Part 26 (1/2)
”Well, he's disposed of all his stocks and shares. He's sold everything, and keeps a great heap of gold in a cupboard.”
”A heap of gold!” exclaimed La Sarriette in ecstasy.
”Yes, a great heap of gold. It covers a whole shelf, and is quite dazzling. Madame Leonce told me that one morning Gavard opened the cupboard in her presence, and that the money quite blinded her, it shone so.”
There was another pause. The eyes of the three women were blinking as though the dazzling pile of gold was before them. Presently La Sarriette began to laugh.
”What a jolly time I would have with Jules if my uncle would give that money to me!” said she.
Madame Lecoeur, however, seemed quite overwhelmed by this revelation, crushed beneath the weight of the gold which she could not banish from her sight. Covetous envy thrilled her. But at last, raising her skinny arms and shrivelled hands, her finger-nails still stuffed with b.u.t.ter, she stammered in a voice full of bitter distress: ”Oh, I mustn't think of it! It's too dreadful!”
”Well, it would all be yours, you know, if anything were to happen to Monsieur Gavard,” retorted Mademoiselle Saget. ”If I were in your place, I would look after my interests. That revolver means nothing good, you may depend upon it. Monsieur Gavard has got into the hands of evil counsellors; and I'm afraid it will all end badly.”
Then the conversation again turned upon Florent. The three women a.s.sailed him more violently than ever. And afterwards, with perfect composure, they began to discuss what would be the result of all these dark goings-on so far as he and Gavard were concerned; certainly it would be no pleasant one if there was any gossiping. And thereupon they swore that they themselves would never repeat a word of what they knew; not, however, because that scoundrel Florent merited any consideration, but because it was necessary, at all costs, to save that worthy Monsieur Gavard from being compromised. Then they rose from their seats, and Mademoiselle Saget was burning as if to go away when the b.u.t.ter dealer asked her: ”All the same, in case of accident, do you think that Madame Leonce can be trusted? I dare say she has the key of the cupboard.”
”Well, that's more than I can tell you,” replied the old maid. ”I believe she's a very honest woman; but, after all, there's no telling.
There are circ.u.mstances, you know, which tempt the best of people.
Anyhow, I've warned you both; and you must do what you think proper.”
As the three women stood there, taking leave of each other, the odour of the cheeses seemed to become more pestilential than ever. It was a cacophony of smells, ranging from the heavily oppressive odour of the Dutch cheeses and the Gruyeres to the alkaline pungency of the Olivets.
From the Cantal, the Ches.h.i.+re, and the goats' milk cheeses there seemed to come a deep breath like the sound of a ba.s.soon, amidst which the sharp, sudden whiffs of the Neufchatels, the Troyes, and the Mont d'Ors contributed short, detached notes. And then the different odours appeared to mingle one with another, the reek of the Limbourgs, the Port Saluts, the Geromes, the Marolles, the Livarots, and the Pont l'Eveques uniting in one general, overpowering stench sufficient to provoke asphyxia. And yet it almost seemed as though it were not the cheeses but the vile words of Madame Lecoeur and Mademoiselle Saget that diffused this awful odour.
”I'm very much obliged to you, indeed I am,” said the b.u.t.ter dealer. ”If ever I get rich, you shall not find yourself forgotten.”
The old maid still lingered in the stall. Taking up a Bondon, she turned it round, and put it down on the slab again. Then she asked its price.
”To me!” she added, with a smile.
”Oh, nothing to you,” replied Madame Lecoeur. ”I'll make you a present of it.” And again she exclaimed: ”Ah, if I were only rich!”
Mademoiselle Saget thereupon told her that some day or other she would be rich. The Bondon had already disappeared within the old maid's bag.
And now the b.u.t.ter dealer returned to the cellar, while Mademoiselle Saget escorted La Sarriette back to her stall. On reaching it they talked for a moment or two about Monsieur Jules. The fruits around them diffused a fresh scent of summer.
”It smells much nicer here than at your aunt's,” said the old maid. ”I felt quite ill a little time ago. I can't think how she manages to exist there. But here it's very sweet and pleasant. It makes you look quite rosy, my dear.”
