The Fat and the Thin | Page 9

"It would be very kind of you," said she, "if you would look after my
goods while I put the horse and cart up. I'm only going a couple of

yards, to the Golden Compasses, in the Rue Montorgueil."
Florent told her that she might make herself easy. He preferred to
remain still, for his hunger had revived since he had begun to move
about. He sat down and leaned against a heap of cabbages beside
Madame Francois's stock. He was all right there, he told himself, and
would not go further afield, but wait. His head felt empty, and he had
no very clear notion as to where he was. At the beginning of September
it is quite dark in the early morning. Around him lighted lanterns were
flitting or standing stationary in the depths of the gloom. He was sitting
on one side of a broad street which he did not recognise; it stretched far
away into the blackness of the night. He could make out nothing
plainly, excepting the stock of which he had been left in charge. All
around him along the market footways rose similar piles of goods. The
middle of the roadway was blocked by huge grey tumbrels, and from
one end of the street to the other a sound of heavy breathing passed,
betokening the presence of horses which the eye could not distinguish.
Shouts and calls, the noise of falling wood, or of iron chains slipping to
the ground, the heavy thud of loads of vegetables discharged from the
waggons, and the grating of wheels as the carts were backed against the
footways, filled the yet sonorous awakening, whose near approach
could be felt and heard in the throbbing gloom. Glancing over the pile
of cabbages behind him. Florent caught sight of a man wrapped like a
parcel in his cloak, and snoring away with his head upon some baskets
of plums. Nearer to him, on his left, he could distinguish a lad, some
ten years old, slumbering between two heaps of endive, with an angelic
smile on his face. And as yet there seemed to be nothing on that
pavement that was really awake except the lanterns waving from
invisible arms, and flitting and skipping over the sleep of the vegetables
and human beings spread out there in heaps pending the dawn.
However, what surprised Florent was the sight of some huge pavilions
on either side of the street, pavilions with lofty roofs that seemed to
expand and soar out of sight amidst a swarm of gleams. In his
weakened state of mind he fancied he beheld a series of enormous,
symmetrically built palaces, light and airy as crystal, whose fronts
sparkled with countless streaks of light filtering through endless

Venetian shutters. Gleaming between the slender pillar shafts these
narrow golden bars seemed like ladders of light mounting to the
gloomy line of the lower roofs, and then soaring aloft till they reached
the jumble of higher ones, thus describing the open framework of
immense square halls, where in the yellow flare of the gas lights a
multitude of vague, grey, slumbering things was gathered together.
At last Florent turned his head to look about him, distressed at not
knowing where he was, and filled with vague uneasiness by the sight of
that huge and seemingly fragile vision. And now, as he raised his eyes,
he caught sight of the luminous dial and the grey massive pile of Saint
Eustache's Church. At this he was much astonished. He was close to
Saint Eustache, yet all was novel to him.
However, Madame Francois had come back again, and was engaged in
a heated discussion with a man who carried a sack over his shoulder
and offered to buy her carrots for a sou a bunch.
"Really, now, you are unreasonable, Lacaille!" said she. "You know
quite well that you will sell them again to the Parisians at four and five
sous the bunch. Don't tell me that you won't! You may have them for
two sous the bunch, if you like."
Then, as the man went off, she continued: "Upon my word, I believe
some people think that things grow of their own accord! Let him go
and find carrots at a sou the bunch elsewhere, tipsy scoundrel that he is!
He'll come back again presently, you'll see."
These last remarks were addressed to Florent. And, seating herself by
his side, Madame Francois resumed: "If you've been a long time away
from Paris, you perhaps don't know the new markets. They haven't
been built for more than five years at the most. That pavilion you see
there beside us is the flower and fruit market. The fish and poultry
markets are farther away, and over there behind us come the vegetables
and the butter