Behind him, on the footway of the Rue Rambuteau, fruit was being sold. Hampers and low baskets covered with canvas or straw stood there in long lines, a strong odour of over-ripe mirabelle plums was wafted hither and thither. At last a subdued and gentle voice, which he had heard for some time past, induced him to turn his head, and he saw a charming darksome little woman sitting on the ground and bargaining.
“Come now, Marcel,” said she, “you’ll take a hundred sous, won’t you?”
The man to whom she was speaking was closely wrapped in his cloak and made no reply; however, after a silence of five minutes or more, the young woman returned to the charge.
“Come now, Marcel; a hundred sous for that basket there, and four francs for the other one; that’ll make nine francs altogether.”
Then came another interval.
“Well, tell me what you will take.”
“Ten francs. You know that well enough already; I told you so before. But what have you done with your Jules this morning, La Sarriette?”
The young woman began to laugh as she took a handful of small change out of her pocket.
“Oh,” she replied, “Jules is still in bed. He says that men were not intended to work.”
She paid for the two baskets, and carried them into the fruit pavilion, which had just been opened. The market buildings still retained their gloom-wrapped aspect of airy fragility, streaked with the thousand lines of light that gleamed from the venetian shutters. People were beginning to pass along the broad covered streets intersecting the pavilions, but the more distant buildings still remained deserted amidst the increasing buzz of life on the footways. By Saint Eustache the bakers and wine sellers were taking down their shutters, and the ruddy shops, with their gas lights flaring, showed like gaps of fire in the gloom in which the grey house-fronts were yet steeped. Florent noticed a baker’s shop on the left-hand side of the Rue Montorgueil, replete and golden with its last baking, and fancied he could scent the pleasant smell of the hot bread. It was now half past four.
Madame Francois by this time had disposed of nearly all her stock. She had only a few bunches of carrots left when Lacaille once more made his appearance with his sack.
“Well,” said he, “will you take a sou now?”
“I knew I should see you again,” the good woman quietly answered. “You’d better take all I have left. There are seventeen bunches.”
“That makes seventeen sous.”
“No; thirty-four.”
At last they agreed to fix the price at twenty-five sous. Madame Francois was anxious to be off.
“He’d been keeping his eye upon me all the time,” she said to Florent, when Lacaille had gone off with the carrots in his sack. “That old rogue runs things down all over the markets, and he often waits till the last peal of the bell before spending four sous in purchase. Oh, these Paris folk! They’ll wrangle and argue for an hour to save half a sou, and then go off and empty their purses at the wine shop.”
Whenever Madame Francois talked of Paris she always spoke in a tone of disdain, and referred to the city as though it were some ridiculous, contemptible, faraway place, in which she only condescended to set foot at nighttime.
“There!” she continued, sitting down again, beside Florent, on some vegetables belonging to a neighbour, “I can get away now.”
Florent bent his head. He had just committed a theft. When Lacaille went off he had caught sight of a carrot lying on the ground, and having picked it up he was holding it tightly in his right hand. Behind him were some bundles of celery and bunches of parsley were diffusing pungent odours which painfully affected him.
“Well, I’m off now!” said Madame Francois.
However, she felt interested in this stranger, and could divine that he was suffering there on that footpavement, from which he had never stirred. She made him fresh offers of assistance, but he again refused them, with a still more bitter show of pride. He even got up and remained standing to prove that he was quite strong again. Then, as Madame Francois turned her head away, he put the carrot to his mouth. But he had to remove it for a moment, in spite of the terrible longing which he felt to dig his teeth into it; for Madame Francois turned round again and looking him full in the face, began to question him with her goodnatured womanly curiosity. Florent, to avoid speaking, merely answered by nods and shakes of the head. Then, slowly and gently, he began to eat the carrot.
The worthy woman was at last on the point of going off, when a powerful voice exclaimed close beside her, “Good morning, Madame Francois.”
The speaker was a slim young man, with big bones and a big head. His face was bearded, and he had a very delicate nose and narrow sparkling eyes. He wore on his head a rusty, battered, black felt hat, and was buttoned up in an immense overcoat, which had once been of a soft chestnut hue, but which rain had discoloured and streaked with long greenish stains. Somewhat bent, and quivering with a nervous restlessness which was doubtless habitual with him, he stood there in a pair of heavy laced shoes, and the shortness of his trousers allowed a glimpse of his coarse blue hose.
“Good morning, Monsieur Claude,” the market gardener replied cheerfully. “I expected you, you know, last Monday, and, as you didn’t come, I’ve taken care of your canvas for you. I’ve hung it up on a nail in my room.”
“You are really very kind, Madame Francois. I’ll go to finish that study of mine one of these days. I wasn’t able to go on Monday. Has your big plum tree still got all its leaves?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“I wanted to know, because I mean to put it in a corner of the picture. It will come in nicely by the side of the fowl house. I have been thinking about it all the week. What lovely vegetables are in the market this morning! I came down very early, expecting a fine sunrise effect upon all these heaps of cabbages.”
With a wave of the arm he indicated the footway.
“Well, well, I must be off now,” said Madame Francois. “Goodbye for the present. We shall meet again soon, I hope, Monsieur Claude.”
However, as she turned to go, she introduced Florent to the young artist.
“This gentleman, it seems, has just come from a distance,” said she. “He feels quite lost in your scampish Paris. I dare say you might be of service to him.”
Then she at last took her departure, feeling pleased at having left the two men together. Claude looked at Florent with a feeling of interest. That tall, slight, wavy figure seemed to him original. Madame Francois’s hasty presentation was in his eyes quite sufficient, and he addressed Florent with the easy familiarity of a lounger accustomed to all sorts of chance encounters.
“I’ll accompany you,” he said; “which way are you going?”
Florent felt ill at ease; he was not wont to unbosom himself so readily. However, ever since his arrival in Paris, a question had been trembling on his lips, and now he ventured to