La Sarriette began to laugh, for she was fond of compliments. Then she served a lady with a pound of mirabelle plums, telling her that they were as sweet as sugar.
”I should like to buy some of those mirabelles too,” murmured Mademoiselle Saget, when the lady had gone away; ”only I want so few. A lone woman, you know.”
”Take a handful of them,” exclaimed the pretty brunette. ”That won't ruin me. Send Jules back to me if you see him, will you? You'll most likely find him smoking his cigar on the first bench to the right as you turn out of the covered way.”
Mademoiselle Saget distended her fingers as widely as possible in order to take a handful of mirabelles, which joined the Bondon in the bag.
Then she pretended to leave the market, but in reality made a detour by one of the covered ways, thinking, as she walked slowly along, that the mirabelles and Bondon would not make a very substantial dinner. When she was unable, during her afternoon perambulations, to wheedle stallkeepers into filling her bag for her, she was reduced to dining off the merest sc.r.a.ps. So she now slyly made her way back to the b.u.t.ter pavilions, where, on the side of the Rue Berger, at the back of the offices of the oyster salesmen, there were some stalls at which cooked meat was sold. Every morning little closed box-like carts, lined with zinc and furnished with ventilators, drew up in front of the larger Parisian kitchens and carried away the leavings of the restaurants, the emba.s.sies, and State Ministries. These leavings were conveyed to the market cellars and there sorted. By nine o'clock plates of food were displayed for sale at prices ranging from three to five sous, their contents comprising slices of meat, sc.r.a.ps of game, heads and tails of fishes, bits of galantine, stray vegetables, and, by way of dessert, cakes scarcely cut into, and other confectionery. Poor starving wretches, scantily-paid clerks, and women s.h.i.+vering with fever were to be seen crowding around, and the street lads occasionally amused themselves by hooting the pale-faced individuals, known to be misers, who only made their purchases after slyly glancing about them to see that they were not observed.[*] Mademoiselle Saget wriggled her way to a stall, the keeper of which boasted that the sc.r.a.ps she sold came exclusively from the Tuileries. One day, indeed, she had induced the old maid to buy a slice of leg of mutton by informing that it had come from the plate of the Emperor himself; and this slice of mutton, eaten with no little pride, had been a soothing consolation to Mademoiselle Saget's vanity. The wariness of her approach to the stall was, moreover, solely caused by her desire to keep well with the neighbouring shop people, whose premises she was eternally haunting without ever buying anything.
Her usual tactics were to quarrel with them as soon as she had managed to learn their histories, when she would bestow her patronage upon a fresh set, desert it in due course, and then gradually make friends again with those with whom she had quarrelled. In this way she made the complete circuit of the market neighbourhood, ferreting about in every shop and stall. Anyone would have imagined that she consumed an enormous amount of provisions, whereas, in point of fact, she lived solely upon presents and the few sc.r.a.ps which she was compelled to buy when people were not in the giving vein.
[*] The dealers in these sc.r.a.ps are called _bijoutiers_, or jewellers, whilst the sc.r.a.ps themselves are known as _harlequins_, the idea being that they are of all colours and shapes when mingled together, thus suggesting harlequin's variegated attire.--Translator.
On that particular evening there was only a tall old man standing in front of the stall. He was sniffing at a plate containing a mixture of meat and fish. Mademoiselle Saget, in her turn, began to sniff at a plate of cold fried fish. The price of it was three sous, but, by dint of bargaining, she got it for two. The cold fish then vanished into the bag. Other customers now arrived, and with a uniform impulse lowered their noses over the plates. The smell of the stall was very disgusting, suggestive alike of greasy dishes and a dirty sink.[*]
[*] Particulars of the strange and repulsive trade in harlequins, which even nowadays is not extinct, will be found in Privat d'Anglemont's well-known book _Paris Anecdote_, written at the very period with which M. Zola deals in the present work. My father, Henry Vizetelly, also gave some account of it in his _Glances Back through Seventy Years_, in a chapter describing the odd ways in which certain Parisians contrive to get a living.--Translator.