LITMIR.BIZ

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where they did not indulge in secret feasts. The district, with its rows of open shops full of fruit and cakes and preserves, was no longer a closed paradise, in front of which they prowled with greedy, covetous appetites. As they passed the shops they now extended their hands and pilfered a prune, a few cherries, or a bit of cod. They also provisioned themselves at the markets, keeping a sharp lookout as they made their way between the stalls, picking up everything that fell, and often assisting the fall by a push of their shoulders.

      In spite, however, of all the marauding, some terrible scores had to be run up with the “frier” of the Rue de la Grand Truanderie. This “frier,” whose shanty leaned against a tumbledown house, and was propped up by heavy joists, green with moss, made a display of boiled mussels lying in large earthenware bowls filled to the brim with clear water; of dishes of little yellow dabs stiffened by too thick a coating of paste; of squares of tripe simmering in a pan; and of grilled herrings, black and charred, and so hard that if you tapped them they sounded like wood. On certain weeks Cadine owed the frier as much as twenty sous, a crushing debt, which required the sale of an incalculable number of bunches of violets, for she could count upon no assistance from Marjolin. Moreover, she was bound to return Leon’s hospitalities; and she even felt some little shame at never being able to offer him a scrap of meat. He himself had now taken to purloining entire hams. As a rule, he stowed everything away under his shirt; and at night when he reached his bedroom he drew from his bosom hunks of polony, slices of pate de foie gras, and bundles of pork rind. They had to do without bread, and there was nothing to drink; but no matter. One night Marjolin saw Leon kiss Cadine between two mouthfuls; however, he only laughed. He could have smashed the little fellow with a blow from his fist, but he felt no jealousy in respect of Cadine. He treated her simply as a comrade with whom he had chummed for years.

      Claude never participated in these feasts. Having caught Cadine one day stealing a beetroot from a little hamper lined with hay, he had pulled her ears and given her a sound rating. These thieving propensities made her perfect as a ne’er-do-well. However, in spite of himself, he could not help feeling a sort of admiration for these sensual, pilfering, greedy creatures, who preyed upon everything that lay about, feasting off the crumbs that fell from the giant’s table.

      At last Marjolin nominally took service under Gavard, happy in having nothing to do except to listen to his master’s flow of talk, while Cadine still continued to sell violets, quite accustomed by this time to old Mother Chantemesse’s scoldings. They were still the same children as ever, giving way to their instincts and appetites without the slightest shame — they were the growth of the slimy pavements of the market district, where, even in fine weather, the mud remains black and sticky. However, as Cadine walked along the footways, mechanically twisting her bunches of violets, she was sometimes disturbed by disquieting reveries; and Marjolin, too, suffered from an uneasiness which he could not explain. He would occasionally leave the girl and miss some ramble or feast in order to go and gaze at Madame Quenu through the windows of her pork shop. She was so handsome and plump and round that it did him good to look at her. As he stood gazing at her, he felt full and satisfied, as though he had just eaten or drunk something extremely nice. And when he went off, a sort of hunger and thirst to see her again suddenly came upon him. This had been going on for a couple of months. At first he had looked at her with the respectful glance which he bestowed upon the shop-fronts of the grocers and provision dealers; but subsequently, when he and Cadine had taken to general pilfering, he began to regard her smooth cheeks much as he regarded the barrels of olives and boxes of dried apples.

      For some time past Marjolin had seen handsome Lisa every day, in the morning. She would pass Gavard’s stall, and stop for a moment or two to chat with the poultry dealer. She now did her marketing herself, so that she might be cheated as little as possible, she said. The truth, however, was that she wished to make Gavard speak out. In the pork shop he was always distrustful, but at his stall he chatted and talked with the utmost freedom. Now, Lisa had made up her mind to ascertain from him exactly what took place in the little room at Monsieur Lebigre’s; for she had no great confidence in her secret police office, Mademoiselle Saget. In a short time she learnt from the incorrigible chatterbox a lot of vague details which very much alarmed her. Two days after her explanation with Quenu she returned home from the market looking very pale. She beckoned to her husband to follow her into the dining-room, and having carefully closed the door she said to him: “Is your brother determined to send us to the scaffold, then? Why did you conceal from me what you knew?”

      Quenu declared that he knew nothing. He even swore a great oath that he had not returned to Monsieur Lebigre’s, and would never go there again.

      “You will do well not to do so,” replied Lisa, shrugging her shoulders, “unless you want to get yourself into a serious scrape. Florent is up to some evil trick, I’m certain of it! I have just learned quite sufficient to show me where he is going. He’s going back to Cayenne, do you hear?”

      Then, after a pause, she continued in calmer ones: “Oh, the unhappy man! He had everything here that he could wish for. He might have redeemed his character; he had nothing but good examples before him. But no, it is in his blood! He will come to a violent end with his politics! I insist upon there being an end to all this! You hear me, Quenu? I gave you due warning long ago!”

      She spoke the last words very incisively. Quenu bent his head, as if awaiting sentence.

      “To begin with,” continued Lisa, “he shall cease to take his meals here. It will be quite sufficient if we give him a bed. He is earning money; let him feed himself.”

      Quenu seemed on the point of protesting, but his wife silenced him by adding energetically:

      “Make your choice between him and me. If he remains here, I swear to you that I will go away, and take my daughter with me. Do you want me to tell you the whole truth about him? He is a man capable of anything; he has come here to bring discord into our household. But I will set things right, you may depend on it. You have your choice between him and me; you hear me?”

      Then, leaving her husband in silent consternation, she returned to the shop, where she served a customer with her usual affable smile. The fact was that, having artfully inveigled Gavard into a political discussion, the poultry dealer had told her that she would soon see how the land lay, that they were going to make a clean sweep of everything, and that two determined men like her brother-in-law and himself would suffice to set the fire blazing. This was the evil trick of which she had spoken to Quenu, some conspiracy to which Gavard was always making mysterious allusions with a sniggering grin from which he seemingly desired a great deal to be inferred. And in imagination Lisa already saw the gendarmes invading the pork shop, gagging herself, her husband, and Pauline, and casting them into some underground dungeon.

      In the evening, at dinner, she evinced an icy frigidity. She made no offers to serve Florent, but several times remarked: “It’s very strange what an amount of bread we’ve got through lately.”

      Florent at last understood. He felt that he was being treated like a poor relation who is gradually turned out of doors. For the last two months Lisa had dressed him in Quenu’s old trousers and coats; and, as he was as thin as his brother was fat, these ragged garments had a most extraordinary appearance upon him. She also turned her oldest linen over to him: pocket-handkerchiefs which had been darned a score of times, ragged towels, sheets which were only fit to be cut up into dusters and dishcloths, and wornout shirts, distended by Quenu’s corpulent figure, and so short that they would have served Florent as undervests. Moreover, he no longer found around him the same goodnatured kindliness as in the earlier days. The whole household seemed to shrug its shoulders after the example set by handsome Lisa. Auguste and Augustine turned their backs upon him, and little Pauline, with the cruel frankness of childhood, let fall some bitter remarks about the stains on his coat and the holes in his shirt. However, during the last days he suffered most at table. He scarcely dared to eat, as he saw the mother and daughter fix their gaze upon him whenever he cut himself a piece of bread. Quenu meantime peered into his plate, to avoid having to take any part in what went on.

      That which most tortured Florent was his inability to invent a reason for leaving the house. During a week he kept on revolving in his mind a sentence expressing his resolve to take his meals elsewhere, but could not bring

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