa remained ice cold. That made Florent even more uneasy. She had not wanted to send him away, preferring to wait until he gave up, so that she would not feel as though she had done anything wrong. Now he was leaving and it was good riddance, so she didn't want to do anything that might make him change his mind. But Quenu, a little upset, blurted out, “Don't worry, eat outside if you want. You know we wouldn't send you away, for God's sake. We can dine together on Sundays sometimes.”

Florent left quickly and with a heavy heart. After he was gone Beautiful Lisa did not dare to reproach her husband for the Sunday invitation. The victory was still hers, and, breathing more easily in the light oak dining room, she was suddenly overcome with a desire to burn sugar in the room to drive off the odor she thought she could smell of perverse skinniness.

But she remained on the defensive. By the end of the week her thoughts were even more disturbing. Never seeing Florent except occasionally in the evening, she imagined terrible goings-on. Was there a sinister machine of some kind being built upstairs in Augustine's bedroom or maybe some kind of signals being sent from the balcony to a network of roadblocks throughout the neighborhood? Gavard had become broody and would respond only with nods of his head, and he left Marjolin to run his shop for days at a time.

Beautiful Lisa resolved to find out what was going on. She knew that Florent had a day off and planned to spend it with Claude Lantier going to Nanterre to see Madame François. Since he would be leaving in the morning and not returning until the evening it occurred to Lisa that it was an opportunity to invite Gavard to dinner, where he would babble freely with food in front of his belly. But she did not run into the poultry man anywhere all morning. She went back to the market in the afternoon.

Marjolin was by himself in the shop. He snoozed for hours, recuperating from his long walks. His usual position was at the back of the shop with his legs up on another chair and his head leaning against a buffet. In the wintertime he was dazzled by the displays of game. Deer with their heads hanging down, their front legs broken and twisted around their necks, larks strung in garlands around the shop like necklaces worn by savages, large rust-colored partridges, bronze-gray waterfowl, grouse that arrived from Russia packed in straw and charcoal, and pheasants magnificent in their scarlet hoods, their throats of green satin and enameled gold mantles with their flaming tails flaring out like evening gowns. All these feathers made him think of Cadine and nights spent together in the soft depths of baskets.

On this particular day Beautiful Lisa found Marjolin sitting amid the poultry. It was a damp afternoon, but little puffs of air passed down the narrow lanes of the market. She had to bend down to catch sight of him because he was spread out in the back of the shop in a display of raw meat. Fat geese hung from spiked bars above him. The hooks plunged into bleeding wounds in their long stiff necks, and their enormous red bellies under fine down ballooned out like obscene nudes as white as linen from tail to wings.

Gray-backed rabbits also hung from the bar, their legs spread as though about to take some impressive leap and their ears lying flat with tufts of white fur at the tail. Their heads showed sharp teeth and terrified eyes vivid with the laughing grimace of dead animals. Plucked chickens showed fleshy breasts on the display table, where they were stretched tight on skewers, while pigeons, pressed together on a wicker frame, exposed the tender naked skin of newborn babies. Tough-skinned ducks splayed their webbed feet. Three turkeys with blue shadows like a shaved face and their throats sewn up with needle and thread slept on their backs on the fans of their wide black tails. Giblets were placed in plates next to them—livers, gizzards, necks, feet, and wings—and in a nearby oval bowl sat a skinned and gutted rabbit with a blood-spattered head, its four limbs stretched wide apart, and the cavity was spread to reveal the two kidneys inside. A trickle of blood ran down to the tail and fell drop by drop, staining the pale ceramic tiles.

Marjolin had not even troubled himself to wipe the carving board, near which a few severed rabbits' paws were left. His eyes were half closed, and he was surrounded on the shop's three shelves with more dead birds piled up, birds dressed up with paper collars and such a repetitive pattern of folded thighs and plump breasts that it confounded the eye. Against the background of all this food, with his well-built, fair body, his cheeks and hands, his powerful neck, and his head of red hair, Marjolin resembled the glorious turkeys and round bellies of the fat geese.

The moment he saw Beautiful Lisa he jumped out of the chair, blushing at having been caught loafing. He was very shy and awkward in her presence, and when she asked if Monsieur Gavard was there he stammered, “No. I don't know. He was here a minute ago. Now he's gone.”

Lisa smiled. She liked him. Her hand, which was hanging at her side, lightly brushed something warm and she emitted a little cry. Under the display table, rabbits in boxes were stretched out, sniffing her skirts. “Oh,” she said, laughing, “your rabbits are tickling me.”

She bent down to pet a white rabbit, which immediately hid in the corner of the box. Then she straightened up and asked, “Will Monsieur Gavard be back soon?”

Marjolin again said that he didn't know. His hands were shaking slightly. He continued in an uncertain voice, “He might be in the storeroom. I think he told me he was going down there.”

“Then I should wait for him. Maybe you could let him know that I'm here. Or should I go down myself? Yes, that's a good idea. I've been wanting to see the storeroom for five years now. Would you take me down and show me everything?”

His face was turning bright red. He hurried out of the shop, walking very fast in front of her, leaving the store unattended and repeating, “Certainly, whatever you'd like, Madame Lisa.”

But, once down below, the beautiful charcuterie woman could not breathe in the black air. She remained on the bottom step and looked up at the vaulted ceiling in stripes of red and white brick slightly arched between iron ribs supported by short columns. What stopped her there was a warm, penetrating smell, the breath of live animals prickling her nose and throat.

“It smells awful down here,” she muttered. “It can't be healthy to live here.”

“I feel fine,” said Marjolin, a bit surprised. “The smell isn't so bad once you get used to it. And it keeps you warm in the winter. You can be very comfortable here.”

She followed him, saying that the violent smell of poultry made her so sick that she would not be able to eat chicken for two months.

The storage spaces, the narrow stalls in which the merchants kept their livestock, ran back in straight, even rows, separated from one another at right angles. The gaslights were few, and the rows slept, silent as a village when everyone is in bed. Marjolin had Lisa touch the mesh covering the iron ribs. As they passed through a row, she read the names of the owners on blue plaques.

“Monsieur Gavard is just at the end,” said Marjolin. They turned to the left and came to a dead end at a dank cave into which no light penetrated. Gavard was not there. “No matter,” said Marjolin. “I can still show you all our animals. I have the keys.”

Beautiful Lisa followed him into the heavy darkness. Then suddenly she found him wrapped in her skirts. She thought she must have walked too fast and run into him, so she backed up and asked, “Do you think I'm going to be able to see your animals in this dark box?”

At first he didn't answer, and then he stammered that there was always a bit of candle in the storage place. But he was taking forever to open it. He couldn't find the keyhole. As she helped him with it, she could feel hot breath on her neck. Finally when he got the door open and lit the candle, she could see that he was shaking so much that she said, “You silly thing, why are you getting so worked up just because the door won't open? You're just a little girl with large fists.”

She walked into the stall. Gavard rented two compartments, which he had made into a little chicken range by removing the partition. The larger birds—geese, turkeys, and ducks—were waddling around in bird droppings. The three shelves above had flat open boxes full of hens and rabbits. The chicken wire was thick with dust and festooned with cobwebs, so that the stall appeared to be furnished with gray blinds. Rabbit urine had corroded the lower panels, and white splashes of bird droppings spotted the board.

But Lisa did not want to hurt Marjolin by showing any more disgust. She stuck her fingers into the little cages and expressed sympathy for the wretched hens cooped up in a space too small for them even to stand up in. She petted a duck that was cowering in a corner with a broken leg. Marjolin told her that they were planning to kill it tonight in case it died during the night.

“But what,” she asked, “do they do for food?”

He explained that poultry won't eat in the dark. The merchants have to light a candle and wait there until they are finished.

“It's fun,” he continued. “I stand there holding a light for hours. You should see the way they peck at each other. Then, when I cover the candle with my hand, they're all left with their necks sticking out, as though the sun had set. But you can't simply leave them a light and go away. One woman, Mère Palette—you know her— nearly burned the whole place down the other day. A hen must have knocked a candle onto some straw.”

“Oh well,” said Lisa, “that's not too bad, if they have to have their chandeliers lit for each meal.”

That made him laugh. She had stepped out of the stall, wiping her feet and lifting her skirt slightly to keep it out of the filth. Marjolin blew out the candle and shut the door. She was afraid to walk in the dark with this large boy at her side and went ahead of him so that she wouldn't end up with him in her skirts again. When he caught up to her, she said, “I'm glad I saw it. You'd never guess some of the things that are under Les Halles. Thank you for showing me. I have to go now—quickly. They'll wonder what happened to me at the shop. If you see Monsieur Gavard, tell him that I'd like to talk to him as soon as possible.”

“But he's probably at the slaughterhouse,” he said. “We could go see, if you want.”

She did not answer, overcome by the warm air that hit her face. It was turning her pink, and her stretched bodice, usually lifeless, was starting to heave. It worried her for some reason, made her feel anxious, to hear Marjolin's quickening footsteps behind her. He was panting. She stood aside to let him pass her. The village with its darkened rows was still asleep. Lisa noticed that her companion was taking the long way around. When they came out, opposite the railway line, he said that he wanted to show her the tracks, and they stood there a moment looking at the wide planks of fencing. He offered to lead her along the track, but she declined, saying that it was not worth the trouble. And she had a good idea of what it looked like from where they were.

On the way back they ran into Mère Palette in front of her storage. A frenzy of wings and paws could be heard inside. After she untied the last knot the long necks of the geese acted like springs and flipped open the cover. The frightened geese made their escape, their heads plunged forward with a whistling and a quacking that filled the darkness of the cellar with cacophonous music. Lisa could not help laughing, despite the exclamations of the old poultry seller, who in her despair was cursing like a wagoneer while dragging by the neck two geese she had managed to recapture. Marjolin had run off to catch a third goose. He could be heard scrambling through the rows, outwitted by the bird but enjoying the chase. Then there was the sound of a scuffle at the far end, and he returned carrying the goose. Mère Palette, an old, yellowing woman, clutched the bird in her arms and held it against her stomach in the classical pose of Leda.[8]

“I'll tell you,” she said, “you should have been there … the other day I got into it with one of them. I had my knife on me, and I slit its throat.”

Marjolin was winded. When they got to the stone blocks where the slaughtering was done, the light was better and Lisa noticed that he was soaking with sweat and his eyes had a glow she had never seen before. Usually he lowered his eyes in her presence like a girl. She found him particularly handsome the way he was, with his broad shoulders and large pink face framed by his mop of light-colored curls. She looked at him pleasantly, with that look of appreciation that can be offered risk-free to boys who are too young. He was starting to feel shy again.

“As you can see, Monsieur Gavard is not here and you are wasting my time,” she said.

He explained to her, in rapid words, the process of slaughter, the five enormous stone slabs, that went down the side of rue Rambuteau under the yellow lights of the gas burners. At one end a woman was bleeding chickens, which led Marjolin to comment that she was plucking the poultry while it still had some life in it, which made it easier to pluck. Then he wanted her to take handfuls of feathers from the stone slabs. There were piles of feathers everywhere. He explained that they were sorted and sold for as much as nine sous a pound depending on the quality. He also told her to sink her arms into the large baskets of down. Then he turned on the water faucets installed in every pillar.

His deluge of facts was relentless. The blood ran along the benches and made puddles on the flagstones. Every two hours cleaners came and scrubbed away the blood stains with thick brushes. When Lisa leaned over the opening of the drain, there was another lengthy explanation, this time of how the water flooded the cellar through this hole on rainy days. One time it had actually risen a foot and they'd had to move all the poultry to the other end of the cellar, where it sloped upward. Recalling the outcry of the panicking animals made him laugh all over again.

But after that he ran dry unable to think of another point of interest. Then he remembered the ventilator. He led her down to the end, and when she looked up, as instructed, she saw inside one of the corner turrets a ventilation pipe by which the foul air escaped. Then Marjolin fell speechless in this pestilent stinking corner with the alkaline crudeness of guano. But he seemed alert, even invigorated. His nostrils quivered and his breathing grew heavy, as though he were regaining his nerve. For the past quarter hour he had been in the basement with Beautiful Lisa, intoxicated by the warmth and scent of live animals. He was no longer the shy young thing; the scent of chickens had put him in heat under the vaulting of the black, shadowy ceiling.

“You know,” she said, “you're a nice boy to have shown me all this. When you come to the charcuterie, I'll give you something.”

She held his chin in her hand, the way she often did, and did not notice that he was no longer a little boy. Actually, she was a little affected, stirred by this stroll through the basement, and she was savoring a gentle emotion—nothing inappropriate and of no real significance. Maybe she inadvertently left her hand just a little longer than usual under his young chin that was so supple to the touch.

For whatever reason, responding to this caress, his instincts took over, and, shooting a glance out of the corners of his eyes to make sure that no one was watching, he summoned his strength and threw himself on Beautiful Lisa with the force of a bull. He grabbed her by the shoulders, and he pushed her backward into a basket of feathers, where she tumbled in a heap, her skirts up to her knees.

He was going to take her, the same way he had taken Cadine, with the brutality of an animal sating himself, when without making a sound but pale from the suddenness of the assault, Beautiful Lisa sprang out of the basket in a single bound. Raising her arm the way she had seen them do in the slaughterhouse, with her fine female fist she knocked Marjolin unconscious with one blow between the eyes. He fell over backward and cracked his head against the corner of a stone slab. At that very moment a rooster let fly in the darkness a long raucous crow.

Beautiful Lisa remained cool and collected. Her lips were pursed, and her bosom was back to the mute round shape of a belly. The heavy sounds of Les Halles were rumbling overhead. The sounds of the street came through the grates on rue Rambuteau and cut through the thick basement silence.

She reflected on how it was only the sheer power of her arms that had saved her. She shook off a few feathers that were still stuck to her skirt. Then, afraid to be found there, she left without looking at Marjolin. She was relieved to be lit by sunlight from the grates as she climbed the stairs.

Perfectly calm and a little pale, she went back to the charcuterie.

“You were gone a long time,” Quenu said.

“I couldn't find Gavard. I looked everywhere,” she said calmly. “We'll have to have the leg of lamb without him.”

She refilled the crock of saindoux and cut off some chops for her friend Madame Taboureau, who had sent her maid to pick them up. The blows of the cleaver reminded her of Marjolin down in the basement. But she felt no guilt. She had behaved as a decent woman should. She wasn't going to upset herself for a ragamuffin like that. She had her husband and daughter to think of.

But when she looked at Quenu, she did notice the coarseness of the reddish skin on the back of his neck and his clean-shaven chin as rough and wrinkly as knotty wood. The neck and chin of the other one had seemed like pink velvet.

It was better not to think about such things. She was never going to touch him again. He imagined things that were not possible. It had been a little treat that she had allowed herself and now regretted—children grew up much too fast these days.

As the color came back to her cheeks, Quenu thought she was looking “pretty damn good.” He sat down next to her at the counter and said, “You ought to go out more often. It agrees with you. Maybe we should go to the theater some evening to the Gaîté,[9] where Madame Taboureau saw that play she liked.”

Lisa smiled and said, “We'll see.” Then she disappeared again.

Quenu thought about how nice it had been of her to run after that fellow Gavard. He did not notice her go upstairs. She went to Florent's room with the key that hung on a nail in the kitchen. She couldn't count on the poultry man now, so she hoped to find some clue in Florent's room. She paced slowly, looking at the bed, the mantel, peering into every corner. The window that led to the narrow balcony was open, and the budding pomegranate plant was bathed in the golden dust of sunset. It occurred to her that it was as though the shopgirl had never left the room and had slept there the night before. There was no male scent to the room. This surprised her. She had expected to find some suspicious locked boxes or trunks. She fingered Augustine's summer dress, still hanging on the wall.

Finally she sat at the table and started reading a piece of paper half filled with writing. The word “revolution” turned up twice. Frightened, she opened the drawer. It was full of paper. But, faced with this not-very-well-concealed secret in this sad light-wood table, her honesty got the better of her. She lingered for a moment over the papers, trying to read them without actually touching them. And then a finch, the sunlight suddenly striking its cage, let out a shriek, and Beautiful Lisa shuddered. She closed the drawer. It was very bad, what she was doing.

Standing by the window, she was wondering if she should ask the advice of that wise man, the Abbé Roustan, when she noticed a group of people on the street below gathered around a stretcher. Though it was nearly nightfall, she could clearly make out Cadine in the center of the crowd, in tears, while Florent and Claude, their feet covered in white dust, were on the sidewalk discussing something in great agitation. Surprised that they were back already, she hurried down the stairs.

She had barely made it to the counter when Mademoiselle Saget came in and said, “It's that poor Marjolin. They just found him in the cellar with his head split open … Don't you want to come look, Madame Quenu?”

She crossed the street to see Marjolin. The young man lay stretched out and pale with his eyes closed, one lock of his hair caked with blood. The crowd agreed that it wasn't a big thing, that the fault was his, the ne'er-do-well, the way he was always carrying on in the cellars. They guessed that he must have tried to jump over one of the slaughtering blocks, one of his favorite games, and he'd fallen and smacked his head on the stone. Pointing at the crying Cadine, Mademoiselle Saget murmured, “She probably shoved him. They're always together in some corner.”

Revived by the fresh air, Marjolin opened his startled eyes wide. He looked up at everyone, and then, running across Lisa's face bent over him, he smiled sweetly with a humble, submissive look. It was as though he did not remember what had happened. Lisa was relieved and said that he should be taken to the hospital immediately. She would visit him there with cookies and oranges. Marjolin's head fell back, and the stretcher was carried away. Cadine followed it with her tray still hanging from her neck, the little bouquets of violets on the carpet of green moss catching her warm teardrops. But, burning with grief, she gave no thought to her flowers.

As Lisa was going back to the charcuterie, she overheard Claude exchange a handshake with Florent and bid him good-bye, saying, “The damn brat, he ruined my day. Still, we had a hell of a good time, didn't we?”

Claude and Florent had returned weary but happy. They carried with them the pleasant scent of open air. By daybreak that morning Madame François had already sold all her vegetables. The three of them went to get her wagon at the Compas d'Or on rue Montorgueil. Even in the center of Paris this was a foretaste of the countryside. Behind Restaurant Philippe,[10] whose ground floor was done in gilded wood, was a farmyard, bustling and dirty, redolent with the smell of hot dung and fresh straw. Clusters of chickens were pecking at the soft ground. Stairways, balconies, and broken roofing were green with mold and leaned against the house next door. At the back, under a crudely made shelter, Balthazar was waiting, already harnessed and eating oats from a bag tied to his halter. He trotted slowly down rue Montorgueil, pleased to be returning to Nanterre so soon. But he wasn't hauling an empty cart. Madame François had made an arrangement with the company that cleaned Les Halles. Twice a week she carted off a load of leaves pitchforked from the trash heaps scattered around the streets of the market. It made excellent compost.

In very little time the cart was loaded to overflowing. Claude and Florent stretched out leisurely on the thick bed of greens. Madame François took the reins and Balthazar shuffled off at his slow pace, his head slightly bowed with the effort of pulling so many people.

The outing had been planned for a long time. The woman liked the two men and laughed easily and promised them an omelette au lard[11] the likes of which could not be found in that “pigsty called Paris.” They savored this lazy day, not yet lit by the sun. Far away, Nanterre was a paradise that they were about to enter.

“I hope you're comfortable,” said Madame François as she turned into rue du Pont-Neuf.

Claude swore that it was “as soft as a bridal bed.” The two of them lay there on their backs, arms folded behind their heads and gazing up at the sky, where the stars were beginning to lose their glow. They kept silent as they rolled along rue de Rivoli, waiting until there were no more buildings in sight. They just listened to the kind woman in the front talking in a soft voice to Balthazar. “Don't strain yourself, my old friend. We're not in any hurry. We'll get there eventually.”

Along the Champs-Elysées, where the painter saw only the tops of trees on both sides and a broad green swath of the Tuileries Garden at the end, he woke up and began talking to himself. As they passed rue de Roule, he looked down the street and could see one of the side doors to Saint Eustache, which could be seen from a long distance under the giant curve of one of the covered alleyways. He kept returning to the subject of the church as he spoke, seeing it as a point of great symbolic value.

“It's an odd juxtaposition,” he said. “That section of the church framed in the avenue of cast iron. One kills the other. Iron will kill off stone, and the time is near … Florent, do you believe in coincidences? I don't think it was merely a desire for symmetry that brought one of Saint Eustache's rosette windows into alignment with Les Halles like this. Don't you see the message? It's modern art, realism or naturalism—whatever you want to call it—springing up in the face of the old art. Don't you think so?”

Since Florent didn't answer, he went on, “This church is an architectural bastard. It houses the death throes of the Middle Ages together with the baby gurgles of the Renaissance. Have you noticed the kind of churches they build nowadays? They could be anything—a library, an observatory, a pigeon coop, barracks, but certainly no one could be persuaded that God dwells in them. The masons of the Lord are dead, and the wise would stop building these ugly stone carcasses in which no one can live … Since the beginning of the century only one original building has been erected, only one that is not a copy from somewhere else but has sprung naturally out of the soil of our times, and that is Les Halles. Do you see it, Florent? A brilliant work that is a shy foretaste of the twentieth century. That is why it frames Saint Eustache. There stands the church with its rosette window, empty of the faithful, while Les Halles spreads out around it, buzzing with life. That's what I think anyway, my good friend.”

Madame François laughed. “You know, Monsieur Claude, whoever made your tongue certainly earned their money. Balthazar is turning his ears to listen to you. Giddyap, Balthazar!”

The wagon slowly made its way along. The avenue was deserted at this hour of the morning, with its empty steel chairs lining both sides and its lawns broken up by bushes in the bluish shadows of the trees. At the traffic circle a man and a woman on horseback passed them at an easy trot. Florent, who was using a bundle of cabbage leaves for a pillow, was still staring up at the sky, where the rosy light of morning was spreading. From time to time he closed his eyes to let the morning freshness cool his face. He was so happy to be leaving Les Halles and moving into clean air that he could barely listen to what was being said.

“It's fine for those who want to encase art in a toy box,” Claude continued after a brief silence. “It's a big thing now to say that art cannot live with science. The products of industry kill poetry. Then all those fools start crying into their flowers as though anyone were trying to harm them. It nauseates me. I would love to answer those idiots with art that was truly outrageous. It would feel good to upset them. You know what my best work has been so far, the one that gives me the greatest satisfaction when I look back? This is a great story … Last year on Christmas Eve, I was staying with my aunt Lisa, and that moronic apprentice—you know him— Auguste, was busy arranging the window display. He was driving me absolutely crazy with the way he was doing the window. I insisted that he step back and let me try to do it, like it was a painting. It had all the powerful colors—the red of stuffed tongues, the yellow of jambonneaux, blue paper shreds, pink where things had been cut into, green from sprigs of heather, and most especially the black of boudin, a spectacular black that I have never been able to capture again. And then the caul fat, the sausages, the andouille, the breaded pigs' feet, gave me a subtle range of grays.

“So I made a virtual work of art. I took the platters and the dishes, canning jars and crocks. I carefully placed the colors in an astonishing still life bursting with color, ingeniously running up and down the color scale. Hungry flames shot out of the red tongues, and the boudin mingled with the clear tones of sausage, hinting at a colossal bellyache. You see, I had painted the gluttony of Christmas Eve dinner,[12] the midnight hour for overeating, the gorging of stomachs inspired by the singing of carols.

“Above, a giant turkey was showing its white breast, marbled under the skin by the dark splotches of truffles. It was both barbaric and very fine, like a vision of a belly but with a touch of cruelty, such an outburst of parody that a crowd gathered around the window, troubled by this brightly burning display of colors. When my aunt Lisa came out of the kitchen, she panicked, thinking for an instant that I had somehow set all the fat in the shop on fire. The turkey struck her as particularly obscene. She threw me out and had Auguste go back to arranging the window and displaying his stupidity. Those backward creatures will never grasp the power of a touch of red next to a touch of gray … Oh, well, that was my masterpiece. I've never done better.”

He fell silent, smiling and withdrawing into his reminisces. The wagon reached the Arc de Triomphe. Gusts of wind raced through the open expanse, blowing through all the streets that emptied into the enormous plaza. Florent sat up and inhaled the first scents of country grass. He turned his back on Paris and strained for a glimpse of country meadows. When they came up to rue de Longchamp, Madame François pointed out the spot where she had picked him up. That turned him introspective. He studied her pensively. She seemed so healthy and calm with her slightly outstretched arms working the reins. She was more beautiful than Beautiful Lisa, with a kerchief over her head, her ruddy complexion, and her look of plain, outspoken kindness. When she clicked her tongue softly, Balthazar perked up his ears and picked up his step.

When they got to Nanterre, the cart turned left down a narrow lane running between walls and stopped at a dead end. It was what she called the end of the world. First the cabbage leaves had to be unloaded. Claude and Florent did not want to bother the garden boy who was busy planting lettuce. They each took a pitchfork and started hurling the load onto the compost heap. It was fun. Claude particularly liked the compost. Vegetable peelings, Les Halles mud, the trash from that giant table, still alive and being returned to the place where new vegetables would grow to warm a new generation of turnips and cabbage. They grew into beautiful produce that was laid out on Paris pavements. Paris rotted everything and sent it back to the earth, which tirelessly revived life from the dead.

“Look,” said Claude, thrusting in his pitchfork one last time, “there's a stump of cabbage I recognize. This is at least the tenth time it's sprouted back in that corner by the apricot tree.”

That made Florent laugh, but he became serious again very soon, walking slowly around the garden while Claude sketched the stable and Madame François prepared lunch. The garden was a long strip of land divided down the middle by a path. It rose gradually and at the top, if you looked up, you could see the stumpy barracks of Mont-Valérien. Lush hedges separated the garden from other plots of land. Thick tall walls of hawthorn drew a green curtain around the garden so impenetrable that of all the neighboring land, only Mont-Valérien gave a curious glance into Madame François's domain. This unseen countryside offered peace. Between the four hedges the May sunlight struck the entire length of the garden, warming it in a silence that buzzed with insects. Certain cracking noises and gentle sighs made it seem that you could hear the vegetables growing. The beds of spinach and sorrel, the rows of radishes, turnips, and carrots, the tall potato plants and cabbages, formed regular lines along the black earth, shaded green by tree branches.

Farther away were lettuce, onion, leeks, and celery in rows as tidy as soldiers on parade. The peas and beans were beginning to unfurl their thin stems, creeping up the forest of sticks that by June would become stalks thick with leaves. There was not one weed in sight. The garden looked like two parallel carpets, green patterns on a reddish background, carefully brushed each morning. Borders of thyme made gray fringes on the two sides of the path.

Florent paced back and forth in the perfume of sun-warmed thyme. He was deeply contented in the wholesome and peaceful earth. For about a year now the only vegetables he had seen were bruised from bouncing in wagons, yanked from the earth the night before and still bleeding. Now he delighted in finding them where they belonged, living peacefully in the earth, their every limb thriving. The cabbages looked stout and prosperous, the carrots were merry, and the lettuces were lined up in lazy nonchalance. The Les Halles that he had left that morning seemed to him to be a sprawling mortuary, a place for the dead scattered with the corpses of the once living, a charnel house with the stench of decomposition.

His steps began to slow down, and he rested a while in Madame François's garden, as though resting from a long march through deafening noise and foul smells. The ruckus and the sickening humidity of the fish pavilion began to leave him. He was reborn in the fresh air. Claude was right: everything in Les Halles was in the throes of death. The earth was life, the eternal cradle, the health of the world.

“The omelette's ready!” Madame François shouted.

