Part 25 (1/2)
Jules, however, got up and called after her, in a thick voice: ”Not I; no fear! I'm off! I'm not going to wait an hour for you, as I did the other day. And, besides, those cursed plums of yours quite make my head ache.”
Then he calmly strolled off, with his hands in his pockets, and the stall was left to look after itself. Mademoiselle Saget went so fast that La Sarriette had to run. In the b.u.t.ter pavilion a neighbour of Madame Lecoeur's told them that she was below in the cellar; and so, whilst La Sarriette went down to find her, the old maid installed herself amidst the cheeses.
The cellar under the b.u.t.ter market is a very gloomy spot. The rows of storerooms are protected by a very fine wire mes.h.i.+ng, as a safeguard against fire; and the gas jets, which are very few and far between, glimmer like yellow splotches dest.i.tute of radiance in the heavy, malordorous atmosphere beneath the low vault. Madame Lecoeur, however, was at work on her b.u.t.ter at one of the tables placed parallel with the Rue Berger, and here a pale light filtered through the vent-holes. The tables, which are continually sluiced with a flood of water from the taps, are as white as though they were quite new. With her back turned to the pump in the rear, Madame Lecoeur was kneading her b.u.t.ter in a kind of oak box. She took some of different sorts which lay beside her, and mixed the varieties together, correcting one by another, just as is done in the blending of wines. Bent almost double, and showing sharp, bony shoulders, and arms bared to the elbows, as scraggy and knotted as pea-rods, she dug her fists into the greasy paste in front of her, which was a.s.suming a whitish and chalky appearance. It was trying work, and she heaved a sigh at each fresh effort.
”Mademoiselle Saget wants to speak to you, aunt,” said La Sarriette.
Madame Lecoeur stopped her work, and pulled her cap over her hair with her greasy fingers, seemingly quite careless of staining it. ”I've nearly finished. Ask her to wait a moment,” she said.
”She's got something very particular to tell you,” continued La Sarriette.
”I won't be more than a minute, my dear.”
Then she again plunged her arms into the b.u.t.ter, which buried them up to the elbows. Previously softened in warm water, it covered Madame Lecoeur's parchment-like skin as with an oily film, and threw the big purple veins that streaked her flesh into strong relief. La Sarriette was quite disgusted by the sight of those hideous arms working so frantically amidst the melting ma.s.s. However, she could recall the time when her own pretty little hands had manipulated the b.u.t.ter for whole afternoons at a time. It had even been a sort of almond-paste to her, a cosmetic which had kept her skin white and her nails delicately pink; and even now her slender fingers retained the suppleness it had endowed them with.
”I don't think that b.u.t.ter of yours will be very good, aunt,” she continued, after a pause. ”Some of the sorts seem much too strong.”
”I'm quite aware of that,” replied Madame Lecoeur, between a couple of groans. ”But what can I do? I must use everything up. There are some folks who insist upon having b.u.t.ter cheap, and so cheap b.u.t.ter must be made for them. Oh! it's always quite good enough for those who buy it.”
La Sarriette reflected that she would hardly care to eat b.u.t.ter which had been worked by her aunt's arms. Then she glanced at a little jar full of a sort of reddish dye. ”Your colouring is too pale,” she said.
This colouring-matter--”raucourt,” as the Parisians call it is used to give the b.u.t.ter a fine yellow tint. The b.u.t.ter women imagine that its composition is known only to themselves, and keep it very secret.
However, it is merely made from anotta;[*] though a composition of carrots and marigold is at times subst.i.tuted for it.
[*] Anotta, which is obtained from the pulp surrounding the seeds of the _Bixa Orellana_, is used for a good many purposes besides the colouring of b.u.t.ter and cheese. It frequently enters into the composition of chocolate, and is employed to dye nankeen. Police court proceedings have also shown that it is well known to the London milkmen, who are in the habit of adding water to their merchandise.
--Translator.
”Come, do be quick!” La Sarriette now exclaimed, for she was getting impatient, and was, moreover, no longer accustomed to the malodorous atmosphere of the cellar. ”Mademoiselle Saget will be going. I fancy she's got something very important to tell you abut my uncle Gavard.”
On hearing this, Madame Lecoeur abruptly ceased working. She at once abandoned both b.u.t.ter and dye, and did not even wait to wipe her arms.
With a slight tap of her hand she settled her cap on her head again, and made her way up the steps, at her niece's heels, anxiously repeating: ”Do you really think that she'll have gone away?”
