f cleanliness, her
craving for fresh air, light, and healthy life. The shop where Uncle
Gradelle had accumulated his fortune, sou by sou, was a long, dark
place, one of those suspicious looking pork butchers' shops of the old
quarters of the city, where the well-worn flagstones retain a strong
odour of meat in spite of constant washings. Now the young woman longed
for one of those bright modern shops, ornamented like a drawing-room,
and fringing the footway of some broad street with windows of
crystalline transparence. She was not actuated by any petty ambition to
play the fine lady behind a stylish counter, but clearly realised that
commerce in its latest development needed elegant surroundings. Quenu
showed much alarm the first time his wife suggested that they ought to
move and spend some of their money in decorating a new shop. However,
Lisa only shrugged her shoulders and smiled at finding him so timorous.

One evening, when night was falling and the shop had grown dark, Quenu
and Lisa overheard a woman of the neighbourhood talking to a friend
outside their door.

"No, indeed! I've given up dealing with them," said she. "I wouldn't buy
a bit of black-pudding from them now on any account. They had a dead man
in their kitchen, you know."

Quenu wept with vexation. The story of Gradelle's death in the kitchen
was clearly getting about; and his nephew began to blush before his
customers when he saw them sniffing his wares too closely. So, of his
own accord, he spoke to his wife of her proposal to take a new shop.
Lisa, without saying anything, had already been looking out for other
premises, and had found some, admirably situated, only a few yards
away, in the Rue Rambuteau. The immediate neighbourhood of the central
markets, which were being opened just opposite, would triple their
business, and make their shop known all over Paris.

Quenu allowed himself to be drawn into a lavish expenditure of money; he
laid out over thirty thousand francs in marble, glass, and gilding.
Lisa spent hours with the workmen, giving her views about the slightest
details. When she was at last installed behind the counter, customers
arrived in a perfect procession, merely for the sake of examining the
shop. The inside walls were lined from top to bottom with white marble.
The ceiling was covered with a huge square mirror, framed by a broad
gilded cornice, richly ornamented, whilst from the centre hung a crystal
chandelier with four bra