With all three seated in the kitchen, the door open to the sun, they ate so merrily that Madame looked at Florent with wonder, saying with every mouthful, “How you've changed. You look ten years younger. It's that vile Paris that makes you so somber. But now I see some sunlight in your eyes. You see, it's no good to live in big cities. You ought to come live here.”

Claude laughed, insisting that Paris was wonderful. He stood by his city down to its very bricks, but he also had a fondness for the countryside. In the afternoon Florent and Madame François were alone in the garden. They were seated on the ground in a corner that was planted with fruit trees, and had a serious chat. She gave him advice with a sense of friendship that seemed tender and maternal. She asked him a thousand questions about his life and his plans for the future. She told him that she was always available if he needed her. He was very moved by this. No woman had ever spoken to him in this way. To him she was like a robust healthy plant that had grown the same way as her vegetables in the garden. He thought of the fair women of Les Halles, of the Lisas and the Normans, like dubious meat that had been dressed for the window. Here he inhaled into his lungs a few hours of complete well-being, free of the food smells that had driven him mad. He was resuscitated in the countryside like the cabbage that Claude said kept sprouting back from the ground.

At about five o'clock they said their good-byes to Madame François. They wanted to walk back. She went with them to the end of the lane and for a moment held Florent's hand in hers. “If you ever get sad, come and see me,” she said softly.

For a quarter of an hour Florent walked in silence, already growing sad, telling himself that he was leaving his health behind him. The route to Courbevoie was whitened by dust. They both enjoyed hiking the long distance, their thick shoes ringing on the hard earth. With every step little clouds of dust rose behind them. The rays came at an angle across the avenue, stretching out their two shadows, distorting them so that their heads stretched to the other side and hopped along the opposite sidewalk.

Claude, swinging his arms loosely, took long, regular strides and enjoyed watching their shadows, happily lost in their sway, which he further exaggerated by putting his shoulders into the rhythm.

Then, as though suddenly waking from a dream, he asked, “Do you know ‘The Battle of the Fat and the Thin’?”

Florent, caught by surprise, answered no. Claude excitedly praised this series of prints, pointing out favorite parts: the Fat, bursting from their enormity, prepare the evening glut, while the Thin, doubled over from hunger, look in from the street, stick figures filled with envy; then the Fat, seated at the table, cheeks overflowing, drive away a Thin who had the audacity to approach humbly, looking like a bowling pin among bowling balls.

Claude saw in these drawings the entire drama of mankind, and he took to classifying all people into the Thin and the Fat, two opposing groups, one devouring the other to grow plump and jolly. “You can bet,” he said, “that Cain was a Fat and Abel a Thin. And since that first killing, there have always been hungry Fats sucking the blood out of scanty eaters. It is a constant preying of the stronger on the weaker, each swallowing his neighbor and then finding himself swallowed in turn … So you see, my friend, watch out for the Fat.”

He fell silent for a moment, gazing at their two shadows as the setting sun stretched them ever longer. Then he murmured, “You and I, we belong to the Thin, you see. Tell me if people with flat stomachs like ours take up much sunlight.”

Florent looked at the two shadows and smiled. But Claude became angry. “If you think it's funny, you're wrong. I suffer a lot because I'm a Thin. If I were a Fat, I could paint when I felt like it, I would have a beautiful studio, I could sell my paintings for their weight in gold. Instead, I'm a Thin. I pour my soul out to produce things that only make the Fats shrug their shoulders. I'm sure I'll end up dying of it, my skin sticking to my bones and so flat that they could bury me between the covers of a book. And you! You're a Thin, a perfect example, the King of Thins. Remember your argument with the fish sellers? It was spectacular, all those giant bosoms flying at your spindly chest. They were acting out of instinct, hunting the Thin the way a cat chases a mouse. You see, Fats have such a distaste for Thins, they have to drive them out of their sight by either biting or kicking. That's why, if I were you, I'd be careful. The Quenus are Fats, and the Méhudins too. The fact is you are completely surrounded by Fats. That would worry me.”

“And what about Gavard and Mademoiselle Saget and your friend Marjolin?” Florent asked, still smiling.

“If you want, I can classify everyone we know for you,” answered Claude. “I've been keeping a file on them in my studio for a long time with notations on who belongs to which group. It's a whole chapter of natural history. Gavard is the kind of Fat who pretends to be a Thin. Not at all a rare species. Mademoiselle Saget and Madame Lecœur are a variety of Thin that should be feared— desperate, capable of doing anything to fatten themselves. My friends Marjolin, little Cadine, and La Sarriette are three Fats, still innocent with nothing more than the lovable hunger of youth. I've noticed that the Fat, if they're still young enough, can be charming creatures. Monsieur Lebigre, he's a Fat, isn't he? Then there are your political friends, who are mostly Thins—Charvet, Clémence, Logre, Lacaille. But I make an exception for that fat slob Alexandre and for the enormous Robine, who has caused me a lot of trouble.”

The painter continued in this vein from the pont de Neuilly to the Arc de Triomphe. He went back to some people to complete their portraits with a few characteristic brushstrokes. Logre was a Thin who carried his belly between his shoulders. Beautiful Lisa was all stomach and the Beautiful Norman, all bosom. Mademoiselle Saget had surely missed an opportunity sometime in her life to become fat, for she loathed the Fats, while still disdaining the Thins. As for Gavard, he was compromising his role as a Fat and would end up skinny as a bug.

“And Madame François?” asked Florent.

Claude was embarrassed by the question. He struggled for an answer and finally stuttered, “Madame François. Madame François. I don't know. I never had the urge to classify her. She's a fine woman, that's all. She's not a Fat, and she's not a Thin.”

They both laughed. They were now in front of the Arc de Triomphe. The sun, on the crest of the hills of Suresnes, was so low on the horizon that their shadows darkened the whiteness high up on the monument, even higher than the group of statues, like two black marks sketched in charcoal. This made Claude even more amused, and he waved his arms and bent his body. Then, as he started to walk again, he asked, “Did you notice? Just as the sun set, our two heads flew up to the sky.”

But Florent stopped laughing. Paris started to overtake him again, Paris that had cost him so many tears in Guiana and still frightened him. He lowered his head as he returned to that nightmare of mountains of food, but he carried within him the sweet and sad memories of the day in thyme-scented fresh air.

CHAPTER FIVE

The following day around four o'clock Lisa went to Saint Eustache. She had adorned herself in black silk with a woven shawl for crossing the square. The Beautiful Norman, from her place in the fish market, followed her with her eyes, right up to the church doors. She was choking with indignation.

“Oh, fine!” she said malevolently. “Now the fatso is working on the priests … It'll calm her down some to dip her rear end in holy water.”

But she was mistaken. Lisa was not in the least religious. She did not practice religion and often said that she tried to be honest in everything she did and that was enough. But she didn't like it if someone spoke badly of religion in front of her. She often cut off Gavard, who loved telling stories of priests and nuns, the scandals of the clergy. She found it inappropriate. Everyone had a right to their own beliefs and should be respected for them. Besides, most of the priests were good people.

She knew Abbé Roustan at Saint Eustache, a distinguished man and good confidant on whose friendship she could rely. She would end up stating that religion was absolutely necessary for most people. She thought of them as a police force that helped to maintain order, without which there could be no government. When Gavard went too far and said that the clergy should all be thrown out and their shops closed, she shrugged and said, “How would that help you? In a month's time they'd be massacring people on the streets, and then they'd have to invent another god. That is what happened in '93.[1] I'm not much of a churchgoer, as you know, but I do believe that you have to have clergy because you have to.”

So when Lisa entered the church she showed deference. She had bought an attractive prayer book, which she never opened, to take with her to weddings and funerals. She stood up and knelt at the right places and was careful to have the correct bearing. For her it was a kind of official posture that respectable people, shopkeepers and businesspeople, ought to show toward religion.

On this day the handsome charcuterie woman walked into Saint Eustache, letting the double door, which was covered in faded green cloth worn thin by the hands of the faithful, close gently behind her. She dipped her fingers in holy water and crossed herself properly. Then, with muffled steps, she went to the Chapel of Saint Agnès, where two women were kneeling with their faces in their hands and waiting while the blue skirts of a third were spilling over from the confessional. A little annoyed, she went up to a verger in a black skullcap who was dragging his feet.

“Is Abbé Roustan hearing confession today?” she asked.

He answered that Abbé Roustan had only two more penitents and it wouldn't be a long wait. If she would just take a seat, her turn would come soon. She thanked him and did not admit that she had not come to say confession. She decided to wait and delicately paced up and down the aisle. She looked down the bare nave as far as the west door, high and austere between the walls painted in vivid colors. She raised her chin a bit, finding the high altar too unadorned. This cold stone grandeur was not to her taste. She preferred the gilding and gaudy colors of the side chapels. Running along the rue du Jour side, these chapels lay in shadow, lit only by dusty windows, whereas on the Les Halles side, sunset lit the stained-glass windows with gentle colors, especially greens and yellows, with such clarity that they reminded her of the liqueur bottles in front of the mirror at Monsieur Lebigre's.

She went back to her side, which seemed to be warmed by glowing embers of light, looking briefly at the shrines, the ornaments on the altar, the murals on the wall, which were illuminated by a prism of light. The church was empty, quivering in the silence of its vaulting. The skirts of a few women appeared as dark splotches against the yellow chairs. The sound of whispering escaped from the closed confessional. As she passed the chapel again, she could see that the blue skirts were still at Abbé Roustan's feet.

“I could take care of it in ten seconds,” she thought, proud of her virtue.

She walked to the end of the church. Behind the high altar, shaded by a double row of pillars, the Chapel of the Virgin was silent and stuffy. Only the saints' robes could be made out in the dark windows, with large folds of red and purple burning like the flames of spiritual love and silent adoration in the dark recesses. It was a place of mystery, a glimpse into Paradise, where two candles shone in the air like stars and four metal candelabra hanging from the vaulting in the ceiling by angels, recalling the gold censers swung before Mary, could barely be made out. Between the pillars she could see that the women were still there, bent low over the chair backs, consumed in voluptuous shadows.

Lisa stood there watching calmly. She was not in the least agitated. She did think it was a mistake not to light the candelabra. It would be much more cheerful with lights. There was something almost indecent about all this darkness. It gave a feeling to the alcoves that she did not find suitable. The candles burning beside her on a stand warmed her face. An elderly woman was using a knife to scratch off the wax that had fallen like very pale teardrops. And in this soft trembling of religion, this silent melting setting of love, drifting through the chapel she heard the distant rumble of carriages turning into rue Montmartre on the other side of the red-and-purple saints in the stained glass. From a distance the relentless hubbub of Les Halles was continuing.

She was about to leave the chapel when she saw the younger Méhudin girl come in—Claire, the freshwater fish vendor. She lit a candle on the rack and then walked behind a pillar, where she knelt on the stone floor. With her pale face and her disheveled blond hair, she looked like a corpse. And, thinking she was out of sight, she wept warm tears, a woman surrendering to her feelings, praying with such passion that she was tilting as though bent by a powerful wind.

Beautiful Lisa was very surprised because the Méhudins were not very religious. Claire usually talked about priests and religion in a way that would make people's hair stand on end.

“What's come over her?” Lisa wondered as she walked back into the Saint Agnès chapel. “She's probably poisoned someone, the slut.”

Finally Abbé Roustan emerged from the confessional. He was a handsome, fortyish man with a smiling demeanor. When he saw Madame Quenu he took her hand, calling her “dear lady,” and led her to the sacristy, where he took off his surplice and told her that he was at her disposal. They went back into the church, the abbé bareheaded in his cassock. Lisa was stiffly wrapped in her shawl. Walking by the chapels along the rue du Jour side, they spoke in low voices. Through the windows the sun was dying, the church growing darker, the footsteps of the last worshippers barely making a noise on the stones as they left.

Lisa explained her problem to him. They never discussed religion with each other. She didn't say confession but simply asked his advice when she was troubled, turning to him as a man of wisdom and discretion whom she much preferred, she liked to say, to shady businessmen who have the scent of prison about them. He had shown an inexhaustible patience. He would check regulations for her, suggest good investments, tactfully address moral issues, recommend tradesmen, always ready with a solution no matter how diverse and complicated the proposition—and, of course, without letting God enter into it or trying to gain anything for himself or the church. All he asked for was a smile and a thank-you. He seemed pleased to help this lovely Madame Quenu, about whom his maid often spoke with great respect, saying she was much admired in the neighborhood.

This time the topic was particularly sensitive. It was a question of what would be the decent way to deal with her brother-in-law and whether she had the right to spy on him to protect her husband, her daughter, and herself, and also how far she should go in case of imminent danger. She did not state this directly, but posed the questions artfully so that the abbé could respond without speaking of specific people. And sure enough, it was his conclusion that a person had the right, even the obligation, to prevent wrongdoing by whatever means necessary and to make sure that goodness triumphed.

“That's my opinion, dear lady,” he said in conclusion. “The discussion of methods is serious. The method is the great trap that ensnares common virtue. But I know what sound moral judgment you have. Weigh carefully your every act, and if there is no protest from within you, go forth boldly. Good souls have that wonderful gift of marking everything they touch with their virtue.”

He continued with a change of tone, “Please send Monsieur Quenu my best regards. Next time I pass by I will drop in to give my sweet little Pauline a kiss. Good-bye, dear lady, I am here whenever you need me.”

He returned to the sacristy. Lisa was curious to see on her way out if Claire was still praying. But Claire had returned to her carp and eels, and only the litter of overturned chairs left by kneeling women in their holy zeal remained in the Chapel of the Virgin, where night was now falling. When Beautiful Lisa crossed the square again, the Norman, who had been waiting for her, spotted her by the curve of her skirts.

“Oh, my God!” she exclaimed. “She was there more than an hour! When the priests clear out all of her sins, the choirboys have to form lines to toss it all out in buckets.”

The next morning Lisa went straight to Florent's room. She settled in with complete peace of mind, certain that she would not be disturbed, and besides, if Florent were to return, she could lie and say that she was checking on the linen. She had seen him down at the fish market, and he was very busy. Sitting at the small table, she pulled out the drawer, placed it on her lap, and started emptying it very carefully so that she could put all the bundles of papers back exactly the same way she had found them. First of all she found the opening chapters of a book on Cayenne, then plans for all kinds of projects—his idea for the conversion of municipal taxes into a tax on business transactions and his reform of the Les Halles administration, among other ideas.

These pages of writing in tiny letters, which she carefully read, bored her terribly. She was about to put them back in the drawer, convinced that Florent had hidden the proof of his diabolical designs somewhere else, and had already decided to search the wool in the mattress, when she found in an envelope a portrait of the Norman. The photograph was a bit dark. The Norman posed standing up with her right arm resting on a truncated pillar, wearing all her jewelry a new silk dress that puffed out, and an insolent smile.

Lisa forgot all about her brother-in-law, her fears, the reason she was there. She was lost in the fascination of one woman staring at another without inhibition and with no concern for being caught. She had never had an opportunity to study her rival from this close up. She examined her hair, nose, and mouth; she held the photograph at a distance, then brought it closer. Then with pursed lips she read on the back, written in large, distasteful letters, “From Louise, to her friend Florent.” She was shocked. It was as good as a confession, and she was tempted to keep the photograph as a weapon against her enemy. But she put it back in the envelope, slowly, thinking that keeping it would be wrong, and besides, she could always come back and get it later.

Then it was back to sifting through the papers, laying them one on top of the other. It occurred to her to look in the back where he had shoved Augustine's needles and thread. And there between the prayer book and The Guide to Dreams she found what she was looking for: incriminating notes hidden under a layer of gray paper. The idea of an uprising, a movement to overthrow the empire, an armed insurrection, had been proposed one evening at Monsieur Lebigre's and had ripened in Florent's impassioned soul. He had soon come to think of it as a duty, a mission. At last he had found the reason for his escape from Guiana and his return to Paris. Thinking it his calling to avenge his thinness against this city that had grown fat while those who defended justice starved in exile, he was a self-appointed avenger, and he dreamed of rising up, right in Les Halles, and crushing this regime of drunks and gluttons. Into his sensitive nature, this idea had easily driven its nail. Everything grew out of all proportion. The strangest of stories were based on nothing. He imagined that immediately upon his arrival, Les Halles had grabbed him to sap him of his strength and poison him with its rankness.

It was Lisa who wanted to hypnotize him, and he would avoid her for days at a time, as though she were an acid that would, if he was exposed, eat away his will. These spasms of irrational panic, the outbursts of a man in revolt, always resulted in a surge of tenderness, the need to love, which he would hide like an embarrassed child.

Especially at night Florent's brain was consumed with such noxious fumes. Depressed by his day's work, his nerves tense, unable to sleep out of fear, he would stay late at Monsieur Lebigre's or the Méhudins', and when he got home, he still couldn't sleep, so he wrote, preparing the illustrious revolution. Slowly he drew up a plan. He divided Paris into twenty sectors, one per arrondissement,[2] each with its own leader, a sort of general who would command twenty lieutenants in charge of twenty companies of followers. Every week these leaders would hold a staff meeting, always in a different sector, and, to ensure even greater secrecy, the followers would know only the lieutenant who commanded them, who in turn would deal only with the head of his sector. It would also be advisable that the companies be led to believe that they were discussing a hypothetical mission, which would have the effect of throwing off the police.

As for actually mobilizing these forces, that would be simple enough. Once the ranks had been instructed completely, you would only have to take advantage of the first public outcry. Since they would probably have nothing more than a handful of hunting guns, they would first have to overrun military posts and disarm fire stations, the guard, and regular soldiers, with as little combat as possible by inviting them to join the cause of the people. Then they would march straight to the Corps Législatif and from there to the Hôtel de Ville.

Every night Florent returned to this plan, as though it were the script for a play that somehow relieved his frazzled nerves. It was so far only scribbling and doodles on scraps of paper, clearly showing the floundering of the author, at once scientific and childish. After Lisa read through the notes, only half understanding them, she sat there shaking, not daring to touch the papers, as though they might explode in her hands like a loaded weapon.

One final note shocked her more than all the rest. It was a half sheet of paper on which he had drawn the different insignias to distinguish the leaders from the lieutenants, and alongside she found the banners for various companies. Captions written in pencil specified the colors for each of the twenty sectors. The insignia of the leaders were red sashes, the lieutenants were to wear armbands, also red. This made Lisa able to visualize the riot. She could see the men, decked out in red, charging past her charcuterie, firing bullets into the mirrors and the marble, stealing sausages and andouilles from her window. These treacherous plots of her brother-in-law were an attack on her, an assault on her happiness.

She closed the drawer and looked around the room, telling herself that she was the one who had given this man a home, that he slept on her sheets and used her furniture. She was particularly irritated by the thought that he had concealed his infernal, abominable scheme in this little white wood table, an innocent, tattered table that she had used at Uncle Gradelle's house before her marriage.

She stood there, trying to decide what to do. First of all, it would be useless to discuss this with Quenu. It occurred to her to confront Florent, but she was afraid that he would just commit the crime further away, where he could still endanger them, just to be vindictive. She calmed down and decided that the best course of action would be to keep an eye on him, and at the first sign of trouble she would return to these papers. In any event, she already had enough evidence to send him back to prison.

Back at the shop, she found Augustine in a state. Little Pauline had been missing for at least a half hour. When Lisa questioned her, she could only say, “I don't know, Madame. She was here just a minute ago on the sidewalk, playing with a little boy. I was watching them. Then I sliced some ham for a gentleman, and they were gone.”

“I'll bet it was Muche!” shouted Lisa. “That horrible child!”

And it was, in fact, Muche. Pauline, who was excited because she had just gotten a new dress with blue stripes, had wanted to show it off. She had stood very rigid in front of the shop, behaving perfectly, her face pulled into the earnest expression of a six-year-old lady who does not want to get dirty. Her short, starched dress spread out like a ballerina's skirts, revealing her smooth white stockings and shiny little blue boots. The dress had a low-cut apron with embroidered edging around the shoulders, out of which came her chubby, sweet, bare pink arms. She wore turquoise studs in her ears, a small gold cross around her neck, and a blue velvet ribbon in her well-coiffed hair, and she combined the plump, fleshy good looks of her mother with the fashionable style of a new doll.

Muche had spotted her from the market. He was releasing small dead fish into the stream, which the water washed away. He followed them along the pavement, insisting that they were swimming. But the sight of Pauline, so clean and pretty, made him cross the street, hatless, with a frayed shirt, his pants drooping down, and looking entirely like a seven-year-old street waif. His mother had forbidden him ever to play with “that fat beast stuffed by her parents until she practically explodes.” He circled for an instant, then came nearer, wanting to touch the pretty blue-striped dress. Pauline, flattered at first, put on a prudish face and stepped backward, saying in an angry tone, “Leave me alone … Mama told me not to.”

This made Muche laugh. He was very enterprising and selfconfident. “What a dummy you are!” he said. “Who cares what your mama said? Let's play at pushing each other. Do you want to?”

He was considering a villainous plot to get Pauline dirty. But when she saw him about to shove her in the back, she stepped backward as though she were going to go back into the shop. Then he softened and hitched up his pants like a man of the world.

“Don't be silly it's just for a laugh. You know, you look very nice like that. Is that little cross your mama's?”

She said it was her own.

He quietly led her to the corner of rue Pirouette. He touched her skirt and was surprised at how oddly stiff it felt, and that greatly amused the little boy. All the time she had been posing outside, she had been upset that no one was paying any attention. But despite the flattery of Muche's attentions, she didn't want to leave the sidewalk.

“Dumb fatso!” shouted Muche, reverting to his crude ways. “I'm going to sit you in a basket of poop, Madame Big Butt.”

She started to panic. He had grabbed her by the hand, but seeing his mistake he spoke sweetly again as he fished around in his pocket for something. “I have a sou,” he said.

Pauline was calmed by the sight of the sou, which he held in front of her with his fingertips, so hypnotically that she followed the coin into the street without noticing. Clearly, good fortune was coming little Muche's way.

“What would you like?” he asked.

She did not answer immediately because she didn't know. She liked so many things. He suggested a whole lineup of scrumptious treats—licorice, molasses, gumdrops, powdered sugar. The little girl had to think carefully a minute about powdered sugar, the way you stuck your fingers in it and licked. It was very nice. But she remained quite stern until she decided, “No, I like cornets.”

So he took her by the arm and led her away. She did not resist. They crossed rue Rambuteau and followed the wide sidewalk of Les Halles until they reached a little grocery store on rue de la Cossonnerie that was renowned for its cornets. Cornets are thin paper cones into which grocers pour the debris from their window display; broken dragées, marrons glacés that have fallen to pieces[3]—the dubious scraps from the candy jars.

Muche did this well. He let Pauline choose her own cornet, one with blue paper, and he did not grab it from her when paying with his sou. Outside she emptied the assortment of crumbs into her two apron pockets, which were so small that they were filled quickly. She crunched slowly, crumb by crumb, elated, as she wet her finger to pick up the fine powder, which made the crumbs melt. Two brown stains appeared on her apron pockets. Muche laughed wickedly. He held the girl by the waist, rumpling her dress as he swung her around the corner of rue Pierre-Lescot over to square des Innocents. “Now you'll play huh?” he said. “You like what's in your pockets. See, I wasn't going to harm you, you big silly.”

And he stuck his fingers in her pockets too. They moved into the square, which was probably exactly the place where little Muche had wanted to lure his conquest all along. He showed her around the square as though it were his own private property, and actually it was a favorite afternoon haunt. Pauline had never wandered so far away and probably would have been in tears were it not for the sugar in her pockets.

The fountain squirted and poured down in the midst of lawns trimmed with circular flower beds. Jean Goujon's nymphs,[4] so white against the gray of the stone, tilted their urns and gave grace to the seedy air of rue Saint-Denis. The children walked around watching the water empty into the six basins. They were drawn to the lawn and, no doubt, thought about scampering across the center one and into the holly and rhododendron beds that ran along the square's railings.

Now little Muche, who had already managed to crumple the back of her dress, said with his sly laugh, “Let's play throwing sand at each other.”

Pauline had been completely seduced. They closed their eyes and dove into the sand, which went into her low-cut bodice and made its way down into her stockings and boots. Muche was reveling in the way the white apron was becoming yellow. But apparently she was still too clean for his taste.

“Do you want to plant some trees?” he suddenly asked. “I can make a beautiful garden.”

“Really! A garden!” said Pauline, struck with admiration.

Since the groundskeeper was nowhere in sight, he had her dig holes in one of the flower beds. She was on her knees, in the middle of the soft soil, spread-eagle, facedown, her sweet pink arms buried to the elbows. For his part, he looked for broken branches to plant as the trees in the garden in the holes Pauline made. The only problem was that he was never satisfied with the depth of the holes and he played the angry boss, scolding her as an incompetent worker.

When she stood up, she was black from head to foot, she had soil in her hair, and her face was smudged. She looked funny, with her arms looking like a coal miner's, and Muche clapped his hands, ordering, “Now we have to water them, or else they won't grow.”

This was their crowning moment. They left the square, scooping up water from the stream in their cupped hands, and ran back to water their sticks. Along the way, Pauline, who was too fat and didn't know how to run, let the water drip from her hands down her skirt, so that by the time she had done six trips, she looked as though she had been bathing in the stream. Muche thought that she was wonderful, now that she was all dirty. He had her sit next to him, under the rhododendron in the garden they had planted. He told her that it was already starting to grow. He held her hand and called her his little wife.

“You're not sorry you came, are you? It's a lot better than just standing on the sidewalk being bored. You see, I know all kinds of games to play in the streets. You'll have to come do this again—but don't say anything to your mama about it. Don't mess it up. If you do say anything, when I go by your place, I'll pull your hair.”

Pauline just kept saying yes. As a crowning touch to his chivalry, he filled the two pockets of her apron with soil. Then he squeezed her hard with that street boy's impulse to be mean. But there was no more sugar, the game was over, and she was beginning to get worried. When he pinched her, she started to cry and said that she wanted to go. This provoked Muche, bringing out his outrageous side, and he threatened not to take her back to her parents. The poor little thing, completely terrified, sighed like the fair maiden at the mercy of her seducer somewhere in an unknown inn. No doubt he would have started beating her to shut her up if a shrill voice, that of Mademoiselle Saget, had not shouted out, “Well, God forgive me if it isn't Pauline! Leave her alone, you nasty little boy!”

The elderly woman took Pauline by the hand, expressing shock at the condition of her clothes. Muche was not in the least bit intimidated. He followed them, laughing in his sly way about his handiwork, saying repeatedly that Pauline had chosen to come with him and it had been her decision to get down on the ground.

Mademoiselle Saget was a regular at the square des Innocents. She spent at least an hour there every afternoon keeping up on the latest gossip on the locals. The square had semicircles of benches end to end on either side. Poor people from the narrow sweltering streets of the neighborhood packed tightly onto the benches, frail, shriveled old women in threadbare bonnets, young ones in camisoles with badly fastened skirts, bareheaded and exhausted and already sagging from poverty, and a few men also, tidy grandfathers, forts with soiled jackets, and suspicious-looking men in black hats, while the footpaths were jammed with children pulling toy carts with wheels missing, filling pails with sand, screaming and biting—a filthy, snot-nosed crowd of kids, swarming in the sun like vermin.

Mademoiselle Saget was so thin that she could always manage to wriggle into a spot on a bench. She listened in on what was being said and then struck up a conversation with the person next to her, some young and sickly wife of a worker mending her linen, taking socks and handkerchiefs as full of holes as a sieve from a basket tied with a string. Mademoiselle Saget even knew some of the women.