She was rea.s.sured, however, on catching sight of Mademoiselle Saget amidst the cheeses. The old maid had taken good care not to go away before Madame Lecoeur's arrival. The three women seated themselves at the far end of the stall, crowding closely together, and their faces almost touching one another. Mademoiselle Saget remained silent for two long minutes, and then, seeing that the others were burning with curiosity, she began, in her shrill voice: ”You know that Florent! Well, I can tell you now where he comes from.”
For another moment she kept them in suspense; and then, in a deep, melodramatic voice, she said: ”He comes from the galleys!”
The cheeses were reeking around the three women. On the two shelves at the far end of the stall were huge ma.s.ses of b.u.t.ter: Brittany b.u.t.ters overflowing from baskets; Normandy b.u.t.ters, wrapped in canvas, and resembling models of stomachs over which some sculptor had thrown damp cloths to keep them from drying; while other great blocks had been cut into, fas.h.i.+oned into perpendicular rocky ma.s.ses full of creva.s.ses and valleys, and resembling fallen mountain crests gilded by the pale sun of an autumn evening.
Beneath the stall show-table, formed of a slab of red marble veined with grey, baskets of eggs gleamed with a chalky whiteness; while on layers of straw in boxes were Bondons, placed end to end, and Gournays, arranged like medals, forming darker patches tinted with green. But it was upon the table that the cheeses appeared in greatest profusion.
Here, by the side of the pound-rolls of b.u.t.ter lying on white-beet leaves, spread a gigantic Cantal cheese, cloven here and there as by an axe; then came a golden-hued Ches.h.i.+re, and next a Gruyere, resembling a wheel fallen from some barbarian chariot; whilst farther on were some Dutch cheeses, suggesting decapitated heads suffused with dry blood, and having all that hardness of skulls which in France has gained them the name of ”death's heads.” Amidst the heavy exhalations of these, a Parmesan set a spicy aroma. Then there came three Brie cheeses displayed on round platters, and looking like melancholy extinct moons. Two of them, very dry, were at the full; the third, in its second quarter, was melting away in a white cream, which had spread into a pool and flowed over the little wooden barriers with which an attempt had been made to arrest its course. Next came some Port Saluts, similar to antique discs, with exergues bearing their makers' names in print. A Romantour, in its tin-foil wrapper, suggested a bar of nougat or some sweet cheese astray amidst all these pungent, fermenting curds. The Roqueforts under their gla.s.s covers also had a princely air, their fat faces marbled with blue and yellow, as though they were suffering from some unpleasant malady such as attacks the wealthy gluttons who eat too many truffles. And on a dish by the side of these, the hard grey goats' milk cheeses, about the size of a child's fist, resembled the pebbles which the billy-goats send rolling down the stony paths as they clamber along ahead of their flocks. Next came the strong smelling cheeses: the Mont d'Ors, of a bright yellow hue, and exhaling a comparatively mild odour; the Troyes, very thick, and bruised at the edges, and of a far more pungent smell, recalling the dampness of a cellar; the Camemberts, suggestive of high game; the square Neufchatels, Limbourgs, Marolles, and Pont l'Eveques, each adding its own particular sharp scent to the malodorous bouquet, till it became perfectly pestilential; the Livarots, ruddy in hue, and as irritating to the throat as sulphur fumes; and, lastly, stronger than all the others, the Olivets, wrapped in walnut leaves, like the carrion which peasants cover with branches as it lies rotting in the hedgerow under the blazing sun.
The heat of the afternoon had softened the cheeses; the patches of mould on their crusts were melting, and glistening with tints of ruddy bronze and verdigris. Beneath their cover of leaves, the skins of the Olivets seemed to be heaving as with the slow, deep respiration of a sleeping man. A Livarot was swarming with life; and in a fragile box behind the scales a Gerome flavoured with aniseed diffused such a pestilential smell that all around it the very flies had fallen lifeless on the gray-veined slap of ruddy marble.
This Gerome was almost immediately under Mademoiselle Saget's nose; so she drew back, and leaned her head against the big sheets of white and yellow paper which were hanging in a corner.
”Yes,” she repeated, with an expression of disgust, ”he comes from the galleys! Ah, those Quenu-Gradelles have no reason to put on so many airs!”
Madame Lecoeur and La Sarriette, however, had burst into exclamations of astonishment: ”It wasn't possible, surely! What had he done to be sent to the galleys? Could anyone, now, have ever suspected that Madame Quenu, whose virtue was the pride of the whole neighbourhood, would choose a convict for a lover?”
”Ah, but you don't understand at all!” cried the old maid impatiently.