doubtless, right. She looked so healthy, so serene, that it was
impossible to imagine that she desired anything but what was proper. It
was he, with his fleshless body and dark, equivocal-looking countenance,
who must be in the wrong, and indulging in unrighteous dreams. He could,
indeed, no longer understand why he had hitherto resisted.

Lisa, however, continued to talk to him with an abundant flow of words,
as though he were a little boy found in fault and threatened with the
police. She assumed, indeed, a most maternal manner, and plied him with
the most convincing reasons. And at last, as a final argument, she said:

"Do it for us, Florent. We occupy a fair position in the neighbourhood
which obliges us to use a certain amount of circumspection; and, to tell
you the truth, between ourselves, I'm afraid that people will begin
to talk. This inspectorship will set everything right; you will be
somebody; you will even be an honour to us."

Her manner had become caressingly persuasive, and Florent was penetrated
by all the surrounding plenteousness, all the aroma filling the kitchen,
where he fed, as it were, on the nourishment floating in the atmosphere.
He sank into blissful meanness, born of all the copious feeding that
went on in the sphere of plenty in which he had been living during the
last fortnight. He felt, as it were, the titillation of forming fat
which spread slowly all over his body. He experienced the languid
beatitude of shopkeepers, whose chief concern is to fill their bellies.
At this late hour of night, in the warm atmosphere of the kitchen, all
his acerbity and determination melted away. That peaceable evening,
with the odour of the black-pudding and the lard, and the sight of plump
little Pauline slumbering on his knee, had so enervated him that he
found himself wishing for a succession of such evenings--endless ones
which would make him fat.

However, it was the sight of Mouton that chiefly decided him. Mouton was
sound asleep, with his stomach turned upwards, one of his paws resting
on his nose, and his tail twisted over this side, as though to keep him
warm; and he was slumbering with such an expression of feline happiness
that Florent, as he gazed at him, murmured: "No, it would be too
foolish! I accept the berth. Say that I accept it, Gavard."

Then Lisa finished eating her black-pudding, and wiped her fingers on
the edge of her apron. And next she got her brother-in-law's candle
ready for