In the midst of the unbearable shrieking from the children and the constant rumbling of traffic from behind rue Saint-Denis, the women babbled without stopping long enough to take a breath, with tales of storekeepers, grocers, bakers, butchers—a complete listing of the district—tales soured and warped by a lack of credit and the hungry longings of the poor. It was among these needy people that she learned of the horrors that slipped out of sleazy boardinghouses and emerged from the dark caves of the con cierges, the muck and garbage that piqued her curiosity and appetite like hot pepper on the tongue.

Facing Les Halles, the square was in front of her, with the facades of three buildings broken up by windows into which she tried to penetrate with her stare. She seemed to stretch taller and glide along each story, right up to the round flaring eyes of the attic windows. She gawked at the curtains. She could develop an entire drama from a head that appeared between two shutters. Over time she had come to know all the stories of the tenants of every house just by sitting outside, watching. Restaurant Baratte was especially interesting to her, with its wine shop and gilded fretwork awning forming a terrace that overflowed with greenery from a few pots of flowers. It was a narrow four-story house daubed and speckled with color. She liked the pale blue base with yellow trim, the fluted pillar with a shell on top. It all looked like a cardboard temple on the facade of a dilapidated old building, topped off by colored tin edging along the roof. Behind the red-striped flexible shutters she could imagine pleasant little lunches and fine dinners. She even convinced herself that this was where Florent and Gavard went to carouse with those two Méhudin floozies and imagined the abominations that took place during the dessert course.

Meanwhile Pauline cried even more loudly as Mademoiselle Saget took her hand. The elderly woman was about to lead her away through the gate to the square when she suddenly had a different idea. She sat her down at the end of a bench and tried to get her to stop crying.

“Come on, Pauline, stop this crying or the police will come get you. I will take you home. You know me, don't you? I'm a good friend, aren't I? Now, come on. Let me see a little smile.”

But the tears were choking her, and she wanted to go. Calmly Mademoiselle Saget let her cry, waiting for her to finish. The poor girl was shivering. Her skirt and stockings were soaked. Her entire face was becoming muddy as she wiped away her tears with dirty fists. After the girl calmed down, the old woman said to her in a syrupy tone, “You have a good mama, don't you? She loves you very much?”

“Yes,” said Pauline, her heart still heavy.

“And Father isn't wicked either. He doesn't beat you, does he? What do they talk about at night when you're going to sleep?”

“Oh, I don't know. I'm warm in my bed.”

“Do they talk about your cousin Florent?”

“I don't know.”

Mademoiselle Saget adopted a stern bearing and pretended to get up as though she would walk away. “You're a liar. You know you shouldn't lie. If you lie to me, I'll leave you here and Muche will come back and pinch you.”

Muche, who had been hanging around the bench, interrupted at this point and said in a clear, masculine voice, “Aw, she's too stupid to know anything. But I know that my good friend Florent looked pretty worked up when Mama smiled and said he could kiss her if he wanted to.”

Pauline, afraid of being abandoned, had started crying again.

“Be quiet, just shut up, you little brat,” Mademoiselle Saget cursed, starting to shake the little girl. “I'm not going away. I'll buy you some barley sugar,[5] hmm? A little barley sugar? … So you don't like your cousin Florent, do you?”

“No. Mama says that he's not respectable.”

“Aha! You see, your mama did say something.”

“I had Mouton in bed with me one night, I sleep with Mouton. And she told Papa, ‘Your brother only escaped from the penal colony to drag us all back there.’”

Mademoiselle Saget let out a slight squeal. She stood up shaking from head to foot. A light beam had at last shown through the shadows of her mind. She took Pauline's hand again and hustled her off to the charcuterie without saying a word, her lips squeezed into a secretive smile, her eyes shining with intense happiness. At the corner of rue Pirouette, Muche, who had been prancing alongside, enjoying the sight of the little girl running in her muddy stockings, wisely vanished.

Lisa was in a state of extreme anxiety. When she saw her daughter coming, looking like a dishrag she was so perplexed that she spun her around to look at her from every side and didn't even want to hit her.

“It was that Muche,” said Mademoiselle Saget with a malevolent tone. “I've brought her back to you. I found them under a tree in the square. I don't know what they were up to. You'd better take her home and look her over. That slut's son is capable of anything.”

Lisa could find nothing to say. She could not decide where to grab her child, she was so disgusted by her muddy little boots, dirty stockings, torn skirts, and smudged face and hands. Blue velvet, little ear studs, crucifix, all were buried under a layer of dirt. But what really drove Lisa over the top was the pockets full of soil. She bent down and emptied them without regard for the pink-and-white tile floor. Still she was speechless and dragged Pauline away saying only, “Come on, you mess.”

Mademoiselle Saget, who was thrilled by the scene, crossed rue Rambuteau with a light step with her head hidden deep in her black hat. In fact, her little feet barely touched the ground. She was carried by her delight as though caressed by a breeze. At last she had found out. After almost a year of aching to find out the truth, here she was, all of a sudden, entirely in possession of Florent. It was more than she had hoped for, like a cure for a disease, because she felt that she could have slowly burned herself out because of this man and for a long time held off death only with the strength of her curiosity. Now the whole Les Halles neighborhood belonged to her. There was no longer a missing piece. She could tell the story, shop by shop, on every street in the area. She uttered little sighs of pleasure as she entered the fruit pavilion.

“Well, Mademoiselle Saget,” shouted La Sarriette from her fruit stand, “what's happened to you, laughing to yourself? Have you won the big pot in the lottery?”

“No, no. Oh, my child, if you only knew.”

La Sarriette looked irresistible, with the wildness of a beautiful woman amid all her fruit. The locks of her curly hair fell over her forehead like wild grass. Her bare arms and bare neck, every bare and pink part of her that she was showing, had the freshness of cherries and peaches. Just for the fun of it, she had hung cherries from her ears, black cherries that bounced against her cheeks when she leaned forward with earthy laughter. What was amusing her was that she was eating red currants in a way that was covering her from nose to chin in red juice. Her mouth was lipstick red from the red currant juice, as though she had been painted and perfumed with some cosmetic. A smell of plums came from her skirts, and her loosely tied scarf had the scent of strawberries.

And mountains of fruit surrounded her in the narrow shop. Behind her were shelves of melons: cantaloupes, with warty little bumps; maraîchers, with their skin like gray lace; and culs de singe,[6] with their smooth bare humps. The beautiful fruits were on display, delicately arranged with the roundness of their cheeks, half hidden in the baskets like faces of beautiful children, partly concealed by leaves. The peaches were especially beautiful, peaches from Montreuil with clear, soft skin like northern girls' and yellow sunburned peaches from the Midi, tanned like Provençal women. The apricots lying in moss had the amber glow of sunset shining on dark-haired girls. The cherries stacked in neat rows looked like the narrowed lips of smiling Chinese women; the Montmorency cherries like the chubby lips of fat women; the English cherries, longer and more serious; the heart cherries with dark flesh bruised by kisses; the bigarreaus with pink and white splotches and a smile both joyful and angry. The apples and pears were in piles as regular as architecture, tall pyramids with the flushed color of developing breasts, golden shoulders and hips—discreetly naked among the ferns. The apples all had different skins: the baby-soft pommes d'api, the shapeless rambourgs, the calville dressed in white, the ruddy Canadas, the blotchy-faced crab apples, and the freckly reinettes.

Then came the pears, the blanquettes, the anglais, the beurrés, the messire-Jeans, the duchesses, either stubby or elongated with swan necks, yellow- or green-bellied, flushed with a touch of red. Beside them lay the plums, transparent and anemic with virginal softness. Greengage plums, a favorite of men, were as pale as the blush of innocence. The mirabelles, gathered like golden beads of a forgotten rosary, were stored in a box with sticks of vanilla beans.

The strawberries exhaled a scent of youth, especially the smaller ones, which are gathered in the woods, rather than the larger garden variety, which give off the dull scent of a watering can. The raspberries added their scent to this pure fragrance. The currants, both red and black, and the hazelnuts all smiled with an air of confidence, while the baskets of grapes in weighty bunches, heavy with drunkenness, swooned over the edge of the trellis, their colors deepening in spots where they were touched by the sun's voluptuous warmth.

This was where La Sarriette lived, in an orchard of intoxicating perfumes. The less expensive fruits—cherries, plums, strawberries— were piled in a flat, paper-lined basket in front of her. They bruised one another, staining the stand with juice, a strong juice that vaporized in the heat. On those sweltering July afternoons her head would spin with the powerful, musky odor of the melons. Then, slightly inebriated and showing some more flesh under her shawl, barely ripe and still fresh from springtime, her lips pouted: many had the urge to plunder those lips.

It was she, it was her arms and her neck, that breathed life into the fruit with her satin-finished womanliness. One stall over, an elderly market woman, a terrible drunk, filled her display with shriveled apples, pears that sagged like empty breasts, and cadaverous apricots a foul witchlike shade of yellow. La Sarriette, on the other hand, gave her display a naked sensuality. You could imagine that the cherries had been placed in the stall one by one with kisses from her lips, that the peaches had fallen from her bodice, the plums had come from her softest skin—her temples, under the chin, the corners of her mouth. She had let her own blood run into the veins of the red currants. The heat of this beautiful woman excited the fruit that came from the earth, and they made love on a bed of leaves in the moss-spread nooks of the baskets. Compared to the smell of life that rose from her open baskets and disheveled clothes, the flower market behind her smelled dull.

However, on this particular day, La Sarriette was in the throes of a shipment of mirabelles whose scent was overtaking the market. She could see that Mademoiselle Saget had some important news and she wanted to hear it, but the old woman was stamping around impatiently, shouting, “No, I don't have time. I'm on my way to see Madame Lecœur. But I have a good one. Come with me if you want.”

The truth was that the only reason she had cut through the fruit pavilion was to get La Sarriette. And La Sarriette could not resist. Monsieur Jules was there squirming on a chair that was turned backward. He was clean-shaven and as fresh as a cherub.

“Can you look after the shop?” she said to him. “I'll be back in a minute.”

But he jumped to his feet and, as she was turning down the alleyway, shouted after her, “Hey, no, Lisette. You know I'm just about to leave. I don't want to get stuck here for an extra hour like happened last time. Besides, your plums give me a headache.” He sauntered off calmly with his hands in his pockets, leaving the shop unwatched.

Mademoiselle Saget was forcing La Sarriette to run. At the butter market, a neighbor told them that Madame Lecœur was in the cellar. La Sarriette went down to get her while the older woman installed herself amid the cheeses.

The cellars below were very dark; along the passageways the storage bins were protected against fire with fine-meshed wire netting. The gas jets, placed far apart, made yellow splotches in the air but did little to illuminate that humid, murky atmosphere, which grew thicker and thicker beneath the crushing weight of the roof.

Madame Lecœur was working her butter on one of the tables under rue Berger. The gratings allowed some pale light to get in. The tables were continually being washed with water from the faucets so that they were as white as new. The butter merchant was kneading her mixture in an oak box at the far end with her back to the water pumps. She took samples of various kinds of butter that were beside her on the table and mixed them, adjusting the preparation with the addition of one or the other in much the same way as blends of wine are made. Bent over with her pointy shoulders, her thin, gnarled arms bare to the shoulders and looking like stakes, she was pounding her fist furiously into this mass of fat, which was now starting to get white and creamy. She was sweating, and she sighed with each stroke she took.

La Sarriette said, “Mademoiselle Saget wants to talk to you, Aunt.”

Madame Lecœur stopped and pulled her bonnet back over her hair with butter-covered fingers, not seeming to worry about grease spots.

“I'm done. Just ask her to wait a moment,” she answered.

“She's got something very interesting to tell you.”

“Just wait a second, dear.”

She stuck her arms in again, and the butter was up to her elbows. Softened first in warm water, her parchment skin was oiled, which made the thick purple veins stand out like varicose ropes. La Sarriette was repulsed by such ugly arms laboring in the depths of the melting paste. She remembered this work. At one time she too had kept her lovely little hands buried in butter for entire afternoons. It had served as a substitute for hand cream, a lotion that kept her skin white and her nails pink and from which her well-formed fingers had become soft. After a silence she added, “This will not be a good blend, Aunt. Your butters are too strong.”

“I know,” said Madame Lecœur with a grunt. “But what can I do? Everything's got to be used up. Some people want to buy cheap. So you have to make it cheap. It always ends up too good for the customers.”

La Sarriette was thinking that she wouldn't want to eat butter mixed with her aunt's arms. She looked at a little jar containing red dye. “Your raucourt[7] is too light,” she said.

Raucourt is used to give butter a nice yellow color. Merchants are believed to keep its formula a closely guarded secret, but the truth is that it is simply made from the seeds of the raucou tree. It is also true that it is sometimes made from carrots and marigolds.

“Come on, let's go,” said the young woman, whose patience was running out. Also, she was no longer used to the foul smell of the cellar. “Mademoiselle Saget may have left already. She must have something serious to tell us about Uncle Gavard.”

Madame Lecœur stopped. She left the mixture and the raucourt. She did not even wipe her arms. She adjusted her bonnet again with a light tap and followed quickly on the heels of her niece, climbing the stairway, asking anxiously, “Do you think she didn't wait?”

But she was reassured when she saw Mademoiselle Saget seated among the cheeses. She was not going to leave. The three women took seats in the back of the narrow shop. They were almost on top of one another, talking nose to nose.

Mademoiselle Saget remained silent for a good two minutes; then, when she could see that the other two were burning up with curiosity, she said in her piercing little voice, “You know this Florent. Well, now I can tell you where he came from.”

She let the words hang on her lips an instant longer.

“He comes from the penal colony,” she finally said, lowering and deepening her awful voice.

All around her, cheeses were stinking. Huge blocks of butter were lined up on the two shelves at the back of the shop. Brittany butter was overflowing from its baskets. Normandy butters, wrapped in canvas, looked like models of stomachs onto which some sculptor had thrown wet cloths to keep them from drying out. Other blocks, already in use, cut with large knives into jagged rocks with valleys and crevices, looked like landslides on a mountain gilded by the pale evening light of autumn. Under the gray-veined red marble display counter were baskets of chalk white eggs, and in their crates on straw pallets were bondons, end to end, gourneys[8] arranged on a platter like medals, in darker colors with greenish tints. But most of the cheeses were piled up on tables, and there, next to the one-pound packs of butter, was an enormous Cantal cheese on beet greens, looking as if it had been chopped with a hatchet, then a golden Chester and a Gruyère that looked like the fallen wheel of a primitive wagon. From Holland, there were balls like decapitated heads smeared with dried blood with the hard shell of an empty skull, which has given them the name “têtes-de-mort.”[9]

A Parmesan added an aromatic pungence to the heavy smell. Three Bries on round boards were sad as waning moons. Two very dry ones were full. The third, in its second quarter, was oozing, emitting a white cream that spread into a lake, flooding over the thin boards that had been put there to stem the flow. Port Saluts shaped like ancient discuses had the names of the producers inscribed around the perimeters. A Romantour, wrapped in silver paper, was reminiscent of a nougat bar, a sugary cheese that had strayed into the land of sour fermentation. The Roqueforts, under their glass bells, had a regal bearing, their fat, marbled faces veined in blue and yellow as though they were the victims of some disgraceful disease that strikes wealthy people who eat too many truffles. Alongside them were the goat cheeses, fat as a child's fist, hard and gray like the stones rams kick down a path when they lead the flock.

And then there were the smells: the pale yellow Mont d'Ors released a sweet fragrance, the Troyes, which were thick and bruised on the edges, were stronger-smelling than the others, adding a fetid edge like a damp cellar; the Camemberts, with their scent of decomposing game; the Neufchâtels, the Limbourgs, the Marolles, the Pont l'Evêques, each one playing its own shrill note in a composition that was almost sickening; the Livarots, dyed red, harsh and sulfurous in the throat; and the Olivets, wrapped in walnut leaves the way peasants cover rotting carcasses of animals lying by the side of the road in the heat of the sun with branches.

The warm afternoon had softened the cheeses, the mold on the rinds was melting and glazing in rich reds and greens of exposed copper, looking like badly healed wounds. The skin of an Olivet beneath an oak leaf lifted up and heaved like the chest of a sleeping man. A flood of life had made a hole in the Livarot, releasing a cluster of worms. And behind the scale in a narrow box was a Géromé seeded with anise that was so tainted that flies had dropped dead all around it on the veined red marble.

This Géromé was almost directly under the nose of Mademoiselle Saget. She recoiled and leaned her head against the large sheets of yellow and white paper that hung by a corner at the back of the shop.

“Yes,” repeated Mademoiselle Saget, grimacing with disgust, “He came from Cayenne … The Quenu-Gradelles don't have any reason to act so smug.”

But Madame Lecœur and La Sarriette were crying out in surprise, “That can't be true! What would he have been sent to prison for? Who would have thought that Madame Quenu, whose impeccable character is the pride of the neighborhood, would have a convict for a lover?”

“Well, you don't see it!” the old woman shouted impatiently. “Listen to me. I knew I'd seen that big oaf somewhere before.”

She told them Florent's story. Now she remembered rumors going around at the time that one of old Gradelle's nephews had been sent to Cayenne for killing six gendarmes at a barricade. She had even seen him once on rue Pirouette. And this was him, all right. That was the so-called cousin. She started feeling sorry for herself, complaining that she was losing her memory, she was through and soon would remember nothing at all. She bemoaned this memory loss like a scholar who sees a lifetime of notes being scattered in the wind.

“Six gendarmes!” sputtered La Sarriette with admiration. “He must have a hard fist, that one.”

“That's probably not all he has,” Mademoiselle Saget added. “I would advise you not to meet him at midnight.”

“What a thug!” stammered Madame Lecœur, completely overcome.

The sun angled into the pavilion, making the cheese smell even stronger. At this point the Marolles were particularly powerful. They let out a smell like the stink of an uncleaned stable into the dull smell of butter. Then the wind shifted and the three women were struck by a deadly whiff of Limbourg, bitter and sour like the breath of a dying man.

“But wait a minute,” Madame Lecœur said, returning to the subject. “If he is Fat Lisa's brother-in-law … then he's not sleeping with her.”

They stared at one another, surprised by this new side of the case of Florent. It was annoying to have to change the original version. The old spinster shrugged her shoulders. “That wouldn't necessarily stop him … It does seem a bit much … but I wouldn't put anything past him.”

“Oh, well,” said La Sarriette. “That's an old story, anyway. He wouldn't still be sleeping with her, since you've seen him with both the Méhudins.”

“Absolutely. As sure as I'm standing here looking at you, my sweet!” Mademoiselle Saget cried, annoyed that she was being questioned. “Every evening he's there in the Méhudins' skirts. But what do we care? He can sleep with whomever he likes, don't you think? As for us, we're respectable women. What a rogue he is.”

“He certainly is,” the other two agreed. “He's as sly as they come.”

Now the story was becoming tragic. They were feeling sorry for poor Lisa. There was nothing to do but wait for Florent to bring about some terrible calamity. Of course he was up to some evil. People like that escape only to breathe fire wherever they go. He certainly wouldn't have come to Les Halles if he were not planning something. The most extraordinary plots were proposed as to his likely mission. The two shopkeepers declared that they would put an additional padlock on their storage areas. La Sarriette recalled that just the other week a basket of peaches had been stolen from her. But Mademoiselle Saget terrified them by informing them that this was not the way the “reds” operated. They didn't care about baskets of peaches. They organized into groups of two or three hundred, killed everyone, and then helped themselves to whatever they wanted.

“That's their approach,” she said with the superiority of someone who knows. Madame Lecœur was starting to feel queasy. She could picture Les Halles in flames with Florent and his cohorts hiding deep in a cellar, ready to spring on Paris.

Suddenly the elderly woman said, “Now that I think about it, there is the inheritance from old Gradelle. My, my, the Quenus have nothing to laugh about.”

Now she was happy. The gossip continued. They started talking about the Quenus, and she told the story of the treasure in the salting tub, which she knew down to the most petty detail. She could even cite the figure of eighty-five thousand francs, though neither Lisa not her husband could recall telling this to a single soul. It didn't matter. The point was that they had not given “the skinny man” his fair share. He was too poorly dressed. Maybe he didn't even know the story about the salting tub. The whole bunch of them were thieves.

The women then put their heads together, lowering their voices, and decided that it might be dangerous to attack Beautiful Lisa; they had better keep an eye on the Red so that he didn't eat up any more of poor Monsieur Gavard's money.

At the mention of Gavard's name, they fell into silence. They all looked at one another cautiously. And since they were breathing heavily, it was the Camembert they smelled. The Camembert had a scent like venison and had won out over less assertive smells such as the Marolles and Limbourgs. It exhaled more extensively, smothering the other smells with its surprising amount of foul breath. Into this powerful assertion, the Parmesan still periodically added a thin high note as from a panpipe while the Bries kept thudding like damp tambourines. Then the Livarot smothered with its reprise and the symphony was held for an instant by the high sharp note of anise-seeded Géromé, suspended like the breathing chord of an organ.

“I saw Madame Léonce,” continued Mademoiselle Saget with a look fraught with meaning.

This made the two others pay attention. Madame Léonce was Gavard's concierge on rue de la Cossonnerie. There she lived in an old house that was set back from the street. The ground floor was occupied by a distributor of oranges and lemons who had painted the facade blue, clear up to the second floor. Madame Léonce looked after Gavard's housekeeping, kept the keys to the cupboards, and brought him herbal tea when he had a cold. She was a stern woman, a bit more than fifty years old, who spoke slowly and interminably. One day she was angry because Gavard had pinched her, but that hadn't stopped her from placing leeches on him in a very delicate spot after he hurt himself in a fall.

Mademoiselle Saget, who had coffee at her home every Wednesday night, had forged an even closer friendship with her when the poulterer moved in. They chatted for hours about the fine man. They were very fond of him and wished him well.

“Yes, I saw Madame Léonce,” Mademoiselle Saget said again. “We had coffee together yesterday. She was extremely upset. Apparently Monsieur Gavard does not come home before one in the morning anymore. On Sunday she thought he wasn't looking well, so she brought him up some broth.”

“She knows what she's doing,” said Madame Lecœur, who was bothered by the concierge's attentions.

“Not at all. You're mistaken. Madame Léonce is too good for her station in life. She's a very proper woman. Obviously, if she had wanted to help herself to Monsieur Gavard's things by the handful, she could have long ago. All she had to do was open her hands. It seems he leaves everything just lying around. That's really what I wanted to talk to you about, but you have to promise not to breathe a word of this. You have to swear to it.”

They swore to the gods in Heaven that their lips would be sealed. They stretched their necks to get closer. Then Mademoiselle Saget said with great solemnity, “You know, this has been going on with Monsieur Gavard for some time. He has bought a weapon—one of those big pistols that revolves, you know. Madame Léonce said that it's horrible, that the pistol is always on the table or the mantel and she's afraid to do the dusting. And that's not all. His money …”

“His money,” Madame Lecœur repeated, her cheeks turning bright red.

“Well, there are no more stocks. They've all been sold. All he has left is a pile of gold in the closet.”

“A pile of gold!” repeated the enraptured La Sarriette.

“Yes, a big pile of gold. A whole shelf stuffed with it. It's stunning. Madame Léonce told me that one morning he opened the armoire when she was there, and it glowed so brightly, it hurt her eyes.”

Silence fell once again. The three woman batted their eyes as though they had just seen the pile of gold. La Sarriette was the first to start laughing as she muttered, “If my uncle gave it all to me, what a time I could have with Jules. We'd never get up. We'd have scrumptious treats brought to us by the restaurant.”

Madame Lecœur seemed dumbfounded by this revelation, by this gold that she now could not stop picturing. She was gripped by envy. Finally she raised her skinny arms, her dry hands dripping butter from the fingernails, and could only stammer with anguish in her voice, “I cannot think about this. It's too painful.”

“It would be good for you if there were an accident,” said Mademoiselle Saget. “If I were you, I'd watch out for my interests. You see, nothing good will come of this pistol. Monsieur Gavard is getting very bad advice. This is not going to end well.”

Then they went back to Florent, ripping him apart with even more fury than before. They calculated where the troubling stories of Florent and Gavard would lead. A long way down, if certain people didn't hold their tongues. Then they resolved to keep their mouths shut, not that this lowlife Florent was worth worrying about but because they had to do what they could to save Monsieur Gavard from trouble. They all stood up and were about to leave when Mademoiselle Saget turned and asked, “But if there were to be an accident, do you think we can trust Madame Léonce? Does she have the key to the wardrobe?”

“Now you're going too far,” said the old woman. “She's a very fine woman, but of course, I don't know, under the right circumstances. In any case, I've warned you both. It's up to you.”

They stood there saying their farewells in the last bouquet of the cheeses. At this time of day, all the cheeses exhaled together in a cacophony of bad breath, from the heavy softness of the cooked preparations to the Gruyère and the Dutch cheese to the sharp, alkaline Olivet. The Cantal, Chester, and chèvres sang their muffled bass against the high pitched trills of the Neufchâtels, Troyes, and Mont d'Ors. Then the odors ran wild, collided with one another, the Port Salut, Limbourg, Géromé, Marolles, Livarot, Pont l'Evêques, merging and broadening into an explosion of smells. It rose and spread, no longer a collection of individual odors but a nauseating blend, a fierce and suffocating force. For an instant it seemed that it was the venomous words of Madame Lecœur and Mademoiselle Saget fouling the air.

“Thank you very much,” said the butter merchant. “I'll remember you if I ever get rich.”

But Mademoiselle Saget did not leave. She picked up a bondon, turned it over, and put it back on the marble counter. Then she asked the price.

“For me,” she added, smiling.

“For you, nothing,” said Madame Lecœur. “It's a gift.” And then she said again, “Oh, if I were only rich.”

Mademoiselle Saget told her that someday she would be. The bondon had already vanished into her bag. The butter woman went back down to her cellar, while the old woman accompanied La Sarriette back to her stand. Surrounded by fruit with the fresh smell of spring, they stopped for a moment to talk about Monsieur Jules.

“It smells a lot better over here than at your aunt's,” said the old woman. “I was starting to feel queasy. How can she live with it? At least here it's sweet and pleasant. It makes you look all pink and healthy, my dear.”

La Sarriette began to laugh. She loved getting compliments. Then she sold a pound of mirabelles to a woman, telling her they tasted like candy.

“I'd like to buy some mirabelles,” Mademoiselle Saget murmured after the other woman left. “But I can only use a few, you know, living alone …”

“Then grab a handful!” exclaimed the pretty brunette. “That's not going to ruin me. Send Jules over here, will you, if you see him? He should be smoking his cigar on the first bench to the right, off the main road.”

Mademoiselle Saget stretched her fingers wide to take a handful of mirabelles that joined the bondon in her bag. She pretended that she was trying to leave Les Halles, but she detoured through one of the covered streets, walking slowly and thinking what a meager meal mirabelles and bondon would be. Usually if she failed to fill her bag to the top while plying shopkeepers with gossip, she was reduced to eating leftovers. She slipped back to the butter market. There, near rue Berger and behind the offices of the oyster merchants, were the cooked-meat stalls. Every morning small covered wagons looking like boxes, zinc-lined and vented, stopped at the doors of large kitchens and gathered a jumble of leftovers from embassies, ministries, and restaurants. Then it was sorted out in a basement. At about nine in the morning platters were put on display, prettily garnished and trimmed and selling for three to five sous each. There were bits of meat, trimmings of game, heads and tails of fish, charcuterie right through to dessert, hardly touched pieces of cake, and other almost whole candies. The starving, part-time workers and women shivering with fever would line up. Sometimes the street children would harass them, calling out to these pale, elderly people, who nervously glanced around, hoping that no one would see them there.

Mademoiselle Saget crept over to a stand that claimed its leftovers came exclusively from the Tuileries. One day the woman had talked her into a slice of lamb, claiming that it came straight from the plate of the emperor himself. This slice of leg of lamb, eaten with considerable pride, still appealed to the old woman's vanity. She tried to stay hidden so she could reenter the market to further browse without ever buying anything. Her approach was to get into a fight with one merchant and go to the next to calm down, working the district so that she managed to go to every stall and shop. She acted as though she were a big spender, but in fact she never bought anything, hoping to cajole vendors into little gifts; if that failed completely, she would actually spend money, but only on table scraps.

On this particular evening only one tall elderly man was at the stall selling leftovers. He was examining a plate of mixed fish and meat. But Mademoiselle Saget was more interested in a plate of cold fried food. She bargained the saleswoman down to two sous and the fried food, too, disappeared into the bag. Then other people arrived and bent down to examine the food. It had a nauseating smell of greasy sinks left over from washing.

“Come back tomorrow,” the woman said to Mademoiselle Saget. “I'll put aside something nice for you. There's a big dinner at the Tuileries tonight.”

Mademoiselle Saget promised to come, and then, as she turned around, she saw Gavard, who had been listening and watching her. She turned bright red, hunched her thin shoulders, and left without showing that she had seen him. He followed her for an instant, then shrugged it off, muttering that the nastiness of that old magpie no longer surprised him and he was not in the least amazed to see that she ate that poisonous garbage they belched up from the Tuileries.

The next day a rumor was circulating in Les Halles. Madame Lecœur and La Sarriette were supposedly honoring their vows to be discreet. But Mademoiselle Saget had been outstandingly sly this time, holding her tongue and letting the other two spread the story about Florent. At first it was a shortened version, just a few simple phrases that were whispered. Then a variety of versions began to spread, each one a little longer. The legend grew, and Florent appeared in the role of the bogeyman. He had killed ten gendarmes at the barricade on rue Grenéta. He had returned home on a private ship and had slaughtered every living soul on the high seas. Ever since his return to Paris he had been seen roaming the streets at night with suspicious-looking men who clearly followed his orders.

From that point, the imaginations of the people of Les Halles had wings, and an array of the most fantastic things was fantasized—a band of smugglers in the heart of Paris and an organized crime ring that ran all the thefts in Les Halles. The Quenu-Gradelles were pitied when people enviously referred to their inheritance. It was especially the inheritance that fascinated them. It was generally stated that Florent had returned to claim his share of the treasure. But since it was problematic to explain why this had not happened, it was assumed that he was waiting for his opportunity to abscond with the whole thing. Surely, one day the Quenu-Gradelles would be found slaughtered. It was reported that already there were horrible fights every evening between Beautiful Lisa and the two brothers.

When these tales reached the Beautiful Norman, she shrugged and laughed. “That's silly,” she said. “You don't know him. The dear man is as gentle as a lamb.”

She had just harshly spurned the hand of Monsieur Lebigre, who had finally managed to propose. For about two months he had been presenting the Méhudins with a bottle of liquor every Sunday. It was Rose who brought the bottle over along with her submissive look. She was always entrusted with a compliment for the Norman, some profession of friendship that she faithfully recited without appearing in the least bit embarrassed by this strange errand.

Now that Monsieur Lebigre was a rejected suitor, he was eager to show that he was not angry and still held out hope, so the following Sunday he sent Rose with two bottles of champagne and a gigantic bouquet of flowers. Rose dutifully presented it to the beautiful fishmonger, reciting in one breath this composition from the wine merchant:

“Monsieur Lebigre invites you to drink this to his health, which has been much shaken by you-know-what. He hopes that someday you will cure him, for to him you remain as beautiful and wonderful as these flowers.”

The Norman was amused by the servant's enraptured expression. She kissed her and talked to her about her monsieur, who, it was said, was very hard to please. She asked her if she liked him, whether he wore suspenders, and if he snored at night. Then she insisted that she take back the champagne and the flowers. “Tell Monsieur Lebigre not to send anything more. You're too nice, my dear. It annoys me to see you so sweet with your bottles under your arms. You ought to scratch his face, your monsieur.”

“Oh, no! He's waiting for me,” was Rose's answer. “You're wrong to make him suffer. He's a fine, handsome man.”

The Norman was seduced by Florent's gentle nature. She still sat in on his lessons with Muche under the evening lamp, dreaming that one day she would marry this fellow who was so good with children. She would keep working her fish stall and he would become an important figure in the administration of Les Halles. But this dream was obstructed by the respect with which the teacher treated her. He greeted her with a bow, keeping his distance, when what she wanted was to laugh with him and love the way she knew to love. His silent resistance was the reason she constantly played with the idea of marriage. She imagined how she would enjoy the self-esteem it would give her. Florent, however, was ever more aloof. Perhaps he would have given in to his passions had he not been so attached to little Muche. But in addition, the idea of being involved with someone in that house, so close to the mother and the sister, was not appealing.

It was with great surprise that the Norman heard the stories about the man she loved. Never had he uttered a word about such things. She prodded him about it. These incredible adventures added yet another spice to her affection. So he spent whole evenings allowing stories to be coaxed out of him about the things that had happened. She shivered at the thought that the police might find him, but he reassured her, saying that it was ancient history and of little interest to the police anymore.

One evening he told her about the woman in boulevard Montmartre, the one in the pink bonnet who had bled onto his hands from a wound in her breast. He still thought of her often. His bereaved memory had regularly surfaced on moonlit nights in Guiana. The memory had returned with him to France, and he had crazily half expected to see her walking down the sidewalk in bright sunlight despite the fact that he could still remember the feel of her dead weight on his legs. But suppose she had managed to get up? Often, walking down the street, he felt a jab in his heart, thinking he had just seen her. With his heart pounding, he would follow a pink bonnet and a shawl over one shoulder. When he closed his eyes, he could see her walking toward him. She would let the shawl slip down to show the two red stains on her bodice, and he could see her pale, waxy face with empty eyes and her mouth twisted with pain. For a long time he felt grief in not even knowing her name and having only her shadow. When the idea of her crossed his mind, it was as the one good and pure person he had encountered. Innumerable times he had found himself dreaming that she was searching for him on the boulevard where she had lain; that she could have given him a whole lifetime of happiness had he only found her a few seconds sooner. He wanted no other woman. No other woman even existed for him. There was such a tremble in his voice when he spoke of her that the Norman, with the instincts of a woman in love, was jealous.

“Well,” said the Norman mischievously, “it's better that you don't see her again. She can't be very pretty these days.”

The blood went out of Florent's face, horrified by the image the Norman had evoked. His memory of love decayed into nothing. He did not forgive her this viciousness, which from that moment filled the lovely silk bonnet with the jutting jaw and gaping eyes of a skull. When the Norman joked with him about “the woman he had lain with on the corner of rue Vivienne,” he became hostile and his language became coarse.

But what really struck the Beautiful Norman from all the revelations was that she was completely mistaken in thinking she was stealing Beautiful Lisa's lover. This so deflated her sense of triumph that for a full eight days she loved Florent less. She did find some measure of consolation in the story about the inheritance. No longer was Beautiful Lisa a perfect prude. She was a thief who had kept her brother-in-law's inheritance and put a hypocritical face on it to fool everyone. Now, every night, while Muche was copying his handwriting samples, the conversation turned to old Gradelle's fortune.

“That was a funny idea the old man had,” said the fishmonger, bursting into laughter. “I guess he wanted to ‘salt away his money’ putting it in the salting tub … Eighty-five thousand francs, that's a lot of money, especially when you take into account that Quenu probably lied. There was probably twice that much. Three times! If it were me, I would insist on my share, now!”

“I don't need anything,” was always Florent's answer. “I wouldn't even know what to do with it.”

That angered her. “Are you a man? It's pathetic. Don't you see that the Quenus are laughing at you? That fatso hands you down old linens and her husband's worn-out clothes. I'm not trying to make you mad, but the fact is, everyone notices. Those pants you are wearing are thick with grease, and the whole neighborhood has seen them on your brother's rear for the past three years. If I were in your place, I'd throw their rags in their faces and settle accounts. It's forty-two thousand five hundred francs, isn't it? I wouldn't leave without my forty-two thousand five hundred francs.”

Florent tried his best to explain to her that his sister-in-law had offered him the money and was keeping it for whenever he needed it. He just didn't want it. He explained it in minute detail, trying to show her the honesty of the Quenus.

“Wake up, wake up!” she mocked him with the words of a popular song. “I know all about them and their honesty. The fatso folds it up in the wardrobe every morning so that it won't get dirty. You make me sad, you poor thing. At least you could have the pleasure of strutting around like a rooster. But you think like a five-year-old. She'll put the money in your pocket one day and take it out the next. The trick is as easy to play as that. Do you want me to go ask for what's owed you? That would be amusing. I'd get my hands on the cash or I'd smash that place up, I promise you that.”

“No, no, it's not your place,” Florent said, not without fear, quickly adding, “I'll have to see. I may be needing some money soon.”

She doubted it but shook it off, muttering something about him being too soft. Her tireless obsession was to use Florent against the Quenu-Gradelles, and she tried every weapon in her arsonal, including mockery, anger, and tenderness. Then she had another idea: after she married Florent she would be the one to go to Lisa and slap her face if she did not pay up the inheritance. Lying awake in bed at night, she would picture the whole thing: walking straight into the charcuterie, sitting down in the middle of the shop at the busiest time of day, and making a terrible scene. She lovingly nurtured this plan and was so smitten by it that she would have gotten married for no other reason than to claim the forty-two thousand five hundred francs left by old Gradelle.

Mère Méhudin was so exasperated by the rejection of Monsieur Lebigre that she went around the neighborhood screaming that her daughter was crazy and that the “big beanpole” must have slipped her some drugs. When she heard the story about Cayenne, she became furious, called him a convict and a murderer, and said it was his evil ways that kept him so thin. She was the one who spread the worst versions of the story through the neighborhood. But at home she contented herself with merely grumbling and locking the silver drawer when Florent showed up.

One day, after a quarrel with her older daughter, she shouted, “We can't go on like this anymore. It's that horrible man who's turned you against me, isn't it. Don't push me too far, because I'll go denounce him to the prefecture.”

“You'll denounce him,” repeated the Norman with her fists trembling and her body shaking. “Don't you dare do such a horrible thing. Oh, if you weren't my mother …”

Claire, who witnessed the argument, started to laugh nervously, as though it tore at her throat. After some time she became more serious and more emotional, turning white, her eyes bloodshot.

“You'll do what?” she asked. “Are you going to beat her? And then will you beat me, your own sister? That's how this will end. I'm getting out of this house. I'll go to the prefecture and save Mama the trip.”

And while the Norman was choked with rage and stammered threats, Claire added, “You won't have to bother beating me. I'm going to jump off the bridge into the water on my way back.”

Large tears rolled down her face, and she rushed into the bedroom and slammed the door. Mère Méhudin never said another word about denouncing Florent. But Muche reported to his mother that he had seen her talking to Monsieur Lebigre in quiet spots all over the neighborhood.

The rivalry between the Beautiful Norman and Beautiful Lisa took on a quieter but more disturbing character. In the afternoons, when the pink-striped gray canvas awning was pulled down in front of the charcuterie, the fishmonger would call out that the fatso was scared and hiding. The store also had a window blind that provoked the Norman when it was down. It featured a luncheon of a hunting party in a forest clearing with men in black and their bare-shouldered ladies sitting on the yellow grass, eating a red pâté almost as large as the people.

Of course, Beautiful Lisa wasn't really scared. As soon as the sun passed, she raised the awning as she knitted and looked out peacefully from her counter across the square in front of Les Halles, planted with plane trees and crawling with good-for-nothings sitting beneath trellises of leaves, poking at the gratings that protected the tree roots, while along the benches porters were smoking their pipes. At the ends of the pavement were two pillars plastered with square theater posters of green and yellow and blue and red, as colorful as a harlequin's costume. She had a perfect view of the Beautiful Norman, though all the time she appeared to be watching the traffic.

Sometimes she would lean forward, pretending to follow the omnibus from the Bastille to place Wagram as it went up to Saint Eustache. But actually she was leaning to get a better view of the fishmonger, who avenged the blinds with large sheets of gray paper with the excuse that it protected the merchandise from summer heat. But Beautiful Lisa had the advantage. She remained very calm as the day of reckoning drew near, whereas the other, despite her attempt to maintain a grand, lofty air, invariably gave in to shouting something crude that she instantly regretted. The Norman always wanted to appear correct. Nothing upset her more than hearing her rival praised for good manners. Mère Méhudin had noticed that her daughter had this weak spot, and she too started to use it against her.

“I saw Madame Quenu chatting by her doorway,” she would say in the evening. “It's incredible how well that woman takes care of herself. And so clean—she looks like a real lady. It's the counter, you see. A good counter is the mark of a real lady, that is what makes her distinguished.”

Hidden in this was a reference to Monsieur Lebigre's proposals. The Beautiful Norman did not answer but sat for a moment lost in thought. She imagined herself at the other end of rue Pirouette behind the wine merchant's counter, making a bookend with Beautiful Lisa. This was the first wavering of her affections for Florent.

In truth, Florent was becoming very hard to defend. The entire neighborhood was turning against him. It seemed as though every one of them had a reason to want to be rid of him. In Les Halles there were those who swore he was a paid police informant. Others swore they had seen him in the butter cellars trying to make holes in the wire netting for throwing in lighted matches. The slander had built to a torrent of accusations.

There were ever more sources for it without anyone knowing where it had all originated. The fish market was the last to revolt because the fish women liked his gentle ways. For a time they defended him, but then, under pressure from the women in the butter and fruit markets, they too gave in. After that the fight was on—the thin man against enormous bellies and ponderous bosoms. Once again he was lost among the skirts, stuffed bodices nearly bursting and heaving extravagantly all around his pointy shoulders. But Florent noticed nothing and marched straight on toward his plan.

Now, all hours of the day on most any corner, the black hat of Mademoiselle Saget could be seen amid the turmoil. Her pale little face seemed to be multiplying. She had sworn a terrible revenge on the group that met in Monsieur Lebigre's glass-paneled room. She accused them of spreading the story that she ate leftovers. In truth it was Gavard, who one evening had told them how that old goat who spied on them ate leftover garbage that the Bonapartists threw out. This made Clémence ill, and Robine quickly gulped down some beer to cleanse his mouth. But Gavard repeated his quip, “The Tuileries have belched on it.”

He said these words with a grimace of disgust. Those slices of meat taken from the emperor's plate were unspeakable filth, the vomit of politics, the spoiled remains of all the corrupt excess of the regime. After that, as far as the people at Monsieur Lebigre's were concerned, no one would touch Mademoiselle Saget except with a pair of tweezers; she was living dung, a vile animal feeding on rot that even a dog wouldn't touch. Clémence and Gavard peddled the story around Les Halles so thoroughly that the old woman's relationship with the shopkeepers was very much damaged. When she tried to haggle over prices or stood there chatting without buying, she was sent off to the leftover stand. This cut off her sources of information. Some days she had no idea what was going on. She wept with rage. And it was on such an occasion that she said bluntly to La Sarriette and Madame Lecœur, “You don't have to push me any further. I'm going to take care of your friend Gavard.”

The other two were a little taken aback, but they didn't argue. The next day Mademoiselle Saget seemed to have calmed down and seemed to have again warmed to that poor Monsieur Gavard, who got such bad advice and was speeding toward ruin.

Gavard was certainly putting himself in a difficult position. Ever since the conspiracy had begun to ripen, he had been walking around with the revolver that had frightened his concierge, Madame Léonce. It was a menacingly large revolver that he had bought from the best firearms dealer in Paris, the transaction carried out in an aura of mystery. The next day, he had showed it off to all the women in the poultry market like a little boy with a forbidden novel hidden in his desk. He let the gun stick out of a pocket and then, with a wink, drew attention to it. Then he grew reticent and would only give glimpses, playing the game of a man enjoying the pretense of being afraid.

This pistol gave him tremendous importance. He was counted as one of the truly dangerous men in town. Sometimes in the back of his shop he would agree to take it out of his pocket and show it to two or three women. He would ask the women to stand in front of him so he would be hidden by their skirts. Then he would cock it, turn it over in his hand, and point it at a goose or turkey hanging on display. He enjoyed frightening the women but then would always comfort them by saying that it was not loaded. But he always carried cartridges with him, in a box that he opened with great care. Once they had held the cartridges, it was time to put everything back in the arsenal. And with his arms crossed he triumphantly held court for hours.

“With a pistol like that, a man is a man,” he would say with a braggart's bravado. “Now the police are nothing to me. Sunday, I tried it out with a friend on the plaine Saint-Denis. You know, you can't let everybody know you have one of these gadgets. But I tell you, my little darlings, we shot at a tree, and every time, whack, we hit it. You'll see, you'll see, it's just a matter of time until you hear everyone talking about Anatole.”

Anatole was his name for the revolver. He did such a thorough job that by the end of the week everyone in the pavilion knew of his pistol and the cartridges. His friendship with Florent was also thought to be suspicious. He was too rich and too fat to have the same resentments as Florent. But he lost his standing with thinking people and even managed to frighten the timid. All of this, of course, thrilled him.

“It's unwise to carry firearms,” Mademoiselle Saget said. “That habit will lead to trouble for him.”

At Monsieur Lebigre's, Gavard was in his glory Since Florent had stopped eating with the Quenus, he almost lived in that paneled room. He ate lunch and dinner there and came at odd hours to lock himself away behind its doors. It was almost his own room, a study where he kept his old coats and books and papers. Monsieur Lebigre accepted Florent moving in. He removed one of the two tables to put in its place an upholstered bench where, if he wanted to, Florent could sleep the night. When Florent hesitated, the landlord begged him not to worry about it and to consider the house at his disposal. Logre also displayed a warm friendship for Florent, making himself the trusty lieutenant. At all hours he would engage him in discussions of “the matter,” giving him the names of any new members and informing him of steps that were being taken. He had assumed responsibility for organizing the entire operation. He was the one who made contact with people, organizing the various districts, preparing each stitch in the vast net into which Paris would fall at a given signal. Florent remained in charge, the heart of the plot.

The hunchback tried so hard that he seemed to sweat blood with no appreciable result. Though he swore that he knew two or three supporters who could be counted on in each district, groups like the one that gathered at Monsieur Lebigre's, so far he had produced no precise information. He simply threw out names without any real information and untiringly bragged of tossing himself into the thick of the popular enthusiasm. The closest thing to concrete information he had to report was the number of hands he had shaken—so-and-so, whom he knew well, had shaken his hand heartily and said that he “would be there.” At Gros-Caillou, a big tall fellow who would make an excellent section chief had nearly yanked his arm off. On rue Popincourt, he had been embraced by a group of workers. It sounded as though a hundred thousand men could easily be raised overnight.

When Logre arrived looking weary and fell across the upholstered bench in the little room, Florent took notes on his reports and assumed he would deliver on his promises. The plot was coming to life in Florent's pocket. The notes became reality, the facts indisputable, and since the entire plan was built on the notes and ideas, it was now simply a matter of waiting for the right moment. Logre, with his impassioned gestures, said the whole thing would roll along as though it were on wheels.

During this time, Florent was very content. He felt so uplifted by the intensity of his ideas for dispensing justice after all that he had suffered, he felt as though his feet didn't touch the ground when he walked. He had the faith of a child and the confidence of a hero. If Logre had reported that the statue on the Colonne de Juillet[10] had climbed down from the pillar to lead them, he would have believed it. In the evenings at Lebigre's, eloquence flowed from him. He spoke of the upcoming battle as a festival to which all good people were invited. But while he spoke, while Gavard fiddled with his revolver, Charvet grew even more bitter and shrugged his shoulders as he scoffed. His rival's ascent to the leadership of the plot infuriated Charvet and made him lose interest in politics. One evening when he arrived early and was alone with only Logre and Monsieur Lebigre, he took the opportunity to unload his feelings.

“That boy” he said, “cannot manage two political ideas at the same time. He would be more suited to teach writing at a girls' boarding school. It would be a disaster if he succeeded because we would have to look after all the damned workers with whom he locked arms in his foolish social daydreams. Don't you see, that's how we will lose. There's no room for whiners, humanitarian poets, people who are going to throw their arms around each other at the slightest scratch … But he won't succeed. He'll end up in a coffin, that's all.”

Logre and the wine merchant said nothing. They let Charvet go on.

“He would have been in his coffin a long time ago if he were as dangerous as he thinks he is,” Charvet continued. “His pathetic pretenses about escaping from Cayenne. I'm sure the police knew all about it the day he arrived back in Paris. He was left alone because they couldn't care less.”

Logre shuddered slightly.

“They've been trailing me now for fifteen years,” he added proudly. “But I'm not going to scream about it to the rooftops. I'm not going to get involved in this fracas of his. I won't play the fool. He may have half a dozen informants trailing him, ready to grab him by the collar the second the prefecture wants him.”

“Oh, no! What an idea,” said Monsieur Lebigre, who normally didn't speak at all. He was a little pale and cast a glance at Logre, who was rubbing his hump against the glass partition.

“This is speculation,” the hunchback muttered.

“Call it speculation if you like,” answered the tutor. “I know how the police operate. In any case, the police aren't going to get me this time either. Let the others do what they want. But if you listen to me, especially you, Monsieur Lebigre, you won't want to put your business at risk. Because they'll shut you down.”

Logre could not help but smile. Several times Charvet had spoken to them in this way. He must have thought he could separate the two of them from Florent by scaring them. He was always surprised by their calm and confidence. Nevertheless, he still came regularly in the evening with Clémence. The big brunette was no longer a clerk in the fish market. Monsieur Manoury had fired her.

“Those agents are all bastards,” grumbled Logre.

Clémence leaned her chair back against the partition, rolling a cigarette in her long, thin fingers, and answered in her crisp voice, “It's a fair fight. We don't have the same politics, you see. That Manoury, who brings in moneybags as fat as he is, licks the emperor's boots. If I had a business, I would keep him on my staff twenty-four hours a day.”

The truth was, it was her offbeat sense of humor that had caused the trouble. One day she had thought it would be funny to write on the sales boards, right next to the dabs and skates and mackerel, the names of the best-known ladies and gentlemen of the court. The fishy nicknames given to highly placed dignitaries—countesses and barons for sale at thirty sous apiece—had deeply shocked Monsieur Manoury. Gavard was still laughing about it.

“Don't worry about it,” he said, patting Clémence on the arm. “You're a real man.”

Clémence had found a new way of mixing grog. First she filled the glass with hot water. Then, after adding sugar, she poured in the rum, one drop at a time, on a floating slice of lemon, so that the rum did not mix with the water. Then she lit it and watched it burn with great earnestness, slowly smoking, her face lit green by the licks of the flame. But it was an expensive drink, and she'd had to drop it when she lost her job. Charvet would comment with biting laughter that she wasn't rich anymore.

She earned a little money giving French lessons to a young woman at the head of rue Miromesnil who was secretly polishing her education and hiding it from her maid. So this evening Clémence ordered nothing more than a beer, which she drank, accepting her fate philosophically.

Evenings in the glassed-in room were not as tumultuous as they once had been. Charvet, pale and in an icy rage, had fits of silence when they ignored him to listen to his rival. The thought that he had once ruled there, that before the other man came he had been a despot lording over the group, had planted in his heart the cancer of a deposed king. If he continued going there, it was only his nostalgia for this crowded little corner where he recalled lovely hours of tyranny over Robine and Gavard. It was a time when he owned not only Logre's hunchback but the meaty arms of Alexandre and the somber face of Lacaille. With one word he could bend them, stuff his opinion down their throats, and hold his scepter above their shoulders. But nowadays it was too painful, and he stopped talking entirely, stiffening his back, whistling a casual tune, and considering it beneath him to bother refuting the stupidities he was hearing. What most upset him was the way he had been pushed away little by little, so gradually that he had failed to notice. He could not understand how Florent had dominated. He would often say, after listening to his soft voice and seeing his sad demeanor during the endless hours he was speaking, “Why, that boy is a priest. He's only lacking the skullcap.”

But the others seemed to drink up his every word. Charvet, faced with Florent's clothes hanging from every hook, would pretend not to know where he could hang his hat without getting it dirty. He shoved back the papers that were scattered around and said that they could no longer feel at home there since “this ‘monsieur’ has taken over everything here.” He even complained to the wine merchant, asking him if the room was for everyone or just one customer. This invasion of his domain was the final blow. Men were just dumb animals, after all. It gave him tremendous contempt for the human race to watch Logre and Monsieur Lebigre with their eyes fixed on Florent. Gavard exasperated him with his revolver. Robine, who remained silent behind his mug of beer, seemed to him the most solid one of the group. No doubt he judged men by their true value and not their words. As for Lacaille and Alexandre, they confirmed his belief that people are too stupid and need to live under a revolutionary dictatorship for at least ten years to learn how to act.

Logre confirmed that all the sections would soon be completely organized. Florent began to give out assignments. Then one night, after a final discussion in which he again came out the loser, Charvet got up, grabbed his hat, and said, “Good night to you all. Go get your heads beaten in, if that's what you want. But I won't be there, you understand? I have never worked for anyone's personal ambition.”

Clémence, who was putting on her scarf, added coldly, “The plan is inept.”

And since Robine was watching them with a gentle look, Charvet asked if he was coming with them. Robine, who still had three fingers of beer left in his mug, thought it would be enough to offer a handshake. The couple never came back. Lacaille learned one day that Charvet and Clémence had started frequenting a brasserie on rue Serpente. He had seen them through the window gesticulating a great deal, surrounded by an attentive group of very young people.

Florent was never able to enlist Claude. There was a moment when he fantasized about indoctrinating Claude with his political ideas, making him a disciple who could help him in the work of his revolution. With this in mind, one evening he took him to Monsieur Lebigre's. But Claude spent the evening doing a sketch of Robine, with his hat and his brown coat, his beard resting on the knob of his cane.

Leaving with Florent, he said, “No, you see, all those things you were talking about in there are of no interest to me. Maybe it's brilliant, but it goes right by me. You have that outstanding fellow there, Robine. He's deep as a well, that one. I'm coming back, but not for the politics. I want to sketch Logre and do another of Gavard, to put them with Robine into a fantastic painting that came to me while you were discussing the question of—how was it you put it—the question of the two chambers, wasn't that it? Can't you picture it, Gavard, Logre, and Robine talking politics from behind their beer mugs? It would be the hit of the Salon, my good friend, a tremendous success, true modern painting.”

Florent was saddened by Claude's skepticism about politics. He made him come up to his room, and they talked until two in the morning on the narrow balcony facing the blue vastness of Les Halles. He questioned and instructed, gave him a catechism, telling him he was less than a man if he was indifferent to the well-being of his country.

The painter shook his head and answered, “You may be right, I am selfish. I can't even say that I paint for my country, in the first place because everyone who looks at my paintings is horrified, and in the second place because when I am working on a painting, I think only of pleasing myself. It is as though I tickle myself when I paint. It makes my whole body laugh. What do you want? It's just the way I'm built. I'm not going to throw myself in the river over it. Also, France does not need me, as my aunt Lisa is always pointing out. And if you will excuse me for being frank … the reason I like you is that you approach politics exactly the way I approach painting. You like to tickle yourself with it, my friend.”

When Florent tried to deny it, Claude continued, “Wait a minute. You're an artist in your own field. You dream politics. I imagine you spend entire evenings here, gazing at the stars, interpreting them as infinity's ballots. Then you tickle yourself with your ideas of justice and truth. It's also true that your ideas, like my paintings, strike terrible fear into the hearts of the bourgeoisie. And furthermore, just between you and me, do you think I would have any fun being your friend if you were Robine? Ah, no, great poet that you are.”

Then Claude started joking around, saying that politics didn't bother him anymore, that he had gotten used to them in the brasseries and the studios. While on the subject, he told Florent of a café on rue Vauvilliers, the café on the ground floor of the building where La Sarriette lived. That smoky room had booths upholstered in worn velour and marble tables yellowed by coffee spills mixed with rum. It was the usual place for the modern young people of the neighborhood to meet. There Monsieur Jules reigned over a crowd of porters, shop boys, and the white shirt and velvet cap crowd.[11] At either temple a curl was glued to his cheek. Every Saturday he had his neck shaved to keep it white at a barber's on rue des Deux-Ecus, where he paid by the month. He set the tone, playing billiards with a studied grace, employing his hips, bending his arms and legs, nearly lying over the edge in a position to best use his loins. When the game ended, it was time for talk. The crowd was very reactionary and very materialistic.

Jules read the fluffy newspapers. He knew the people in the small theater world, talked with familiarity about the celebrities of the day, and always knew which plays had bombed and which had been cheered in the previous night's openings. But he had a weakness for politics. His ideal was Morny[12] as he liked to call the duc de Morny. He read the annals of the sessions of the Corps Législatif and laughed merrily at Morny's most trivial comments. Morny ridiculed those dumb republicans. Then he would go on to say that only the scum of society hated the emperor, because the emperor cared for the well-being of all respectable people.

“Sometimes I go to their café,” Claude told Florent. “That bunch is very funny too with their pipes, talking about balls at court as though they were ever invited. That little fellow who goes around with La Sarriette, you know, he made fun of poor old Gavard the other night. He calls him ‘uncle.’ When La Sarriette came downstairs looking for him, she had to pay his bill because he had lost all his money between drinks and billiards. Pretty girl, that Sarriette, isn't she?”

“Ah, what a nice life you lead,” said Florent, smiling. “Between Cadine, La Sarriette, and all the others.”

The painter shrugged. “You see, that's where you are mistaken. I don't want women. They upset everything too much. I wouldn't even know what to do with a woman. I've always been afraid to find out … Good night, sleep well. If you ever become a government minister, I would like to give you a few ideas for the beautification of Paris.”

Florent had to give up on his plan to make Claude a disciple. That saddened him because despite his fanatic's blindness, he was beginning to sense a growing hostility around him. Even at the Méhudins' he was received a little more coldly. The old woman was cackling under her breath. Muche no longer listened to him. The Beautiful Norman treated him with curt impatience when she moved her chair close to him and he wouldn't respond. Once she said that he acted as though he were displeased with her, and when he only managed to respond with an embarrassed smile she angrily moved over to the other side of the table. And he had lost the friendship of Auguste. When the boy went up to bed, he never stopped in Florent's room anymore. Auguste was very frightened by the stories circulating about this man with whom he had spent so much time late at night. Augustine made him swear not to be so foolish anymore. But Lisa managed to end the friendship completely when she asked them to delay their marriage until the cousin had relinquished his upstairs room. She didn't want to put the new shopgirl into the tiny room on the first floor.

From that moment Auguste longed for “the expulsion of the jailbird.” He had found his dream charcuterie not in Plaisance but a little farther away in Montrouge. Smoked pork products had become profitable items, and Augustine had said that she was ready, laughing in that chubby-girl way she had. Every night Auguste would lurch out of sleep at the slightest sound, feeling a surge of false hope, thinking the police had come for Florent.

At the Quenu-Gradelles' no comment was ever made about these things. The staff of the charcuterie had a tacit understanding to shroud Quenu in silence. Quenu, saddened by the rift between his brother and his wife, consoled himself by stringing his sausages and salting his strips of pork fat. He sometimes went to the doorway of the shop to air his thick ruddy skin, which laughingly bulged out of the tight white apron stretched across his belly. He never realized how his appearance at the door always stirred up the Les Halles gossip mill. People sighed for him. People found that he was losing weight, overlooking the fact that he was enormously fat. On the other hand, there were those who accused him of being too fat, considering the shame he should be feeling for having a brother such as his.

Like a cheated husband, who is always the last to learn of his misfortune, he had an impenetrable ignorance that kept him in a happy frame of mind as he stopped some neighbor on the street to inquire after her Italian cheese or her pig's head in aspic. The neighbor would always assume a look of condolence, as though all the pigs in his charcuterie were suffering from jaundice.

One day he asked Lisa, “What's going on with all these women? They look at me as though we were at a funeral. Do I look ill or something?”

She reassured him that he looked fresh as a rose, because he had a terrible fear of illness, moaning and disrupting the entire household with the least sniffle. But the truth was that the handsome Quenu-Gradelle charcuterie was becoming a gloomy place—the mirrors looked pale, the marble was white as ice, the cooked meats on the counter lay sleeping under a cover of yellow fat or sitting in lakes of troubled jelly Even Claude dropped in one day to tell his aunt her display looked “all agitated,” and it was true. The stuffed tongues from Strasbourg on their bed of blue shredded paper had white spots like the tongues of sick people. The fine yellow faces of the jambonneaux looked sickly, garnished with sorry wilted green pom-poms. Furthermore, customers never came into the shop to ask for a link of boudin or six sous' worth of saindoux without lowering their voice as though in the room of a dying man. There were always two or three despondent-looking women lingering by the cooled-off warming oven.

Beautiful Lisa supervised the charcuterie-in-mourning with perfect dignity. She smoothed her white apron over her black dress with even more than the usual correctness. Her clean hands were clasped at the wrists by long sleeves, and her face was even more lovely with this proper sorrow, all of which sent a clear message to the neighborhood and all the inquisitive women who stopped there from morning until night that they were the victims of undeserved misfortune, but that knowing the cause of it, she would triumph in the end. Sometimes she would bend down and with her eyes reassure the two goldfish who swam joylessly in their aquarium that better days were coming.

Now Beautiful Lisa allowed herself only one pleasure. She could chuck Marjolin under his satin chin without fear. He had just returned from the hospital with his skull restored, as fat and happy as ever—but stupid, even stupider than before, in fact a complete idiot. The blow seemed to have gone to his brain. He was stupid as an animal. With the body of a Goliath, he had the mentality of a five-year-old. He laughed and lisped, completely failing to pronounce some words, and was as obedient as a lamb. Cadine once more completely took him over, shocked at first but then thrilled with this wonderful pet with whom she could do as she liked. She would bed him down in a basket of feathers, take him to romp and play in the streets, use him according to her whims as a dog, a doll, or a lover. He was her cookie, a delicious little part of Les Halles, blond flesh available for whatever she wished. But though the girl took all he had and kept him trained at her heel, a submissive giant, she could not keep him from going back to Madame Quenu's. She would pummel him with her fists. He didn't even feel it. As soon as she slung her flower tray over her neck and left with her violets down rue du Pont-Neuf or rue de Turbigo, he wandered around in front of the charcuterie.

“So come in!” Lisa would shout out to him.

Usually she would give him cornichons. He loved them and ate them at the counter with his childish giggle. He was overcome by the sight of this beautiful woman, and it made him clap his hands together with joy Then he would hop around the shop letting out little shrieks, like a street child confronted with something exquisite.

At first she had been afraid that he would remember. “Does your head still hurt?” she would ask.

He said that it didn't and he balanced and swayed merrily. Gently she pushed on: “What happened? You fell?”

“Yes. Fell. Fell. Fell,” he started singing to a happy tune as he started smacking his head.

Then seriously and with excitement he started repeating the word “Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful.”

Lisa was deeply moved. She urged Gavard to take him and look after him. It was when he sang his song of simple tenderness that she would stroke him under the chin and tell him that he was a good boy. Her hand would linger there for an instant, warmed by a discreet pleasure, a sign of friendship, accepted by the giant with a child's trusting eyes. He would bend his neck a bit and close his contented eyes like an animal being petted. In order to convince herself of the respectability of this pleasure she indulged in with him, Lisa told herself that she was making it up to him for the blow she had dealt him in the poultry cellar.

But the charcuterie remained a sorrowful place. Florent occasionally ventured in to shake his brother's hand, in the face of Lisa's icy silence. Sometimes, not very often, he would even dine there on a Sunday. Quenu would make a tremendous effort to be jolly but he never managed to bring any warmth to the meal. He ate badly and ended up angry. One evening after one of these frigid family reunions, almost in tears, he said to his wife, “What in the world is wrong with me? Are you telling the truth when you say I'm not sick? You don't think I've changed? It's as though there is a weight pressing on me somewhere. And I'm feeling very sad, and I don't even know why. I swear I don't. You don't know, do you?”

“It's probably just a bad mood,” Lisa answered.

“No, no, it's lasted too long to be just a bad mood. It's choking me. Our business is not going badly. I've got nothing to be sad about. Everything is chugging along in its usual way. And you too, dear, you're not well. You seem overtaken with melancholy. If this keeps on like this, I'm going to see a doctor.”

The beautiful charcutière looked at him very soberly.

“There's no need for a doctor,” she said. “It'll pass. You'll see. There's an ill wind blowing at the moment. Everyone in the neighborhood is sick.” Then, as though suddenly overtaken by motherly love, she said, “Don't worry, my darling. I don't want you to get sick. That would be too much.”

Usually she sent him back to the kitchen, knowing that the sound of cleavers, the sizzling of fat, the clanking of pans, made him feel more cheerful. Also, she now avoided the indiscretions of Mademoiselle Saget, who had gotten into the habit of spending whole mornings in the charcuterie. The old woman had made it her job to shock Lisa, to push her to extreme measures.

First she tried to win her confidence. “Oh my, what evil people there are,” she said. People who should really just mind their own business. “If you only knew, my dear Madame Quenu … But I wouldn't dream of repeating this to you.”

Lisa insisted that she was not at all interested, that she was above listening to malicious tongues. Then the old mademoiselle leaned over the meat counter and murmured in her ear, “Well, they say that Monsieur Florent isn't your cousin.”

Then, little by little, she showed that she knew the whole story. All of this was simply a way to put Lisa at her mercy. When Lisa confessed the truth, also for tactical reasons, to have someone at her disposal who could keep her up to date on the neighborhood gossip, the aged mademoiselle swore that she would be mute as a fish about it and would deny everything, even if they put her head on a block. She then took profound pleasure in the drama. Every day she delivered troubling news that she further enlarged upon.

“You should be careful,” she murmured. “At the tripe shop I heard two women talking about you-know-what. I can't tell people that they're lying, you see. It would look odd … But it spreads, it spreads. No one can stop it. The truth will come out.”

A few days later the real attack was launched. She arrived in a panic and made impatient gestures, waiting for everyone else to leave the shop. Then she hissed, “You know what they're saying? The men who meet at Monsieur Lebigre's, they all have rifles and they want to start up again just like in the uprising of '48. What a shame to see that good Monsieur Gavard, so rich and decent, mixed up with that trash. I wanted to warn you, because of your brother-in-law.”

“It's all nonsense, none of this is real,” said Lisa to push her into saying more.

“Not real, my goodness! In the evening, if you walk down rue Pirouette, you can hear the most horrible shouting. They're not bothered by anything. Don't forget how they tried to involve your husband. And what about the cartridges I see them making from my window, are they nonsense too? I'm only telling you for your own good.”

“Of course. And I thank you. But so much of this is completely fabricated.”

“Oh no, it's not. Unfortunately. Everyone in the neighborhood is talking about it. They say that if the police find out, a lot of people will be in trouble. Including Monsieur Gavard.”

But Lisa shrugged as though to say that Monsieur Gavard was an old fool and would get what he deserved.

“I mentioned Monsieur Gavard, but I could have just as easily named some of the others. Your brother-in-law, for example,” the foxy old mademoiselle continued. “It seems that he's the leader, your brother-in-law. It's very awkward for you. I feel bad for you, because if the police come here, it's possible they would also take Monsieur Quenu. Two brothers are like two fingers on the same hand.”

Beautiful Lisa contradicted her, but she had turned pale. Mademoiselle Saget had managed to hit on her deepest fears. From that moment on she brought in nothing but tales of innocent people who had been thrown into prison for harboring criminals. In the evenings when she went to collect her black-currant liqueur from the wine merchant, she filed away material for the following morning. But Rose was not very forthcoming. The aged mademoiselle had to count on her own eyes and ears. She noticed Monsieur Lebigre's affection for Florent, the attention he gave that was so little rewarded by the small amount of money the young man spent there. It was especially surprising to Mademoiselle Saget because she knew about the two of them and the Beautiful Norman.

“You would have thought,” she said to herself, “that he had been beak-feeding him from birth. I wonder who he wants to sell him to?”

One evening when she was in the shop, she saw Logre throw himself on a bench in the small room and talk about his exhausting travels through the suburbs. She stole a quick look at his feet and saw that his shoes did not have a flake of dust. She smiled discreetly, pinching her lips, and left with her black-currant liqueur.

Then, as usual, she sat at her window and put her information together. The window was on an upper floor and had a commanding view of the neighborhood, which gave her endless pleasure. She would sit there at all hours of the day, as though in an observatory from which she could clock all the movements in the neighborhood. She knew all the windows across from her, on both the right and the left, knew them down to the smallest pieces of furniture. She could have listed the inventory without omitting a single detail, the habits of the tenants, who was a good or a bad housekeeper, how they washed up, what they ate for dinner, even who their visitors were. She also had a side view of Les Halles so that no one could cross rue Rambuteau without mademoiselle seeing her. She knew without error where the woman was coming from, where she was going, what she carried in her basket, her whole history, who her husband was, her habits of hygiene, how many children she had, and how much money. There's Madame Loret. She has given her son a fine education. That's Madame Hutin, a sad little woman whose husband neglects her. And that's Mademoiselle Cécile, the butcher's daughter, who could not find a husband because of her unappealing temperament. She could have continued in this vein for days, stringing together empty phrases, being incredibly amused by uninteresting facts dissected into small pieces.

But once eight in the evening came, she only had eyes for the frosted glass window that revealed the shadows of the people drinking in the little room. She had figured out that Charvet and Clémence had left, because she could no longer see their silhouettes on the milky glass. Nothing ever happened in there that she did not eventually figure out from abrupt revelations garnered from the actions of the arms and heads silently projected onto the glass. She was a very good guesser, interpreting the elongated noses, parted fingers, wide-open mouths, and defiant shoulders, following the conspiracy, step by step, with such accuracy that she could report daily on where everything stood. One evening she saw evidence of the conspiracy's brutal climax. She made out the shadow of Gavard's pistol, the enormous profile of a revolver, its long barrel, black against the pale window. The pistol appeared and disappeared several times. It was the weapon she had been talking about at Madame Quenu's. Then, on a different evening, she was no longer able to follow, but she imagined them making cartridges as she saw endless lengths of fabric being measured out. She went in the following morning using the pretext of wanting to borrow a candle from Rose, and out of the corner of her eye, on the table in the little room, she caught sight of a pile of red cloth that seemed very frightening.

Her report for the following day was of the utmost gravity. “I don't want to frighten you, Madame Quenu,” she said. “But things are going too far. I'm afraid, I tell you. You cannot repeat what I am about to tell you for anything in the world. If they knew, they would slash my throat.”

Then, once the charcutière swore not to expose her, she told her of the red cloths. “I just don't know what it could be. There was a huge pile of the things. It looked like blood-soaked rags. Logre— you know, the hunchback—had one of them over his shoulder. He looked like an executioner. One thing is sure, it's some kind of underhanded plot.”

Lisa didn't answer. She was gazing downward and seemed lost in thought while she was fiddling with a fork handle and arranging petit salé on platters. Mademoiselle Saget continued softly, “If I were you, I wouldn't be too calm. I'd want to know. Why don't you go upstairs and have a look in your brother-in-law's room?”

This gave Lisa a slight shiver. She dropped her fork and examined the old woman with a worried eye, believing she had grasped what Mademoiselle Saget was doing.

Mademoiselle Saget continued, “After all, it's fair. Your brother-in-law might go too far if you let him. We were talking about you yesterday at Madame Taboureau's. She really is a good friend to you. She said that you were much too nice and if it were up to her, she would have put an end to it a long time ago.”

“Madame Taboureau said that?” murmured Lisa absentmindedly.

“Yes, she did, and Madame Taboureau is a woman to be listened to. Try to find out what that red material is. Then you'll tell me, won't you?”

But Lisa was no longer listening. She looked at the Petit Gervais cheeses and the escargots on the other side of the string of sausages in the display. She seemed lost in some internal struggle that caused two small wrinkles to show on her silent face. Meanwhile the old woman had stuck her nose closer to the dishes on the counter. As though talking to herself, she muttered, “Well, look at that. There's some sliced sausages. They must be getting dry left a long time all cut up like that. Oh, and look, that boudin has burst open. Apparently it was stabbed with a fork. Someone ought to take it out of there. It's messing up the plate.”

Still distracted, Lisa handed her the sliced sausage and the broken blood sausage. “For you, if you'd like.”

It all vanished into the bag. Mademoiselle had become so used to gathering gifts that she didn't even bother with thanks anymore. Every morning she carried away the leftover scraps of the charcuterie. Then off she went to La Sarriette and Madame Lecœur to get her dessert and talk to them about Gavard.

Once she was alone, Lisa sat down on the bench behind the counter, as though she believed that being comfortable would help her to make a better decision. She had been very worried for the past week. One evening Florent had asked Quenu for five hundred francs. He had asked for it very casually, like a man who had an open account. Quenu had told him to consult his wife, and this very much displeased Florent. He shook a little as he asked Beautiful Lisa. But Lisa, without asking what the money was for, climbed the stairs to her room and gave him the five hundred francs. All she said was that she had jotted down a note on the inheritance account. Three days later he took another thousand francs.

“This act of his doesn't work, pretending to be so indifferent,” Lisa said to Quenu one night when they were going to bed. “You see, I was right to keep accounts. Wait! I haven't marked down today's thousand francs.”

She sat at her secretary and studied the pages of figures. Then she added, “I was right to leave space. I'm going to mark the withdrawals in the margins. Now he's going to waste it all, bit by bit. I've been expecting this for a long time.”

Quenu said nothing but went to bed feeling depressed. Every time his wife opened her secretary, the lid gave a sad little squeak that tore at his soul. He even promised to have a talk with his brother so that the Méhudins wouldn't ruin him. But he didn't dare. Within ten days Florent had asked for another fifteen hundred francs.

One evening Logre had said that things would move much faster if they could find some money. The next day he was thrilled to find that the words he had so carelessly tossed into the air had landed in his hands in the form of a little pile of gold, which he pocketed with a snicker, his hump heaving with joy Since then, there was an endless stream of needs: a certain section needed to rent a space, another had to support some disgruntled patriots, and then there were weapons to buy, as well as ammunition, rental charges, and police expenses.

Florent would give everything he had. He remembered his inheritance and the Beautiful Norman's advice, and he went to the source, Lisa's desk, restrained only by a mute fear of her disapproving face. It seemed to him that he could never have a chance to spend his money on a more righteous cause. Logre, brimming with enthusiasm, took to donning shocking pink ties and patent leather boots, the sight of which angered Lacaille.

“That makes three thousand francs in seven days,” Lisa told Quenu. “What do you say about that? It's a pretty thing, isn't it? If he continues on this path, it will take him four months at the most to spend the whole fifty thousand francs. That's it for old Gradelle, who spent forty years building up his savings.”

“That's your problem!” shouted Quenu. “You didn't have to tell him about the inheritance.”

But she looked at him sternly and said, “It's his money. He can take it all. It's not giving him the money that's bothering me. It's just knowing how badly he uses it. I've been telling you about this for long enough. It's time to end it.”

“Do what you like, I won't try to stop you,” Quenu declared, though his natural greed was still nagging him.

Though he was very fond of his brother, the idea of fifty thousand francs being eaten up in four months was unbearable to him. After listening to the driveling of Mademoiselle Saget, Lisa could guess where the money was going. When the old woman ventured to mention the inheritance, Lisa took the opportunity to have it circulated in the neighborhood that Florent was taking his share and spending it as he saw fit. It was the next day after hearing the story of the red rags, that she made up her mind. She stayed in the shop only a few minutes, still feeling conflicted, glancing around at the sad appearance of the charcuterie, pigs sulking on their spikes. Mouton, sitting by a jar of meat drippings, had a ruffled coat and the mournful eyes of a cat no longer able to enjoy a peaceful life. Then she called Augustine to look after the counter and went upstairs to Florent's room.

When she entered, she was jolted by what she saw. The childlike innocence of the bed had been defiled by a bundle of red scarves drooping down all the way to the floor. On the mantel, between the gilded boxes and the old jars of cream, there were a few red armbands and scattered rosettes like splattered blood. The wall was adorned with flags hung from all the hooks on the faded gray wallpaper—squares of yellow, blue, green, and black. Lisa recognized them as the flags of the twenty sections. The sweet virginity of the room seemed defiled by this revolutionary decor. The dumb innocence left by the shopgirl, the wholesome feel of the curtains and the furniture, seemed caught in the reflection of a fire, and the photograph of Auguste and Augustine looked pale with horror.

Lisa examined everything—the flags, the armbands, the scarves—not touching anything, as though afraid that the horrible rags would burn her. She thought that she had been right, that this was what he had spent the money on. To her this was the abomination, the unbelievable deed that shook her to her being. Her money, money that had been come by honestly, was being used to organize and pay for a riot. She stood there, looking at the open flower of the pomegranate on the terrace resembling the bloodred rosettes, listening to the finch singing, sounding to her like the far-off echo of gunfire. She was seized by the idea that the insurrection was set to begin the next day. The banners fluttered, the scarves marched out, a sudden burst of drums pounded her ears. She quickly descended the stairs, not even stopping to read the papers spread out on the table. She stopped on the second floor and got dressed.

At this fateful hour, Beautiful Lisa was carefully doing her hair with a steady hand. Her mind was made up, her face did not quiver, and she showed just a little more severity around the eyes. As she fastened her black silk dress, stretching the cloth with all the strength in her large fists, she recalled the words of Abbé Roustan. She had interrogated herself, and her conscience told her that what she was about to do was her duty.

Throwing the heavy shawl around her broad shoulders, she felt that she was about to carry out an act of great morality. She pulled on dark purple gloves and attached a thick veil to her hat. Before leaving she double-locked her desk, shooting it a look of reassurance, as though telling that troubled piece of furniture that it would soon be able to sleep in peace.

Quenu was at the doorway of the charcuterie, displaying his big white belly. He was surprised to see her leaving, and so dressed up at ten in the morning.

“Where are you off to?” he asked.

She fabricated a project that she was supposedly doing with Madame Taboureau. She added that she would pass by the Théâtre de la Gaîté to reserve some seats. Quenu ran after her, reminding her that he preferred center seats to see better. Then he went back to the store and she made her way to the taxi stand alongside Saint Eustache, got into a cab,[13] and, lowering the blinds, told the driver to go to the Théâtre de la Gaîté.

She was afraid of being followed. Once she had bought her tickets, she directed the cab to the Palais de Justice. Once at the gate she paid the driver and sent him off. Slowly she made her way through the rooms and hallways to the Prefecture of Police. Finding herself lost amid the rush of sergents de ville and men in heavy overcoats, she gave a man ten sous to take her to the office of the prefect. But to get to the prefect, she first had to have a letter of introduction. She was shown into a narrow room, decorated like a luxury hotel, where a fat, bald man, dressed all in black, received her with surly coldness. Now she could speak.

Lifting her veil, she gave her name and told the whole story in a matter-of-fact tone, barely pausing to breathe. The bald man listened without interrupting, looking bored. When she finished he simply asked, “You're the sister-in-law of this man, are you not?”

“Yes,” Lisa answered. “We're respectable people. I don't want my husband involved.”

He shrugged his shoulders as if to say that the whole matter bored him. Then with impatience he added, “You see, I've been badgered about this business for more than a year now. Denunciation after denunciation, people are always pushing me, telling me to hurry. You have to understand that if I don't take action, it's because I would rather wait. We have our reasons. Here's the file. I can show it to you.”

He put a thick pile of papers in a blue folder in front of her. They were like miscellaneous disconnected chapters from the story she had told. The commissioners of police in Le Havre, Rouen, and Vernon had all announced Florent's arrival. Then came a report confirming his installation at the Quenu-Gradelles' and after that his appointment in Les Halles, his life, his evenings at Monsieur Lebigre's—no details were missing. Astounded, Lisa noted that there were duplicate reports, which must have come from two sources. At the end she found a pile of letters, anonymous letters in different shapes and formats and every kind of handwriting. She recognized a thin, spindly penmanship, the hand of Mademoiselle Saget, denouncing the group in the glass-paneled room. She saw a large sheet of greasy paper stained with Madame Lecœur's big paddles and a glossy sheet, decorated with a yellow pansy, covered with the scratchings of La Sarriette and Monsieur Jules—both letters advising the government to keep an eye on Gavard. She also recognized the abusive style of Mère Méhudin, repeating in four almost indecipherable pages all the stories about Florent that circulated in Les Halles. But she was especially struck by one on her own letterhead, Charcuterie Quenu-Gradelle, on which Auguste had sold out the man he considered to be an obstacle to his wedding. The policeman had his own secret motive for letting her see the file.

“Do you recognize any of these handwritings?” he asked her.

She stammered, “No.” She had stood up. What she had just learned had taken her breath away her veil now lowered to conceal the confusion that was showing on her cheeks. Her silk dress rustled. Her dark gloves vanished beneath her shawl.

The bald man smiled faintly as he said, “You see, Madame Quenu, your information has come a bit late. But we shall make a note of what you have done, I promise you. Most important, tell your husband not to do anything. Certain circumstances may arise …”

He did not finish what he was saying but nodded an abrupt good-bye, getting halfway out of his chair. It was a dismissal. She left immediately. Outside the room she saw Logre and Monsieur Lebigre, who quickly turned away. But she was more upset than they were. She crossed the rooms and passed through the hallways as though she had become part of the police world where, at this moment, she was certain that everything was seen and known. Finally she exited by place Dauphine and walked slowly along the quai de l'Horloge, revived by a breeze from the Seine.

What most upset her was the complete pointlessness of what she had done. Her husband was not in any danger. This was a relief, though it gave her a twinge of remorse. She was angry with Auguste and the women who had managed to put her in this ridiculous position. Slowing her pace, she watched the flow of the river—the barges black with coal dust sliding downstream through the green water while along the bank fishermen were casting their lines.

Truthfully, Lisa was not the one who had handed Florent over to the police. She was suddenly struck by this thought, surprised by it. Would it, then, have been a terrible sin if she had handed him over? She was confused, disturbed by the possibility that she might have been misled by her conscience. The anonymous letters were clearly wrong. But she had gone openly and given her name, trying to save everyone. When she thought suddenly of old Gradelle's inheritance, she searched her conscience and found herself perfectly willing to throw all the money into the river, if that would clear the charcuterie of any wrong. No, she wasn't greedy. It wasn't the money that had motivated her. Crossing the pont au Change, she calmed herself and regained her equilibrium. It was good that the others had beaten her to the police. Now there was no need to lie to Quenu, and for that she would sleep better.

“Did you get the seats?” Quenu asked when she got back. He wanted to see them and to have explained to him the exact location of their balcony seats. Lisa had imagined the police rushing to the scene of the crime as soon as she warned them, and her plan to go to the theater had simply been a clever ruse to get her husband away from the house while Florent was being arrested. The plan called for her to take him for a walk in the afternoon, one of those excursions that they sometimes took, taking a cab to the Bois de Boulogne, eating in a restaurant, and lingering at a café-concert.

But now it seemed pointless to go out. She spent the day in the usual way, behind the counter, her complexion pinker than normal, her mood merrier and friendlier, as though she were finally recovering from an illness.

“I told you fresh air would do you good,” Quenu repeated. “Your morning out has perked you up.”

“That's ridiculous,” she finally answered, giving him a stern look. “The streets of Paris are not exactly good for your health.”

That evening at the Gaîté they saw La Grâce de Dieu. Quenu in his overcoat and gray gloves, hair carefully combed, was absorbed by the actors' names in the program. Lisa was stunning with her bare shoulders, draping her wrist on the red velvet balcony, displaying the sheen of her too-tight white gloves. They were both very moved by Marie's misfortunes. The commandant was truly evil, and Pierrot made them laugh from his first entrance. Lisa wept. The death of the child, the prayer in that virginal bedroom, the return of the poor mad girl, moistened her beautiful eyes with discreet tears that she dabbed away with her handkerchief.

But the evening turned into a veritable triumph for her when, looking up, she caught a glimpse of the Norman and her mother in the second gallery. That made her swell with pride, and she sent Quenu to buy some caramels at the food concession and played with her fan, a mother-of-pearl fan with a lot of gold. The fish seller had been defeated and lowered her head to listen to her mother, who whispered to her. On the way out, Beautiful Lisa and the Beautiful Norman greeted each other with vague smiles.

That day Florent had eaten an early dinner at Monsieur Lebigre's. He waited for Logre, who was to introduce him to a retired sergeant, a capable man with whom they could discuss the plan of attack on the Palais Bourbon and the Hôtel de Ville. Night fell, and a fine rain that had started in the afternoon drowned the market in grayness. The buildings stood out in black against the rust-colored sky, while clouds like dirty dishrags ran above the line of roofs as though caught and torn by the row of lightning rods.

Florent was depressed. The trash in the streets and the stream of yellow water seemed to blur and smother the sunset in the mud. He gazed at the people ducking under the porticos, the umbrellas darting by in the downpour, the cabs speedily echoing past in the empty streets. Then the weather cleared for a moment. A reddish glow rose in the sunset. An entire army of sweepers appeared at the entrance to rue Montmartre, pushing along a lake of liquid muck with strokes of their brooms.

Logre did not bring the sergeant. Gavard had gone to dine with friends in Batignolles. So Florent was reduced to spending the evening alone with Robine. He talked continually but ended up feeling sad. The other man gently stroked his beard, and every fifteen minutes he would reach out his arm for a gulp of beer. Bored, Florent went back up to his room. Robine, left alone, did not leave, but frowning thoughtfully beneath his hat, stared at his beer mug. Both Rose and the waiter, who had hoped that since the group wasn't in the little room they could shut down early, had to wait more than a half hour before he finally left.

Up in his room, Florent was afraid to go to bed. He was in the grip of one of his nervous ailments that caused endless nightmares lasting until morning. The day before, he had attended Monsieur Verlaque's funeral in Clamart. The man had suffered horribly before his death. Florent still grieved, thinking of the narrow coffin being lowered into the ground. But most of all he could not get out of his head the image of Madame Verlaque, her voice full of tears but not one tear in her eyes. She followed him, talking of the coffin that still had to be paid for, the procession that she had no idea how to organize, having not a single sou left at home because the day before, the pharmacist, when he learned that the patient was dead, had demanded full payment. Florent had to advance the money for the coffin and the procession and even tip the undertakers. And as he was leaving, Madame Verlaque looked at him with such a woeful face that he gave her twenty francs.

Now, this death was a problem. It called into question his job as inspector. It unsettled his position. Now he would be considered for the position of permanent inspector. And there were annoying complications that might draw the attention of the police. He wished the uprising could take place the next day and he could fling his gold-braided hat into the street. With his head full of these worries, he went out onto the balcony with his forehead burning up, longing for fresh air from the warm night. The showers had made the wind die. The dark blue, cloudless sky was still filled with stormy heat. Washed clean by the rain, Les Halles below him stretched out its massive body, the same color as the sky, and, also like the sky, it twinkled with yellow stars—the gas lamps.

Leaning his elbows on the iron balustrade, Florent was thinking that sooner or later he would be punished for having taken the job of inspector. It was a blemish on his life story. He was in the accounts of the prefecture. He had betrayed himself by serving the empire, despite all the vows he had made when in exile. His desire to please Lisa, the charitable use of the money he earned, the honest way he had tried to carry out his duties—none of these seemed a strong enough argument to excuse his weakness. If he suffered in this fat and overfed setting, he deserved it. He thought back on the terrible year he had just endured, the persecution of the fish vendors, the illness of damp days, the indigestion of his thin man's stomach, the silent hostility he had felt building all around him— all this he accepted as his just deserts. The weighty grumbling of ill will from some cause he could never discover was the harbinger of some unknown catastrophe that had already bowed his shoulders with the shame of a sin he had to expiate. Then, just thinking of the popular movement he was organizing, he flew into a rage against himself. He no longer had the purity to succeed.

How many dreams had he dreamed up there, his eyes wandering the sprawling market roofs? Most of the time he saw them as gray oceans that suggested distant places. On moonless nights they were darker, becoming dead lakes, polluted waters, stagnant and foul. Moonlit nights converted them into fountains of light, the moon drifting across the two roof levels, running down the great expanses of metal, and overflowing the edges of the huge basins. In cold weather the roofs were still and frozen, like Norwegian fjords where skaters glided, whereas warm June days overtook them with drowsiness.

Once in December, he had opened his window and found the rooftops all white with snow, with a virgin whiteness that brightened the rusty sky. They were spread before him without the blemish of a single footprint, like arctic plains too vast for sleds. They had a lovely silence, the sweetness of an innocent giant. And Florent, with every new quality of his changing horizon, would give in to his thoughts—either tender or harsh. The snow calmed his soul, the broad sheet of white seemed to him a covering of purity over the filth of Les Halles. On moonlit nights, the moonbeams transported him to a fairyland. He suffered only on dark nights, the broiling nights of June, with the foul-smelling marshes spread beneath him, the sleeping waters of some cursed sea. And always the same nightmare returned.

The markets were always there. He couldn't open his window or lean on the balcony rail without seeing them there, filling the horizon. He would leave the market in the evening only to find when he went to bed, once again, the endless expanse of rooftops. They cut him off from the rest of Paris, imposed their massive presence on every hour of his life. That night his nightmare returned, brought on by the anxieties that plagued him. The afternoon rain had filled Les Halles with an infectious dampness. It blew a foul breath into his face, a breath that had rolled around the city like a drunk under a table with his last bottle. It seemed to him that each pavilion exhaled its own thick vapor. From a distance the meat market and the tripe market discharged steam with the dull scent of blood. The vegetable and fruit markets exhaled the smell of sour cabbage, rotten apples, and greens chucked into the street. The butter stank, the fish market had a peppery freshness. And at his feet he could see the poultry market pushing a blast of hot air through its ventilation turret, a stench that poured out like soot from a factory. The cloud of all these breaths gathered over the rooftops, drifted to the neighboring houses, and spread into a heavy cloud over all of Paris. It was Les Halles bursting out of its steel belt and warming the sleep of the overfed city, belching with indigestion.

Below, on the sidewalk, he heard the sound of voices, the laughter of happy people. The alley door was shut noisily. Quenu and Lisa had returned from the theater. Then Florent, dizzy, as though drunk from the air he had been breathing and with an uneasy fear of the storm he could feel brewing over his head, went inside. Below him lay his misery, in Les Halles, still hot from the day. He shut the window violently, abandoning the roofs, leaving them sprawling in the shadows, naked, sweating, and uncovered, exposing their bloated bellies and stretched out under the stars.

CHAPTER SIX

A week later, Florent thought he was finally ready for action. The government had made a move unpopular enough to send groups of rebels into the streets of Paris. The Corps Législatif, divided on a pension law, were now in the process of debating an extremely unpopular tax,[1] and all over the city people were muttering against it. Fearing defeat, the government was fighting with all its might. It might be a long time before a better pretext came along.

Early one morning Florent explored the Palais Bourbon. He forgot about his responsibilities as inspector and stayed there studying the area until eight o'clock, without a moment's thought as to how his absence from the fish market might be causing a revolution. He visited every street: rue de Lille, rue de l'Université, rue de Bourgogne, rue Saint-Dominique; he went as far as the parade ground in front of the Invalides, stopping at certain selected intersections, measuring distances by taking huge steps. Then, sitting on the wall back at the quai d'Orsay he decided that the attack should come from all sides at once: the Gros-Caillou group would arrive along the Champ de Mars, the group from northern Paris would come in by the Madeleine, and the groups from the west and south would come along the quais or fight their way along the streets of the Saint Germain suburb.

But he was worried by the Champs-Elysées on the other bank, with its wide-open avenue. He could see how they would place cannons there and fire at the quais. So he modified some details of the plan and marked combat positions for the various groups in a notebook he carried in his hand. The primary assault would definitely occur along rue de Bourgogne and rue de l'Université, while a diversion was created along the Seine. The sun at eight o'clock could be felt, warm on the back of the neck, lighting the pavement and gilding the columns of the large buildings across the way. Already he could envision the battle, groups of men clinging to those columns, the gates bursting open, the invasion penetrating past the columns, and then suddenly a glimpse of thin arms planting a flag.

Slowly he walked back with his head lowered. A cooing noise grabbed his attention. He realized that he was crossing the Tuileries Garden. A band of pigeons strutted on the lawn, puffing out their necks. He leaned for a moment against the stand of an orange tree and looked at the grass and the pigeons all bathed in sunlight. Across the way, chestnut trees were blackened by shadows. A warm silence reigned, disturbed only by the continual distant rumbling behind the railings of rue de Rivoli. The smell of the greenery affected him greatly because it reminded him of Madame François. The pigeons were scared away by a young girl chasing a hoop and flew to the marble arm of an ancient wrestler in the middle of the lawn, still cooing and puffed out but in a gentler way now.

As Florent returned to Les Halles by rue Vauvilliers, he heard the voice of Claude Lantier calling him. The painter was going into the basement below the poultry market.

“Hey, come with me,” he shouted. “I'm looking for that thug Marjolin.”

Florent followed him, to forget his work for a few more seconds, to delay his return to the fish market. Claude said that now his friend Marjolin no longer wanted anything—he had become nothing more than an animal—he was considering having him pose on all fours with his childlike grin. Whenever he was driven to tear up a sketch in a rage, he could spend hours in that imbecile's company, not speaking, trying to make him smile.

“He's probably feeding the pigeons,” Claude said. “The problem is that I don't know where Monsieur Gavard is.”

They searched everywhere in the cellar. In the pale shadows in the center, two water taps were running. The cages were reserved exclusively for pigeons. Along the chicken wire there was a constant plaintive hooting, the unassertive song of birds from under the leaves at dusk. It made Claude laugh to hear this music. “You would swear that every lover in Paris was snuggling under there,” he said.

Not one of the coops was open, and Claude was starting to think that Marjolin was not down there after all when the sound of kisses, real, loud kisses, stopped him in his tracks in front of a partly open door. He opened it and saw Marjolin, the animal, whom Cadine had made kneel on the straw-covered ground so that his face rose just to the level of her lips. She was kissing him gently, everywhere. She parted his long blond hair so that she could reach behind his ears, on the cheeks, behind the neck, coming back to his eyes, his mouth, slowly, devouring his face in tiny caresses, as though it were a scrumptious treat that she was consuming at her leisure. Contentedly he remained as she had placed him. He was no longer completely aware of things. He offered her his flesh, no longer even afraid of being tickled.

“Will you look at that,” said Claude. “Aren't you even embarrassed? You have no shame, you huge good-for-nothing. Teasing him like that in all this filth. He's up to his knees in dirt.”

“So what,” said Cadine brazenly. “He's not unhappy. He likes being kissed. Because he's afraid of the dark now. Aren't you? You're afraid.”

She had pulled him to his feet. He rubbed his hands across his face as though groping for the kisses she had placed there. He stammered that he was afraid. “Besides, I came here to help him. I was force-feeding the pigeons.”

Florent looked at the poor creatures. On the planks surrounding the coops were uncovered boxes. Pigeons were jammed into them with mottled feathers and stiff legs. From time to time a shudder ran through the feathers and the bodies huddled even more tightly together, a chaotic chatter rising out of the boxes. Cadine had a pot next to her full of water and seeds: she filled her mouth and, one by one, blew the seeds into the birds' beaks. They choked and squirmed, then fell backward white-eyed into the darkness of the box, knocked senseless by the forcibly swallowed food.

“The poor innocents,” said Claude.

“Too bad for them,” said Cadine when she finished. “They're a lot better off after they've been well stuffed. You'll see, in a couple of hours we'll make them swallow saltwater, these birds over here. That will make their meat white and delicate. Two hours after that, they'll be bled. But if you want to see bleeding, there's some over there all ready to go. Marjolin was just about to do them.”

Marjolin was carrying about fifty pigeons in a box. Claude and Florent followed him. He settled himself on the floor by one of the faucets, putting the box next to him and placing a fine screen on a wooden frame in a deep zinc tray. Then he began. He moved the knife quickly in his fingers, grabbing pigeons by the wings, knocking them out with a blow on the head from the knife handle, then sticking the blade into the throat. The pigeons shuddered for an instant, and their feathers rumpled as he laid them out in rows, their heads stuck out on the screen over the zinc tray into which, drop by drop, their blood fell. All of this was done in an even rhythm— the whack of the handle on the smashed little skull in measured time with the hand that took the live birds on one side and the hand that placed the dead ones on the other side.

Marjolin was going ever faster, enjoying the slaughter, crouching with gleaming eyes like a huge salivating mastiff. Finally he started laughing and sang, “Tic-tac, tic-tac, tic-tac,” accompanying the rhythm of his knife with the clicking of his tongue, making the sound of a head-grinding mill. The pigeons hung like swatches of silk.

“So you think that's funny, you big dummy,” said Cadine, laughing too. “They look so funny, those pigeons, when they pull in their head between their shoulders and the neck is gone. They're mean little things anyway. They'd bite you if they could.”

Marjolin laughed even louder at an ever more feverish pace. She added, “No matter how hard I try, I can't do it as fast as he does. One day he bled a hundred in ten minutes.”

The wooden frame was filling up, and they could hear the blood dropping into the zinc tray below. Then Claude by chance looked at Florent and saw how pale he had turned. He hurried him out and made him sit on the top step by the street.

“Look at you,” Claude said, clapping his hands. “There you go, fainting like a woman.”

“It's the smell of the cellar,” said Florent, feeling a little ashamed.

The pigeons, force fed seeds and then saltwater and then slashed in the throat, reminded him of the pigeons of the Tuileries strutting in their satin gowns over the grass, yellow with sunlight. He pictured them cooing on the marble arm of the ancient wrestler amid the great silence of the garden, while under the dark shadows of chestnut trees a little girl played with a hoop. It was then that his bones iced over, when he saw that huge blond animal conducting his massacre, stunning with the handle and stabbing with the blade in the depths of the fetid cellar. Then he felt himself falling, his legs buckling and his eyelids fluttering.

“What the hell!” Claude said when Florent came to. “You wouldn't make much of a soldier. I have to say, whoever sent you to Guiana must have been some character to imagine you were dangerous. If you ever got involved in an uprising, my old friend, you wouldn't dare to fire your pistol, you'd be too afraid you might kill someone.”

Florent got up without answering. He had become very somber, and there were worry lines across his face. He walked away, leaving Claude to go back down into the cellar. On his way back to the fish market he once more went over his plan of attack and the armed groups that would invade the Palais Bourbon. In the Champs-Elysées the cannon would roar, the gates would be smashed down; there would be blood on the steps and skulls smashed against the columns. A fleeting image of the battle passed through his mind. He saw himself in the thick of it, pale, unable to look, his face hidden in his hands.

Crossing rue du Pont-Neuf, he thought he saw the pale face of Auguste at the corner of the fruit market, walking along, his neck outstretched. He seemed to be looking for someone, his eyes round with some extraordinary imbecilic emotion. Suddenly, he disappeared, running back toward the charcuterie.

“What was that about?” Florent wondered. “Did I scare him?”

That morning there had been serious events at the Quenu-Gradelles'. At sunrise Auguste had run to his mistress in great excitement with the news that the police had come to arrest Florent. Then, stammering even more, he gave a muddled account of how Florent had already left, no doubt to escape arrest. Beautiful Lisa, uncorseted and in her camisole, unfazed, hurried upstairs to her brother-in-law's room, where she took the photo of the Norman after a quick look around to make sure there was nothing to implicate any of them. On her way down, she ran into the police on the second floor. The police inspector asked her to go with them. They spoke in hushed voices for a few moments, and he and his men went into the bedroom, advising her to open the shop as on a normal day, so that no one would suspect anything. The trap was set.

The only thing worrying Lisa in this entire episode was the blow it would be to poor Quenu. That was partly because she feared he would burst into tears as soon as he found out that the police were there. Because of this she made Auguste promise not to say a word about it. Then she went back upstairs to put on her corset and to make up some story for her husband to explain the commotion. A half hour later she was standing at the doorway of the charcuterie, coiffed and corseted, her face pink and smooth. Auguste was calmly working on the window display. Quenu appeared outside for a minute, yawning and trying to wake up in the fresh morning air. There was nothing to give away the drama that was about to unfold upstairs.

But the police inspector himself had tipped off the entire neighborhood when he had visited the Méhudin household on rue Pirouette. He had remarkably detailed notes. In the anonymous letters sent to the prefecture, it had been established that Florent frequently slept with the Beautiful Norman. Could he be hiding there? The commandant, accompanied by two policemen, went over and pounded on the door in the name of the law. The Méhudins had barely gotten up. The old woman opened the door, at first in a rage and then more calm, even snickering when she understood the situation. Pulling up her clothes, she sat down and told her visitors, “We are respectable people with nothing to fear. You can search the house.”

Since the Norman was slow to open her door, the inspector had it knocked down. She was dressing. Her upper body was bare, her splendid shoulders showing, an undergarment clasped in her teeth. This violent, unexplained entrance infuriated her. She dropped the garment and was about to attack the men in her shift, reddened by anger and not embarrassment. The inspector, faced with this large, naked woman, stepped forward to protect his men, repeating in an icy voice, “In the name of the law! In the name of the law!”

Then she fell into a chair, sobbing, overtaken by emotion at feeling so helpless and not understanding what was expected of her. Her hair had come undone, her shift did not even come down to her knees, and the policemen were casting sideways glances for a better view. The inspector tossed her a shawl that he found hanging on the wall. She didn't use it. She started crying even harder, watching the police roughly searching her bed, smacking the pillows, running their hands down the sheets.

“What have I done?” she finally stuttered. “What are you looking for in my bed?”

The inspector said the name “Florent,” and since the old woman had remained in the doorway of the room, the Norman shouted, “It's her doing, the old battle-ax!” and tried to lunge across the room at her mother.

She would have pummeled her. But she was restrained and forcibly wrapped in her shawl. She struggled and managed to get out in a strangled voice, “What do you think I am? This Florent has never been in my room, do you understand? There's nothing between us. They're trying to smear my name in the neighborhood. But let just one of them come here and say it to my face. Then you'll see. Then you can send me to prison, I don't care. And Florent? I can do better than him. I can marry anyone I want and drive whatever woman sent you here crazy.”

She was calmed by her torrent of words. Then her wrath turned to Florent for causing all this. She turned to the inspector and justified herself. “I didn't know, Monsieur. He looked so gentle, he fooled us. I didn't want to listen to the gossip—they're all so malicious. He came to give the child lessons, and then he left. Sometimes I fed him, and often I gave him a good fish as a gift. That's all. But that's the last time I'll let myself be used for my kindness.”

“But surely he gave you some papers to keep for him?” the inspector asked.

“No, I swear he didn't. I wouldn't care. I'd give you the papers. I've had it, you know? I don't enjoy watching you search through my things. Enough, it's pointless.”

The police, who had examined every piece of furniture in the room, now wanted to go to the little nook where Muche slept. For a few minutes now, the child, awakened by the commotion, had been crying, no doubt thinking that someone had come to slit his throat.

“This is my child's room,” said the Norman, opening the door.

Muche, completely naked, ran up and threw his arms around her neck. She calmed him down and put him in her own bed. The police came out of his room very quickly. The inspector had just decided to leave when the child, still crying, whispered in his mother's ear. “They're going to take my exercise books! Don't let them have my exercise books!”

“Ah, that's right! There are the notebooks. Wait, I'll give them to you, just to show you I have nothing to hide. Look, his writing is in here. You can hang him for all I care, and it won't be me who cuts him down.”

She handed over Muche's notebooks with the writing samples. But the child got up from the bed in a rage, biting and scratching his mother, who shoved him down with a smack. He began to scream. At the doorway, Mademoiselle Saget was stretching her neck. She had come in, finding all the doors open, and asked Mère Méhudin if she could be of some help. She watched and listened and felt bad for these women without defenders. Meanwhile, the inspector was reading the handwriting specimens with great seriousness. Words such as “tyrannically” and “liberticide” and “anti-constitutional” and “revolutionary” made him frown. Then he read the sentence “When the hour strikes, the guilty shall fall.” He tapped the page and said, “This is serious, very serious.”

He gave the exercise books to one of his men, and then he was gone. Claire, who up to this point had not appeared, opened the door and watched the men leave. Then she entered into her sister's room for the first time in a year. Mademoiselle Saget seemed to be very friendly with the Norman; she was fussing over her, pulling the ends of the shawl to make sure she was well covered, and letting her discharge her anger with great sympathy.

“You're a complete coward,” Claire said, facing her.

The Norman rose to her feet, furious, and let the shawl slip off.

“You lying snitch!” she shouted. “Say that again!”

“You're a complete coward,” the young woman repeated in an even more sneering tone.

Then the Norman swung her arm all the way from behind and smacked Claire in the face so hard that she turned horribly pale as the Norman jumped on her and dug her fingernails into her neck. They wrestled a moment, pulling each other's hair, trying to strangle each other. The younger sister, frail as she was, violently pushed the older one with such superhuman strength that they both crashed into the wardrobe, shattering the mirror. Muche was sobbing, and the mother was shouting for Mademoiselle Saget to help separate them. But Claire pulled herself away, saying, “Coward, coward. I'm going to warn that poor man that you have betrayed him.”

Her mother blocked the doorway. The Norman grabbed her from behind. With the help of Mademoiselle Saget, the three pushed her back into her own room, where they managed to double-lock the door, despite her furious struggle. She kicked at the door and smashed everything in the room. Then they could hear only a rapid scraping noise, the sound of iron against plaster. She was unhinging the door with the point of her scissors.

“If she'd had a knife, she would have killed me,” said the Norman, looking for clothes to put on. “You'll see, someday that jealousy of hers will do her in. And nobody can open that door. She'd stir up the whole neighborhood against us.”

Mademoiselle Saget had hurried down the stairs. She arrived at the corner of rue Pirouette just as the inspector was returning to the alley by the Quenu-Gradelles'. She understood what was going on and went into the charcuterie, her eyes glowing with such intensity that Lisa made a sign to be quiet, pointing toward Quenu, who was hanging strips of petit salé. When he returned to the kitchen, the old woman whispered about the drama that had just unfolded at the Méhudins'.

Leaning across the counter, her hand resting on a dish of larded veal, Lisa listened with the happy face of a victorious woman. But then a customer came in to ask for pigs' feet, and she turned to wrap them carefully.

“Personally, I don't wish any harm to the Norman,” she said when they were finally alone again. “I like her very much, and have always felt bad that we've had this falling-out. Here, this is the proof that I'm not vindictive. Look what I rescued from the hands of the police. I'm perfectly willing to return it if she comes and asks for it herself.”

She pulled the portrait from her pocket. Mademoiselle Saget sniffed it and snickered as she read, “From Louise, to her friend Florent,” then, in her sharp-edged voice she said, “That may be a mistake. You should keep that.”

“No, no,” Lisa interrupted. “I want all this foolishness to end. Today's the day of reconciliation. Enough of all this. Let's have a peaceful neighborhood again.”

“So should I tell the Norman that you want to see her?” asked the elderly woman.

“Yes, I'd appreciate that.”

Mademoiselle Saget went back to rue Pirouette, where she alarmed the Norman by telling her she had just seen her portrait in Lisa's pocket. But she was not able to persuade the Norman to do as her rival had asked. The Norman had her conditions: she would go to the charcuterie only if Lisa would come out and meet her at the door. The elderly woman had to make two trips back and forth to settle the conditions for the upcoming encounter. But eventually she had the pleasure of negotiating an accord that was going to make some noise around the neighborhood. As she passed Claire's door one last time, she could still hear the sound of scissors in the plaster.

After having gotten a definitive response from the charcuterie woman, she hurried off to look for Madame Lecœur and La Sarriette. The three planted themselves at the corner of the fish market, opposite the charcuterie. From there they would miss nothing of the encounter. Growing impatient, they pretended to chat among themselves, watching rue Pirouette, where the Norman was expected to be coming out. Throughout Les Halles, gossip about the meeting was already circulating. The women, standing stiffly in their stalls, craned their necks in order to see. Others, more curious, left their places and took positions along the covered street. Every eye in Les Halles was turned toward the charcuterie. The neighborhood had been alerted.

It was a solemn moment. When the Norman finally emerged on rue Pirouette, no one was breathing.

“She has her diamonds on,” La Sarriette murmured.

“Look at the way she's walking,” added Madame Lecœur. “She's too aggressive.”

The truth was that the Beautiful Norman walked like a queen who deigned to accept an offer of peace. She had primped carefully, with her hair all in curls and the corners of her apron turned up to show the cashmere skirt underneath; she even wore a lace bow of stunning lavishness. Feeling the eyes of Les Halles on her, she thrust her chest out and marched up to the charcuterie, stopping in front of the door. “Now it's Beautiful Lisa's turn,” said Mademoiselle Saget, watching closely.

Smiling Beautiful Lisa walked away from the counter, crossed the shop without hurrying, and gently offered her hand to the Beautiful Norman. She too was very well put together, her linen brilliantly white, radiating cleanliness. A whisper ran through the fish market; every head outside drew closer together as they chattered excitedly.

Now the two women were in the shop, and the paper from the window displays obstructed a clear view. But they seemed to be chatting cordially, giving each other little greetings, no doubt flattering each other.

“Look,” said Mademoiselle Saget. “The Beautiful Norman is buying something … What could she be buying? Oh, I think it's an andouille. Ah, did the rest of you see that? Beautiful Lisa gave her the photograph when she handed her the andouille.”

Then there were more pleasantries. Beautiful Lisa went beyond the courtesies she had planned on and said she would accompany the Beautiful Norman to the street. That's what she did, and they both laughed and showed the neighborhood what good friends they were. It was a cheerful moment for the neighborhood, and the fish women all went back to their stalls, agreeing that it had all gone very well.

But Mademoiselle Saget detained Madame Lecœur and La Sarriette. The drama was reaching its climax. The three of them fixed their eyes on the house across from them with a curiosity that hoped to penetrate the stone walls of the building. To pass the time, they gossiped a bit about the Beautiful Norman.

“Now she doesn't have a man,” said Madame Lecœur.

“She has Monsieur Lebigre,” observed La Sarriette, chuckling.

“Monsieur Lebigre isn't going to want her anymore.”

Mademoiselle Saget shrugged, saying, “You don't really know him. He couldn't care less about all this. He is a man who knows how to do business, and the Norman is rich. In two months they'll be together, you'll see. Mère Méhudin has been working on this marriage for a long time.”

“It doesn't matter,” the butter merchant insisted. “The inspector found her sleeping with Florent.”

“No, that's not what I said. The big beanpole had just left. I was there when they looked in her bed. The inspector examined it with his hands. There were two spots still warm.”

The elderly mademoiselle paused to catch her breath and then said with indignation, “You know what hurt most? To hear of all the terrible things that evil man taught little Muche. You wouldn't believe it. There was a whole bundle of them.”

“What horrors?” La Sarriette asked eagerly.

“Who knows? Filth, profanity. The inspector said he could be hanged for this alone. The man is a monster, going after a child like that. Little Muche doesn't amount to much, but that's no reason to fill him with that red propaganda, the poor thing.”

“Absolutely,” the other two agreed.

“Anyway, they're starting to get this scheming straightened out. I told you, you might recall, that there was ‘something hidden at the Quenus’ that didn't smell right.' You see, I have a keen nose … Thank God, now the neighborhood can breathe a little. All it needed was a good sweeping—because, I swear, it was going to end up with everyone afraid of being murdered in broad daylight. You can't live like that. Upheavals and fights and killing. And all because of one man, this Florent. And now, you see, Beautiful Lisa and the Beautiful Norman have made up, which is good news for them, and they had to do it for everyone's peace of mind. Now everything else will fall into place, you'll see. Oh, look, there's poor Monsieur Quenu laughing over there.”

Quenu was indeed outside again, his fat belly spilling over his apron, joking with Madame Taboureau's maid. He was in a good mood this morning. He squeezed the young maid's hands hard enough to make her cry out, in the best of charcuterie humor. Lisa had a hard time getting him back into the kitchen. She paced up and down the shop, fearing that Florent would appear at any moment and wanting to keep the two of them apart.

“She's awfully anxious,” said Mademoiselle Saget. “Poor Monsieur Quenu has no idea. He's laughing like a child. You know, Madame Taboureau said she was going to get into a fight with the Quenus if they continued to ruin themselves by letting Florent stay there.”

“Meanwhile, they kept the inheritance,” Madame Lecœur commented.

“Oh, no, my dear. He got his share.”

“Really? How do you know?”

“Oh, you can tell,” the elderly woman answered after a short hesitation and without offering any further evidence. “In fact, he took more than his share. The Quenus have lost several thousand francs. With a man of vices, money simply disappears. Maybe you hadn't heard. There was another woman.”

“That doesn't surprise me,” La Sarriette interjected. “Those skinny men have a lot of pride.”

“Yes, and not all that young, this woman. When a man wants it, he wants it—he'd grab them from anywhere. Madame Verlaque, the wife of the former fish inspector. You know her, that yellow-faced woman …”

But the other two would not accept that. “It's not possible. Madame Verlaque was in terrible shape.”

But Mademoiselle Saget had taken off. “I'm telling you. Are you calling me a liar? There's proof. Letters have been found from this woman, a whole bundle of letters in which she asked him for money, ten and twenty francs at a time. It's pretty obvious, that's what killed her husband.”

La Sarriette and Madame Lecœur were convinced. But they were growing impatient. They had been standing out on the street waiting for more than an hour. Their stalls might have been robbed in the meantime, they said. So Mademoiselle Saget found yet another story to hold them there. It was impossible for Florent to escape. He was going to come back, and it would be something to see him arrested. And she gave the most minute details of the plan, so that the butter vendor and the fruit vendor continued to examine the building, looking it up and down, trying to peer through every chink and crack in the hopes of seeing the caps of the sergents de ville. But the house was calm and silent, bathing in the morning sunlight.

“You'd never guess that it's full of police,” said Madame Lecœur.

“They're all up there in the attic,” said the older woman. “They left the window just as they found it. But wait, isn't that one of them hidden behind the pomegranate on the balcony?”

They craned their necks and saw nothing.

“No, just a shadow,” said La Sarriette. “Even the little curtains don't stir. They all must be sitting down up there and not moving.”

At that very moment she saw Gavard walk out of the fish market looking preoccupied with something. They glanced at one another, their eyes gleaming, and not a word passed between them. They had huddled close together, standing very erect in their full skirts. The poultryman crossed over to them.

“Have you seen Florent around?” he asked.

They didn't answer.

“I need to talk to him right away,” Gavard continued. “He isn't in the fish market. He must have gone back home. But then you would have seen him.”

The three women were looking a little pale. They were still staring at one another, looking very serious, with a quiver in the corner of their lips. Since her brother-in-law still hesitated, Madame Lecœur snapped, “We've only been here five minutes. He probably came by before that.”

“Then I'll go up and take a chance climbing five flights,” Gavard answered with a laugh.

La Sarriette started to move to stop him, but her aunt grabbed her arm and whispered in her ear, “Let him go, you big idiot. It's what he deserves. That'll teach him to step on us.”

In a lower voice Mademoiselle Saget muttered, “He won't be telling people I eat bad meat anymore.”

Then the women had nothing to add. La Sarriette blushed bright red, the other two remained yellow. They now turned their heads, embarrassed to look at one another. They didn't know what to do with their hands, so they hid them under their aprons. Intuitively their eyes wandered to the house, following Gavard through the stone walls, watching him climb five flights of stairs. When they estimated he had arrived in the bedroom, they began to shoot hard sideways glances at one another. La Sarriette laughed nervously. They thought they saw the curtain move for an instant, which they imagined had been caused by some kind of struggle.

But the outside of the house kept its look of warm tranquillity. A quarter of an hour passed in complete silence, total peace, during which time mounting emotions gripped them in the throat. They were nearly overcome when finally a man running out of the side alley went to find a cab. Five minutes later Gavard came down, followed by two policemen. Lisa, who had gone outside, had seen the cab coming and hurried back into the shop.

Gavard had turned white. Upstairs he had been searched and his pistol and box of cartridges had been found. To judge by the inspector's rude treatment of him and the reaction he had shown upon hearing his name, Gavard was lost. This was a terrible turn of events that he had never considered. The Tuileries would never pardon him. His legs had gone limp as though the executioner were awaiting him. But when he reached the street, he found enough strength to walk upright. He even gave a last smile, thinking that Les Halles would see him going to his death bravely.

Meanwhile, La Sarriette and Madame Lecœur ran to him. They asked what was happening, Madame Lecœur sobbing and the niece emotionally hugging her uncle. He held her tightly and slipped her a key, whispering in her ear, “Take everything and burn the papers.”

Like a man climbing the scaffold, he stepped into the cab. As soon as the coach disappeared around the corner of rue Pierre-Lescot, Madame Lecœur saw La Sarriette trying to hide the key in her pocket.

“It's no use, my dear,” she said between clenched teeth. “I saw him put it in your hand. I swear to God, I will go to the prison and tell him everything if you're not nice.”

“But my dear aunt, I'm always nice,” La Sarriette answered with an awkward smile.

“Let's go to his place right away. No point in letting the police get their paws in his cupboards.”

Mademoiselle Saget had been listening wild-eyed, and now followed, running behind them with the biggest strides her little legs could manage. She couldn't care less about waiting for Florent now. From rue Rambuteau to rue de la Cossonnerie, she was very humble and full of little suggestions. She offered to speak to the concierge, Madame Léonce.

“We'll see. We'll see,” Madame Lecœur repeated curtly.

It turned out she needed to negotiate. Madame Léonce did not want to let these women go upstairs to her tenant's apartment. She stared at them severely, shocked by La Sarriette's badly tied shawl. But when the elderly mademoiselle whispered a few words and showed her the key, she made a decision. Feeling exasperated, once they were upstairs, she would let them into the rooms only one at a time, as though she were being forced to show thieves where she kept her money.

“Go on, take it all,” she said, flopping down on a chair.

La Sarriette tried the key on every wardrobe. The suspicious Madame Lecœur followed close behind—so close that La Sarriette complained, “You're in my way, Aunt, at least give me a little arm room.”

Finally a wardrobe was opened, the one in front of the window between the fireplace and the bed. The four women heaved sighs. On the middle shelf were about ten thousand francs in gold coins, methodically stacked in little piles. Gavard, whose real holdings had wisely been placed in the hands of a broker, held this amount in reserve for “the day the dogs are unleashed.” As he used to say with great solemnity, he was “ready to support the revolution.” He had sold a few securities and took particular pleasure in fondling these ten thousand francs every evening, contemplating them and finding in them something bold and revolutionary. At night he would dream of a battle in his wardrobe: he could hear gunshots and the sound of paving stones being torn up and rolled down the street, voices of confusion and of victory, and it was his money that paid for it all.

La Sarriette had thrust out her hands with a joyful cry.

“Pull your claws back, my child,” said Madame Lecœur in a hoarse voice.

She was even more yellow in the reflection of the gold, her face and eyes burning from the liver disease that was silently consuming her. Behind her, up on her tiptoes, was Mademoiselle Saget, in ecstacy looking into the depths of the wardrobe. Madame Léonce had also risen to her feet, mouthing unspoken words.

“My uncle told me to take everything,” said the girl crisply.

“And me? I looked after him, will I get nothing?” the concierge exclaimed.

Madame Lecœur was choking. She pushed them back and clung to the wardrobe, stammering, “It's mine. I'm the nearest relative. You're a bunch of thieves. I'd rather throw it all out the window.”

There was silence while they looked at each other suspiciously. La Sarriette's shawl was now completely undone, and her admirable breasts were showing along with her moist lips and the pink around her nostrils. Madame Lecœur was disheartened to see the girl so radiant with longing.

“Listen,” she said in her muted voice, “let's not fight about this … You're his niece, and I'm willing to share. We'll take turns taking stacks.”

They pushed the other two aside and Madame Lecœur went first, a pile disappearing into her skirts. Then La Sarriette swept up a pile too. They watched each other carefully, ready to slap the other's hand. Their fingers reached at regular intervals, first the horrid gnarled ones, then the white ones smooth as silk. They filled their pockets. When there was only one stack left, La Sarriette refused to let Madame Lecœur take it, pointing out that she had taken the first round. She quickly split it between Mademoiselle Saget and Madame Léonce, who had been watching the taking of the gold with a feverish taping of the feet.

“Thanks a lot,” said the concierge. “Fifty francs for coddling him all these years with infusions and broths. And he told me he had no relatives, the old swindler.”

Before closing up the wardrobe, Madame Lecœur wanted to inspect it from top to bottom. It contained political books that were not allowed into the country, pamphlets from Brussels, scandalous stories about the Bonapartes, foreign cartoons in which the emperor seemed ludicrous. A favorite pastime of Gavard's was to lock himself up with a friend and show him all this contraband.

“He specifically asked me to burn all the papers,” La Sarriette pointed out.

“Ach, we don't have a fire, and it would take too long. I can smell the police. We should get out of here.”

And all four of them walked out of the room. No sooner had they reached the bottom of the stairs than the police arrived. Madame Léonce had to go up again to accompany them. The other three, with bent shoulders, hurried back to the street. They walked quickly in a row, the aunt and the niece encumbered by their bulging pockets. La Sarriette, in front, turned around as she stepped onto rue Rambuteau and said with her endearing laugh, “It's banging into my legs.”

Madame Lecœur spit out an obscenity, which made them all laugh. They tasted a special pleasure from the feel of this weight on their skirts like the caress of a hand. Mademoiselle Saget had kept her fifty francs in her closed fist. Her face looked serious as she worked on her plan to shake more money out of the plump pockets she was following.

Finally reaching the corner of the fish market, the elderly woman said, “Look, we got back at just the right moment. They're about to catch Florent.”

Florent was just returning from his long walk. He went to his office to change his jacket and then began his daily work, supervising the washing of the stones, strolling through the long aisles. It seemed to him that people were looking at him strangely. The fish women were whispering to each other as he walked past, their noses down and their eyes shifty. He thought some new annoyance had arisen. For some time now these fat, troublesome women had not given him a moment's peace.

When he passed by the Méhudin stall he was very surprised to hear the mother say in a sugary voice, “Monsieur Florent, someone came by asking for you just now. A middle-aged monsieur. He went up and is waiting for you in your room.”

The old fishmonger, collapsed in a chair, was so savoring these words, the perfection of this revenge, that her enormous bulk was quivering. Florent, dubious, looked at the Beautiful Norman. She, now completely in league with her mother, turned on the faucet, slapped some fish beneath it, and seemed not to hear.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Oh, absolutely. Isn't that right, Louise?” the woman continued in an ever shriller voice.

He thought it must have something to do with the big event, so he decided to climb up to his room. He was about to leave the fish market when, turning around mechanically, he caught the Beautiful Norman following him with her eyes, a grave look on her face. He passed the three gossips.

Mademoiselle Saget murmured, “Notice how the charcuterie is empty. Beautiful Lisa is not a woman to put herself at risk.”

It was true, the charcuterie was empty. The front of the building remained bathed in sunlight, and it seemed to have the happy air of a good house warming its belly in the first rays of the morning sun. Above, on the balcony, the pomegranate was in bloom. As he crossed the street, Florent gave a friendly nod to Logre and Monsieur Lebigre, who seemed to be getting some fresh air on the doorstep of the latter's establishment. The two smiled at him.

He was about to start down the alleyway when he thought he saw at its end the pale face of Auguste suddenly vanishing from sight. He then returned to look in the charcuterie to make sure there was not a middle-aged monsieur waiting for him there. But the only one he saw was Mouton, sitting on the chopping block and studying him with two large yellow eyes, double chin, and the large bristly mustache of a defiant cat. Just as Florent decided to enter by the alley, he saw Beautiful Lisa appear at the end of the shop, behind the curtained windows of a door.

A silence had fallen over the entire fish market. The bellies and enormous breasts held their breath waiting until Florent disappeared. Then it was all released—breasts expanded and bellies were bursting with malice. The scam had succeeded. What could be more funny? The old Méhudin woman jiggled with silent laughter like a full wineskin emptying. Her story about the middle-aged monsieur had circulated in the market, and all the women thought it was highly amusing. Finally the string bean was to be shipped off! They would have no more of his gruesome face and convict eyes. They all wished him good riddance and hoped that the new inspector would be good-looking. They ran from one stall to the next and would gladly have danced around the slabs like girls escaped from a convent.

The Beautiful Norman stood stiffly, watching all this merriment, not daring to move for fear she would start crying, with her hands on a large skate to calm her fever.

“See how the Méhudins dropped him as soon as his money was gone,” said Madame Lecœur.

“And they're right,” replied Mademoiselle Saget. “In any event, my dear, it's over, isn't it? There's nothing more to fight about. You're happy. Let the others deal with it as they want.”

“Only the old one is laughing,” said La Sarriette. “The Norman is not looking very merry.”

Meanwhile, up in his room, Florent let himself be taken like a lamb. The policemen, assuming he would put up a desperate struggle, jumped him roughly. But he gently asked them to let go. Then he just sat there while the men wrapped up the papers, the scarves, the armbands, and the banners. He did not seem surprised by how things had turned out. In fact, it came as a relief, but he did not understand this clearly enough to admit it. But it was painful for him to think of the hatred down below that had urged him into this room. He saw again the pale face of Auguste, the lowered faces of the fish women, he remembered Mère Méhudin's words, the silence of the Norman, the empty charcuterie, and he told himself that Les Halles had been an accomplice, the entire neighborhood had turned him in. All around him the stench of the greasy streets rose up.

His heart was gripped by a stabbing anguish when, amid the round faces that he conjured up in his mind, he suddenly evoked the image of Quenu.

“Let's go, downstairs,” said a policeman roughly.

He got up and went down. On the third-floor landing he asked to go back as he had forgotten something. The police, not wanting him to go back up, pushed him forward. But he begged to be allowed back. He even offered them the small amount of money he had. Finally two of them agreed to go back up with him but threatened to club him on the head if he tried any tricks. They took their revolvers from their holsters. On reaching the room he went straight to the finch's cage, took the bird, kissed it between its wings, and released it from the window. He watched it perch in the sunlight on the roof of the fish market, seeming dazed. Then it took flight again, disappearing above Les Halles, headed in the direction of square des Innocents. He remained an instant longer, staring at the sky, the open, free sky. He thought of the pigeons cooing in the Tuileries and the pigeons in the storage cellar whose throats had been slit by Marjolin. Then everything in him crumbled, and he followed the police, who put their weapons back in the holsters and shrugged.

At the bottom of the stairs, Florent stopped at the door that led to the kitchen.

The inspector, who was waiting for him there, was touched by his gentle obedience and asked, “Do you want to say good-bye to your brother?”

He hesitated a moment. He looked at the door. A commotion of hatchets and saucepans came from the kitchen. Lisa, wishing to keep her husband busy, had come up with the idea of making boudin, which he normally made only at night. Onions were sizzling on the fire, and Florent heard Quenu's happy voice, shouting above the noise, “Oh, my God, this boudin is going to be so good … Auguste, pass me the fat.”

Florent thanked the inspector. He was afraid to go into the hot kitchen, full of the strong smell of cooking onions. He passed the door, content in the belief that his brother knew nothing, quickening his steps to avoid causing a final scene in the charcuterie. But as he felt the bright sunbeams strike his face, he was ashamed and climbed into the cab with his shoulders stooped. He could feel the presence of the fish market enjoying its victory, and it seemed to him that the whole neighborhood was gathering to celebrate.

“Oh, he looked terrible, didn't he?” said Mademoiselle Saget.

“It's the face of a convict caught redhanded,” added Madame Lecœur.

La Sarriette showed her white teeth and said, “I once saw a man guillotined, and he looked just like that.”

They had come closer and were craning their necks, trying to see inside the cab. Just as the vehicle was leaving, the old woman pulled hard at the skirts of the other two to point out Claire, who was running wildly from rue Pirouette. Her hair was undone, and she looked like a madwoman, her fingernails bleeding. She had managed to dismantle her door. Once she realized that she had arrived too late and Florent was being taken, she hurled herself in the direction of the cab, then stopped abruptly, making a gesture of useless rage, shaking her fist at the vanishing wheels. Then, all red under the fine plaster powder with which she was covered, she hurried home to rue Pirouette.

“You would think he'd promised to marry her,” said La Sarriette, laughing. “She's completely smitten, the big idiot.”

The neighborhood returned to calm. Small groups gathered until the pavilion closed to discuss the morning's events. People peered curiously into the charcuterie. Lisa avoided showing herself, leaving Augustine at the counter. Finally, in the afternoon, she thought it her duty to tell Quenu everything for fear that some big mouth would blurt it all out. She waited until she could be alone with him in the kitchen, understanding that this was the part of the house where he felt most at ease and he would cry less. She proceeded with maternal gentleness. But once he knew the truth, he fell on the butcher block and started crying like a baby.

“Now, now, my poor big lug, don't carry on like this, you'll hurt yourself.” And she took him in her arms.

Tears ran out of his eyes and down his white apron. His bulk shook with pain. He was silent, melting away. When he managed to speak, he stammered, “You have no idea how good he was to me when we lived on rue Royer-Collard. He cleaned and did the cooking … He loved me like his child, you see. He would come home at night caked in mud, too tired to stand. Meanwhile there was me, staying at home well fed and warm … And now they're going to shoot him.”

Lisa insisted that he was not going to be shot, but he shook his head and continued, “It doesn't matter. I didn't love him enough. It's no use saying that now. I've been heartless. I even hesitated to give him his inheritance.”

“But I offered it to him more than ten times,” she interjected. “We have nothing to reproach ourselves about on that score.”

“Oh, I know, you were very kind. You'd have given him everything. But not me, you see. I'll have to live with this grief for the rest of my life. I will always think that if I had shared with him, he would not have gone back to his bad ways. It's my fault. I'm the one who drove him to this.”

She was even gentler, telling him to stop torturing himself. She felt sorry for Florent too, even though he was very guilty. If he'd had more money, he might have committed even greater follies. Little by little, she managed to convince him that it could not have ended up any other way and that it had all worked out for the best. Quenu was still crying, wiping his cheeks with his apron, stifling his sobs to listen, then melting into a fresh wave of tears. Without thinking, he had sunk his fingers into a pile of sausage meat on the chopping block. He was drilling holes in it, kneading it roughly.

“Do you remember that you weren't feeling well?” Lisa continued. “It was because we had lost our routine. Although I never said anything about it, I was worried. I could see your health was suffering.”

“It was, wasn't it?” he said, holding back his tears for an instant.

“And the shop too. That hasn't done well this year. It was as if a spell … Come on, don't cry. You'll see how everything will be better. You have to take care of yourself. For my sake. And your daughter's. You have your responsibilities to us, too.”

He was kneading the sausage meat more gently now. He was still in the grip of his emotions, but now a more tender kind, which brought a slight smile to his drawn face. Lisa could see that she had convinced him. Quickly she called Pauline, who was playing in the shop, and lifting her onto his lap, she said, “Pauline, isn't it true that your father must be reasonable? Ask him nicely not to make any more trouble.”

The child asked him gently. They looked at each other and hugged in one huge, overflowing embrace, already recuperating from the yearlong illness that was now slipping away from them. Smiles broadened on their round faces, and Lisa said, “After all, there are only three of us, my dear, only three.”

Two months later Florent was once more sentenced to deportation. The incident got widespread attention. Newspapers published the tiniest of details, along with photos of the accused, the designs of the banners and the scarves, and plans of the place where the conspirators had held their meetings. For fifteen days there was no topic in Paris except the Les Halles conspiracy. The police issued statements that were more and more disturbing and in the end stated that the entire Montmartre neighborhood had been mined. Emotions were running so high in the Corps Législatif that the center and right-wing parties forgot about the ill-conceived pensions that had for an instant divided them and agreed to vote with a crushing majority for the unpopular tax. In the panic that gripped the city, not even the people of the lower-class neighborhoods dared complain.

The trial lasted a week. Florent was surprised by the huge number of accomplices he was credited with having. He knew only six, seven at most, of the twenty faces in the dock. After the reading of the arrest decree, he thought he caught sight of the hat and innocent shoulders of Robine drifting around in the crowd. Logre was acquitted, as was Lacaille. Alexandre was sentenced to two years in prison for his childish stupidity. As for Gavard, like Florent he was sentenced to deportation. This was a crushing blow after his jubilation from a lengthy cross-examination that he managed to fill with his personality. He was paying dearly for that Parisian shopkeeper's verve. Two large tears ran down the gaunt cheeks of the white-haired fellow.

One August morning while the people of Les Halles were just getting up, Claude Lantier, wandering where the vegetables were arriving, his waist cinched with a red belt, came to touch the hand of Madame François at pointe Saint-Eustache. There she was with her big sad face, seated on turnips and carrots. The painter was in a dark mood, despite the bright sunlight, which was already softening the big green mountains of cabbage.

“Well,” he said, “it's over. They're sending him back there. I think they've already sent him to Brest.”

She made a silent gesture of pain. She waved her hand slowly around her and said in a muted voice, “It's Paris. It's this damned Paris.”

“No,” said Claude. “I know who it is. It's those sons of bitches.” Claude raised his fist. “You cannot imagine, Madame François. There isn't a single stupid thing that they didn't say at the trial. They even went as far as to go through a child's notebook. That moron of a prosecutor made a whole big thing out of preaching respect for children on one hand and demagogic education on the other. It made me sick.”

He shuddered and, hunching his shoulders inside his green coat, continued, “A man as gentle as a girl. I saw him fall ill seeing pigeons bled. It made me laugh with pity when I saw him between two policemen. We'll never see him again. This time he'll stay there.”

“He should have listened to me,” said the vegetable vendor after some silence. “He could have come to Nanterre, lived there with my rabbits and hens. I really liked him because I understood what a good man he was. We could have been happy. What a tragedy! Take care of yourself, Monsieur Claude. I'll expect you to come have an omelette with me one of these mornings.”

She had tears in her eyes. She got up, a strong woman bearing her sorrow. “Oh, look,” she said. “There's Mère Chantemesse coming to buy turnips. She's hale and hearty as ever, the old fatso.”

Claude went off for a while, prowling the streets. The day had risen like a white fountain from the depth of rue Rambuteau. The sun was spreading its rosy light above the rooftops, bright expanses washing the pavement even at this early hour. And Claude sensed a cheerful mood awakening in these vast echoing marketplaces filled with their piles of food. It was like the pleasure of recovered health, the brightening sound of people at last relieved of a heavy burden weighing on their stomachs. Along came La Sarriette with a gold watch, singing in the midst of her plums and strawberries, tweaking the little mustache of Monsieur Jules, who was wearing a velvet jacket.

He caught a glimpse of Madame Lecœur and Mademoiselle Saget walking down one of the covered streets, their faces less yellow than before, almost pink. Like good friends, they giggled over some amusing incident. In the fish market Mère Méhudin was back in her stall, slapping fish, abusing customers, and snubbing the new inspector, a young man whom she had vowed to get fired. Claire, lazier and more listless, was gathering a huge handful of snails, sparkling from their silvery slime, with her hands, which had turned blue from the tanks.

At the tripe market, Auguste and Augustine had just bought pigs' feet, and with the sweet faces of newlyweds they were taking their cart back to their charcuterie in Montrouge. It was now eight o'clock and already warm when Claude returned to rue Rambuteau, where he found Muche and Pauline playing at horses. Muche was on all fours, and Pauline was astride him, hanging on to his hair so she wouldn't fall. On the roofs of Les Halles along the gutter a shadow flitted by, causing Claude to look up. It was Cadine and Marjolin, laughing and kissing, basking in the sun, defying the neighborhood with their happy animal love.

Claude shook his fist at them. He was exasperated by all this celebration on the streets and in the sky. He cursed the Fats, for he had to say that the Fats had won. All around him he could see nothing but Fats, growing, bursting with health, saluting a new day of lovely digestion.

When he stopped in front of rue Pirouette, the sight in front of him, to the left and right, was the final blow. On his right was the Beautiful Norman, the Beautiful Madame Lebigre, as she was now known, standing at the doorway of her shop. Her husband had finally managed to merge his wine business with the tobacco shop, a long-nurtured ambition finally realized thanks to important services rendered. Beautiful Madame Lebigre was looking fantastic in her silk dress, her hair curled, ready to take her place behind the counter, where all the neighborhood men came to buy their cigars and pouches of tobacco. She had become very distinguished-looking, quite the lady. Behind her the barroom had been repainted with leaves on the pale wall. The zinc was bright, and the bottles of liquor cast even more sparkling reflections in the mirror. She laughed in the clear morning light.

To his left was Beautiful Lisa at the doorway to the charcuterie, taking up its entire width. Her linens had never been so white. Her rosy cheeks had never been so refreshed or so perfectly framed in smooth waves of hair. She exhibited calm and a splendid poise, an impressive peacefulness that could not be disturbed, even by a smile. This was total tranquillity, complete happiness, lifeless and unshakable, as she bathed in the warm air. Her tightly stretched bodice seemed to be still digesting yesterday's happiness. Her chubby hands, lost in the folds of her apron, were not even outstretched to catch today's happiness, for it was certain to fall into her hands.

Close by, the window display expressed a similar felicity. It too had recovered, and the stuffed tongues were redder and healthier, the jambonneaux were showing their fine yellow faces, the garlands of sausages no longer had the look of despair that had depressed Quenu.

A loud laugh resounded from the kitchen in the back, accompanied by the tintinnabulation of saucepans. The charcuterie was once again ringing with good health, a fatted health. The strips of lard and the half pigs hanging against the marble suggested the roundness of bellies, the belly triumphant, while Lisa, motionless, posed with dignity, offering Les Halles her large, well-fed smile as a morning greeting.

Then both ladies bowed. Beautiful Madame Lebigre and Beautiful Madame Quenu exchanged a friendly salute.

And Claude, who no doubt had forgotten supper the night before, was infuriated by the sight of the two of them looking so prosperous and well, with their huge breasts shoved out in front of them, and he tightened his belt as he muttered in an angry voice, “What bastards respectable people are!”

NOTES ON FOOD AND HISTORY

CHAPTER ONE

1. SENTENCED TO CAYENNE: Cayenne is the capital city, a beat-up, tropical, colonial town, in what is today the Department of French Guiana in northern South America, but the name Cayenne used to refer to the penal colony, which consisted of a number of places on the French Guianese mainland and three offshore islands. Dutch Guiana, across the Maroni River, today the independent nation of Suriname, shares an unguardable border in a still undeveloped rain forest.

2. THE EVENTS OF DECEMBER: On December 2, 1851, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte staged a successful coup d'état to remain in power beyond his elected term and establish a dictatorship, proclaiming himself Emperor Napoleon III. The date was chosen to mark the forty-sixth anniversary of the victory of his uncle, Napoleon Bonaparte, at the Battle of Austerlitz. Angry people supporting the overthrown republic rose up two days later, on December 4, in Paris and the provinces. They were violently suppressed, and thousands were driven into exile, including, most famously, Victor Hugo; thousands more were shipped to penal colonies.

3. “AT THE COMPAS D'OR ON RUE MONTORGUEIL”: To be precise, the inn was at numbers 64 to 72 rue Montorgueil. In his notes in preparation for writing The Belly of Paris, Zola described this inn, built in the sixteenth century, as “several buildings of different sizes united by a courtyard in the back.” He wrote of how the area was covered with straw for parking carts. “Chickens walked around,” he noted, “and the place had the appearance of a farm.” He also described a door on the ground floor that led to the Restaurant Philippe, which is mentioned later, in Chapter Four. In the 1870s, when Zola was writing this book, Restaurant Philippe was one of the most famous restaurants in Paris. Though the name Compas d'Or continues, the original complex of buildings was torn down in 1927.

4. BOULANGERIE: A boulangerie is a bread bakery, but because it traditionally had a huge wood-burning oven, such ovens have disappeared from Paris today. It rented out oven space to people in the neighborhood who wanted something baked. This is the origin of the many dishes, usually stews, with the adjective boulangére.

5. EAU-DE-VIE: Eau-de-vie is white alcohol made from fermented fruit that is distilled twice and quickly bottled to remain colorless and maintain its fruity character.

6. HE WAS A FORT: One of many examples of a particularly rich Parisan slang that came from the Les Halles market. A fort was a porter, literally a strong man, who hefted meat carcasses and crates in the market.

7. PEAL OF BELLS: Bells were used in each of the pavilions to signal work shifts in the market.

8. BARATTE'S: This restaurant in the Les Halles neighborhood, mentioned throughout the novel, was in vogue in the mid-nineteenth century, and the building is painstakingly described, floor by floor, in Zola's notes.

9. TRIPERIE: A type of shop that in France goes back to the Middle Ages, a triperie sells not only tripe but the full range of offal and inward products.

10. KÉPIS: Visored cylindrical French military caps originally invented in Algeria with a cane base to be lightweight. In 1852, six years before the action of this book, the képi became established in metropolitan France for both military personnel and some police units.

11. HIS CHARCUTERIE: One of the oldest types of French food shops, tracing its roots back to ancient Greece and Rome. The French word comes from chair, meaning “meat,” and cuit, meaning “cooked.” Charcuteries originally concentrated on pork products, but in Zola's time the repertoire was expanding and has continued to expand in our day. A charcuterie specializes in prepared foods, including cured meats, such as sausages, hams, and pâtés, predominantly but not exclusively pork products, and also predominantly but not exclusively meat preparations.

12. TO RUE RAMBUTEAU, ACROSS FROM LES HALLES: The significance of the Quenu charcuterie being moved from rue Pirouette to rue Rambuteau is that rue Pirouette was a winding old street from medieval Paris that somehow survived Baron Georges Haussmann's rebuilding of Paris, whereas the new location on rue Rambuteau was very much part of the new, rebuilt Les Halles district. This was of great symbolic importance to Zola, who correctly associated Haussmann's plan with the militarism of the hated empire.

13. RILLETTES: Rillettes are potted pork belly cooked down until it is a fatty meat spread. The belly is cooked for a number of hours; then the meat is separated from the fat and pounded into fibers, then mixed back with the fat and stored in earthen crocks, where it would keep for a very long time even before the age of refrigeration. It is also sometimes made from goose, chicken, or rabbit. In the case of goose, skin is sometimes added. But rillettes are supposed to be made exclusively from the meat and fat of a cut with salt as the only additive, though nitrates such as saltpeter, which is a salt, were sometimes added even in Zola's day. The earliest references to rillettes are from the fifteenth century, when they were called rellée or rihelle. Toward the center of France, especially Touraine and Anjou, is the celebrated area of rillettes. It is said that they were the primary food of the rural poor of Touraine.

14. JAMBONNEAUX: A jambonneau is a lightly cured pork shoulder, which is really the upper arm of the pig. It is a pear-shaped cut, hand-molded after cooking to emphasize the shape and the meat pushed down to make the bone stick up at the end like a stem, though in this case it is presented with the bone removed. Traditionally it is lightly dusted with bread crumbs.

15. BOUDIN: Blood sausage. In the next chapter, Zola gives as a backdrop one of the novel's best scenes, a description of how to make boudin. Today it is called boudin noir because of the advent of boudin blanc—white sausage made of white chicken or pork meat and sometimes with cream added. But in the Paris of Zola boudin referred to boudin noir, sausage made with pork blood, a little pig's head, and onions sautéed in lard and sometimes milk or cream, though this last addition seems to have been less common in the nineteenth century.

16. ANDOUILLES: Originally from northern France, especially Normandy and Brittany, andouilles are large smoked sausages sliced and eaten cold. In the Middle Ages they were considered a delicacy. Andouilles are filled with tripe, cut-up large intestines, and belly—all from pig. Twisting all of this into the black casing is no easy matter and is best described by the fact that it has led to an expression, on fait des andouilles, literally “making andouilles,” which refers to the squirming of restless children, an expression I know of in only one other language, Yiddish, in which it is called spilkes.

17. PÂTÉS: The word literally means “crusted,” and in the nineteenth century and earlier pâté was a cooked loaf of seasoned ground meats, as it is today, but baked in a crust. Today this would be called a pâté en croûte, which is redundant in French.

18. SAUCISSONS: Saucisse, or sausage, which comes from the Latin salsicia, meaning “salted,” as do similar words such as “salami,” is an ancient form of preserved meat. Saucisson means simply a large sausage, of which there are many kinds; if it is dried and ready for eating, it is a saucisson sec.

19. CERVELAS: This is a term for a specialty sausage that varies from region to region; two of the most famous are the Alsatian and the Lyonnais. Cervelas sausages are usually made exclusively from larger chunks of meat and are of ten seasoned with garlic. They are cooked sausages poached in either water or red wine. The name may come from the original presence of pigs' brains, cervelles, though this ingredient has not been used in recent centuries.

CHAPTER TWO

1. LE VIGAN IN THE GARD: Near Nîmes in Zola's native Provence.

2. HE BECAME A REPUBLICAN: At the time this meant a supporter of the republic that the emperor Napoleon had overthrown and thus an opponent of the current repressive imperial regime.

3. HE BECAME DISTRAUGHT AND RAN TO ALL THE “CLUBS”: In February 1848, bloody revolution established the Second Republic, which lasted only until the coup d'état in December 1851. The Second Republic had a heady, idealistic tone, and clubs were formed to air radical political theories.

4. See note 2 on page 313.

5. CORNICHONS: Literally “little horns,” these are the French version of what the English call gherkins, very young cucumbers harvested at between three and eight centimeters. Cornichons are pickled in vinegar, usually with some herbs, and they are a mainstay of charcuteries.

6. PLASSANS: Plassans, in Provence, the seat of the fictional Rougon-Macquart family, is Zola's fictitious name for Aix-en-Provence, where he was raised.

7. PETIT SALÉ: A cut of pork belly with adjacent ribs, spare ribs, that is rubbed and packed in salt, herbs, and spices, such as thyme and cloves, left for weeks, then boiled slowly. It can be eaten cold or heated.

8. LARDOONS: Small strips of cured pork fat, here used in sausages but also drawn through some lean meats with a needle before roasting.

9. BOUILLIES: This is a kind of porridge made by thickening a liquid with flour. It is often a dish for children, but it can also refer to any kind of thickened liquid. The word has the same origin as bouillon, which is a stock, bouillie, something boiled in liquid, and bouillabaisse, a Mediterranean fish soup. Here it appears to be some kind of thickened meat soup.

10. GALANTINE: The word traces back to the Middle Ages, and its origin is debatable. Gelatine, the Chinese spice galangale, which is related to ginger, and a medieval jellied fish dish mentioned in Chaucer are among the proposed etymological roots. Further complicating the debate, in late medieval England the word referred to a sauce. In eighteenth-century France it meant a whole stuffed pig. But by Zola's time the word had the same meaning it has today, a chicken, turkey, duck, or other bird, or even veal, boned, stuffed, wrapped tightly in a cloth, slowly cooked and pressed, and presented shimmering in the aspic made from it. A good charcuterie item, it looks elegant sliced on a plate, revealing an attractive mottled cross section, and though it requires considerable labor to make, it does not demand great skill.

11. CAUL FAT: This is the fat peritoneal layer over a pig's intestines. It can be softened in lukewarm water and stretched out to resembles a yard of white, airy lace, but it is made entirely of fat. Its delicacy is testified to by both the English name, caul, referring to a hairnet, and the French word, crépine, which eludes to crêpe, a light, crinkly type of silk. As a wrapping for pâtés, sausages, and meats, caul fat is an attractive and light way to both wrap something tightly and infuse it with a moderate dose of fat.

12. CHANGED HIS NAME TO SACCARD: An example of how Zola loved to have the Rougon-Macquart books make references to one another. This financier cousin, who had changed his name from Aristide Rougon, was the leading character in the novel published the year before, La Curée.

13. THE WORKERS HAD SOLD OUT, BUT HE NO LONGER EVEN ADMITTED TO HAVING SUPPORTED THE COUP D'éTAT BECAUSE HE NOW REGARDED NAPOLEON III AS HIS PERSONAL ENEMY, A REPROBATE WHO LOCKED HIMSELF UP WITH DE MORNY: In the people's revolution of 1848, the revolting working class put their faith in the man who later made himself Emperor Napoleon III, a significant betrayal of the ideals of the Revolution. Charles-Auguste-Louis-Joseph, duc de Morny, the emperor's half brother, who lived from 1811 to 1865, served as the emperor's minister of the interior, the cabinet minister in charge of policing and law enforcement.

14. CORPS LÉGISLATIF: In this period this was the name of the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies.

15. “THE CROWD UP IN THE TUILERIES”: During the empire, the Tuileries housed the imperial palace. After the empire fell in 1871, the rebels of the Paris Commune wrecked the palace.

16. PAINS DE FROMAGE AND FROMAGE DE COCHON: These have nothing to do with bread or cheese. Pain de fromage from Italy, sometimes called fro-mage d'Italie, is a very fine-textured baked pork pâté. Fromage de cochon is sometimes called fromage de tête, in English head cheese. It is, by tradition, though this is not always true, made from all the pig's head meats, including ears and tongue. It is chopped up, pressed together, and baked. The head meats are very gelatinous, so that once it cools, the hardened aspic holds it all together.

17. LARD DE POITRINE: This is essentially petit salé, except slightly higher into the spare rib part of the pork.

18. SAINDOUX: Saindoux is rendered pork fat that is melted and allowed to cool and congeal to the consistency of butter. It is kept in an earthen crock, which keeps fat from turning, and is used for cooking. In American English saindoux is called “lard,” but this leads to confusion because lard is also a word in French that means something entirely different. In French lard is a strip of salt-cured pork from the outer layer that is pure fat without any meat striping.

19. “YOU KNOW, FOR LARKS”: She is asking for the French lard. It comes in sheets, and she will cut pieces and tie them around the larks for roasting. The lard gives a little fattiness to such lean game birds.

CHAPTER THREE

1. GURNARD: The French name for this spiny red fish commonly eaten in Europe but not in America is grondin. In English it is a red gurnet or gurnard, which few Americans have ever heard of even though it is related to the less edible sea robin, both in the genus Trigla.

2. TENCH: Tench, Cyprinidae tinca tinca, has edible carplike flesh, and an eellike exterior of tiny embedded scales covered with slime. Legend has it that the slime will heal any fish it rubs against, which is why tench is sometimes called doctor fish.

3. GUDGEON: Gudgeon is a small freshwater fish, common in Europe but not in the Americas, from the same cyprinid family as tench.

4. BARBEL: This fish, which Zola called a “gros barbillon,” seems from his description to be of the genus Barbus, probably a barbel, which is a fairly large, whitish-gray freshwater fish common in Europe and unknown in North America. Barbel is also the word for feelers around the mouth. Barbus fish have barbels, and barbu means “bearded.”

5. FAKE ASTRAKHAN: Astrakhan, in the delta of the Volga River, produces a fur from young lambs that is celebrated for its softness and was made fashionable by Russian military hats.

6. HE WAS AN HÉBERTISTE: Followers of Jacques Hébert, born in 1757, the son of a jeweler, who was one of the more bloodthirsty figures of the bloody French Revolution. As a leader of the radical faction sansculottes, he urged the ruling Jacobins to unleash the bloodbath known as the Reign of Terror and influenced the decision to execute Marie Antoinette. But in 1794, he himself was guillotined by the order of Maximilien Robespierre, who believed he had become too wildly radical. According to legend, at his execution he became hysterical at the sight of the guillotine. The sansculotte movement rose to prominence in the Revolution because it was a working-class movement, and as such it, including the hébertistes, remained active for much of the nineteenth century. The name, meaning “breechless,” referred to middle-class activists who refused to wear the knee-length breeches of the upper classes and sported workers' trousers.

7. PIQUET: Piquet is a card game dating back to at least the sixteenth century, when it was mentioned by Rabelais. It is played between two people with a thirty-two-card deck that does not use the numbers two through six. In Zola's time it was the most popular card game in France.

8. A TATTERED OLD COPY OF THE GUIDE TO DREAMS: La Clef des songes, a guide to the interpretation of dreams in encyclopedia form, was a popular book in nineteenth-century France.

9. TULLE: Tulle is a stiffened silk netting, today more often made of nylon, for veils, petticoats, and ballet tutus, among other uses. The fabric is named after the town of Tulle, the capital of the Department of Corrèze in the Limousin region of central France, where tulle was once produced.

10. “THAT'S SO MUCHE!”: This is another example of Les Halles slang. “C'est rien muche” is slang for “That's so cool.”

11. LANGOUSTINES: Nephrops norvegicus, the Norway lobster to some of the English-speaking world except in Ireland, where it is a Dublin Bay prawn, is more commonly known in the United States by its French name, which means small lobster. It has the appearance of a tiny pink-and-white lobster though the white flesh is not nearly as rich or flavorful. The reason Americans tend to know it by its French name is that it is not an American species and many Americans have been introduced to it in France.

12. THE SOCIAL CONTRACT: Jean-Jacques Rousseau's 1762 revolutionary tract was one of the intellectual underpinnings of the French Revolution with its famous line “Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.” Rousseau maintained that an individual's obligation was to his society, not his government, and that only the people could legitimize a government.

CHAPTER FOUR

1. POT-AU-FEU: A Paris dish that used to be the symbol of home cooking but in recent decades has shown up in restaurants as such lengthy preparations have vanished from Paris homes. It is made of a variety of meat cuts, some lean, some fat, cooked very slowly in water for hours with vegetables.

2. CHICKWEED: In French mouron; the English-language name comes from the fact that the seeds are used for chicken feed. Chickweed, Stelleria media, grows wild in the temperate zones of the world and has edible spinachlike leaves that the ancient Greeks and Romans were particularly fond of. In past centuries with less food transport, chickweed was valuable in Europe because it was one of the few foods that would grow in the northern European winter and grew wild. But in Les Halles, Cadine was selling chickweed as bird feed.

3. POSITIVISM IN ART: At this time, the mid-nineteenth century, positivism was a very trendy idea and one that had greatly influenced Zola. It was originated by Auguste Comte (1798-1857), who is sometimes considered the first sociologist. Positivism holds that knowledge cannot be attained through such intellectual pursuits as metaphysics and theology but only through scientific observation.

4. SAINT-HONORÉ CAKES, SAVARINS, FLANS, FRUIT TARTS, PLATTERS OF BABAS: These pastries, though still easily found, were invented in mid-nineteenth-century Paris and were the height of culinary fashion at the time the novel is taking place. Saint-Honoré was, according to legend, invented in 1846 in the Paris shop of a celebrated pastry maker named Chiboust. It is a ring of puff pastry topped with little cream puffs filled with pastry cream and topped with caramel. Chiboust's great invention, chiboust cream, which is pastry cream blended with meringue and set with gelatine, fills the center.

Savarins were invented at about the same time, in the Paris pastry shop of the Julien brothers. Their origin was the medieval Slavic cylindrical yeast cake known as a babka, which traveled to Alsace, where it became a yeast cake with dried fruit soaked in kirsch syrup, lost its k, and became baba. In Paris the dried fruit was eliminated, the yeast cake was baked in a small ring mold, the cake was soaked in rum syrup, and it was renamed after the great nineteenth-century French food writer Brillat-Savarin.

5. FROMAGE BLANC: Fromage blanc is a fresh cheese made from milk, barely fermented so that it has at most the thickness of yogurt.

6. GRAS-DOUBLE: A particular beef tripe. Tripe is made from the stomachs of ruminating animals—that is, cud-chewing animals such as cows and sheep, but also deer. Ruminators digest their food, usually grass, by regurgitating it through a series of stomach chambers until it reaches the fourth chamber, the abomasum, where it is finally broken down by gastric juices. All four chambers produce tripe, though the last, the most important to the animal, is the least important to us. The most popular tripe, the honeycombed, comes from the second chamber, the recticulum. Gras-double is made from the first chamber, called in French the fame and in English the paunch or rumen. The smooth exterior and rough interior provide two very distinct textures, thus double tripe, gras-double.

7. “HE'LL GO BACK TO THE PENAL COLONY, YOU KNOW”: The word Zola uses here is le bagne, which originally referred to prison ships on which the navy kept as many as six thousand convicts off the coast of France. But after 1852, when the emperor Napoleon establishd the penal colony of French Guiana, it became known as le bagne and prisoners or former prisoners of French Guiana became known as les bagnards.

8. IN THE CLASSICAL POSE OF LEDA: In Greek mythology Leda was the daughter of an Aetolian king and the wife of a king of Sparta. Zeus came to her in the form of a swan and raped her, a union that resulted in Helen of Troy, Clytemnestra, Castor, and Pollux. Since she also lay with her husband that night, there were varying theories about who was the father of whom. The legend of Leda and the swan became a popular Renaissance motif, painted by Michelangelo and Correggio, among many others. The swan, in what Zola calls “the classical pose,” is usually portrayed between Leda's legs, and there was always an inference, not missed by Zola and probably not by his contemporary readers, of an imminent sexual act.

9. TO THE GAÎTÉ: At the time the novel is taking place, this popular theater was already nearly a century old. It was one of a number of theaters along boulevard du Temple, known as the boulevard du crime because of the melodramas that were popular there. This is the setting of Marcel Carné's brilliant 1945 film, Les Enfants du Paradis.

10. restaurant philippe: See the note for Compas d'Or, page 313.

11. PROMISED THEM AN OMELETTE AU LARD: An omelette with diced salt pork.

12. CHRISTMAS EVE DINNER: Christmas Eve is called réveillon, and it is traditional in France to eat a huge feast to usher in Christmas after midnight Mass.

CHAPTER FIVE

1. WHAT HAPPENED IN ′93: In 1793 the French Revolution turned into the Reign of Terror, when a Committee of Public Safety was formed to prevent any undoing of the gains made by the Revolution. Under the leadership of Robespierre and the hébertistes a sweeping program of arrests was undertaken. Under the Reign of Terror only two trial outcomes were permitted— either acquittal or execution. Some forty thousand people were executed, including many clergy and finally Robespierre himself in July 1794, which marked the end of the Reign of Terror.

2. ONE PER ARRONDISSEMENT: One of a number of anachronisms in this book. Paris is divided into twenty sections called arrondissements, but this division was done in 1861 and the book takes place in 1858.

3. MARRONS GLACéS THAT HAVE FALLEN TO PIECES: Candied chestnuts. The trick is to keep the chestnut whole while peeling it and then slowly cook it in sugar syrup without it crumbling. They are expensive because so many of them break, and then there is nothing to be done with the pieces except sell them cheaply to children.

4. JEAN GOUJON'S NYMPHS: Goujon (c. 1510-68) was a leading architect and sculptor of the French Renaissance. His most famous works were in Paris, where he worked with the architect Pierre Lescot. These include the sculptures for the western wing of the Louvre and the fountain at square des Innocents. Goujon did six nymphs and other decorations. Not all of the fountain, built between 1547 and 1550, remains in the square, and some of Goujon's bas-relief decorations have been moved to the Louvre.

5. BARLEY SUGAR: Sucre d'orge, a hard candy that was already two centuries old at this point. It is brown in color and resembles a hard caramel. Originally it was actually flavored with barley.

6. CULS DE SINGE: Literally monkey bottoms, this is a slang term that shows up in many ways in France, usually for objects with grooves that recede toward the center. It is a type of military insignia, a woodworking term, a type of chair, and, in this case, a melon.

7. “RAUCOURT”: Raucourt, annatto, or achiote is a pod from a tropical tree, the raucou tree, with small pebblelike seeds inside that give off a reddish orange dye. The first recorded use of annatto was by the Carib Indians, who rubbed it on their bodies to greet Columbus, and because of this, native Americans for centuries were called redskins, or peaux-rouges, as is sometimes still said in France. Today it is widely used in the Caribbean to make rice yellow. It was initially imported to Europe to give a reddish tint to chocolate, but by the eighteenth century it was being used in Europe to give a deeper color to cheeses and butters. It is the source of the color in most deep orange cheeses. It is a nearly natural process because annatto contains the same carotene, bixin, as is produced by cattle grazing on rich grasses. But in the wintertime in northern Europe, cattle are given feed, which does not allow them to produce the pigment, and butter and cheeses made from winter milk are very pale. The deeper color of spring and summer was correctly associated with richer milk, but butter and cheese producers made their products look richer in winter by the addition of just the right touch of annatto.

8. BONDONS … GOURNEYS: Bondon is a soft cheese made of cow's milk from Pays de Bray, Normandy. It is a fairly rich cheese, 45 percent fat, molded but not cooked or pressed, and shaped like a small roll. Gourney is also a very soft molded cheese, often mixed with herbs.

9. “TÉTES-DE-MORT”: Dead heads.

10. THE STATUE ON THE COLONNE DE JUILLET: This is the statue of the Spirit of Liberty, sometimes referred to as the Spirit of July, or Juillet, after July 14, 1789, when the Bastille prison was overtaken by a popular uprising. The Bastille, which was later torn down except for a few stones that remain as a monument, was located several blocks closer to the Seine. The place de la Bastille was actually built in 1803, and the column on which July is perched was built in 1830 to commemorate the 504 people killed in a three-day uprising that year that ousted Charles X for Louis-Philippe; 196 more who died in 1848 were later added to the memorial.

11. THE WHITE SHIRT AND VELVET CAP CROWD: This appears to be an anachronism referring to people dressed this way who went to working-class demonstrations against the empire and disrupted by damaging property. It was widely thought that they worked for the government and were providing the troops with an excuse for violent repression. The problem is that this was happening in 1869, more than ten years after the action of this novel. But Zola is clearly suggesting that this crowd was infiltrated by government stooges.

12. MORNY: See note 13 on page 318.

13. GOT INTO A CAB: A fiacre, a four-wheeled coach pulled by two horses.

CHAPTER SIX

1. an extremely unpopular tax: The unpopular tax was a special pension that the emperor had asked to be paid to General Charles-Guillaume Cousin-Montauban. The emperor had awarded him the title comte de Palikao after his victory at Palichaio, near Bejing, in 1860. The legislature opposed this giveaway, and this was the beginning of a popular movement that, coupled with the defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, would lead to the overthrow of the empire. But Zola has stepped a little out of time. The novel takes place from 1858 to 1859. But the furor over the general's pension did not take place until 1862.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ZOLA

Bernard, Marc. Zola par lui-même. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1962.

Brown, Frederick. Zola: A Life. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1995.

Carter, Lawson A. Zola and the Theater. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963.

Émile-Zola, François, and Massin Émile-Zola. Zola: Photographer. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1988.

Josephson, Mathew Zola and His Time: The History of His Martial Career in Letters. Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing, 1928.

Knapp, Bettina Liebowitz. Emile Zola. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1926.

Lanoux, Armand. Bonjour Monsieur Zola. Paris: Amiot-Dumount, 1954.

Zola, Émile. Carnets d'enquêtes: Une ethnographie inédit de la France. Paris: Librairie Plon, 1986.

——. Les Œuvres complétes: Correspondance (1858–1871). Paris: François Bernouard, 1928.

——. Les Œuvres complètes: Correspondance (1872-1902). Paris: François Bernouard, 1929.

——. Les Rougon-Macquart: Histoire naturelle et sociale d'une famille sous le Second Empire (3 vols.). Paris: Gallimard, 1961.

LES HALLES

Flanner, Janet. “The Departed Glory of Les Halles.” Life, May 12, 1967.

Héron de Ville Fosse, René. Les Halles: De Lutèce à Rungis. Paris: Librairie Académique Perrin, 1973.

Luce, Hoctin. “Les Halles.” The Paris Review, no. 40 (Winter-Spring 1967).

Moncan, Patrice de. Baltard, Les Halles de Paris. Paris: Les Editions de L'Observatoire, 1994.

Saint Girons, Simone. Les Halles: Guide historique et pratique. Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1971.

Seyler, Monique. “Les Halles.” Esprit, April 1968.

Stolley, Richard B. “‘The Belly of Paris,’ Les Halles, Closes Forever.” Life, March 14, 1969.

GUIANA

Londres, Albert. Au Bagne. Paris: Albin Michel, 1923.

Michelot, Jean-Claude. La Guillotine sèche: Histoire du bagne de Cayenne. Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1981.

Miles, Alexander. Devil's Island: Colony of the Damned. Berkeley, Ca.: Ten Speed Press, 1988.

Pierre, Michel. La Terre de la grande punition: Histoire des bagnes de Guyane. Paris: Éditions Ramsay, 1982.

FOOD

Davidson, Alan. The Oxford Companion to Food. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Frentz, Jean-Claude. L'Encyclopédie de la charcuterie. Paris: Soussana, 1982.

Grigson, Jane. The Art of Charcuterie. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968.

Kiple, Kenneth F, and Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas, eds. The Cambridge World History of Food (2 vols.). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Montagné, Prosper. Larousse gastronomique. Paris: Larousse, 1938.

ABOUT the TRANSLATOR

Mark Kurlansky is the New York Times–bestselling author of Cod, Salt, and The Big Oyster, as well as a novel, Bugaloo on Second Avenue, and a short-story collection, The White Man in the Tree. He has won numerous awards, including the James A. Beard Award, and, as did Zola, frequently writes about food and politics. He lived in Paris for ten years.

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2009 Modern Library Edition

Introduction and translation copyright © 2009 by Mark Kurlansky

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Zola, Emile, 1840–1902. [Ventre de Paris. English] The belly of Paris/Emile Zola; translated and with an introduction by Mark Kurlansky. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. eISBN: 978-1-58836-855-3 1. Paris (France)—Fiction. I. Kurlansky, Mark. II. Title. PQ2521.V3E5 2009 843′.8—dc22          2008037987

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