asins, divided into separate
compartments by iron gratings. Slender streams of water flowed from
brass jets shaped like swan's necks; and the compartments were filled
with swarming colonies of crawfish, black-backed carp ever on the
move, and mazy tangles of eels, incessantly knotting and unknotting
themselves. Again was Monsieur Verlaque attacked by an obstinate fit
of coughing. The moisture of the atmosphere was more insipid here
than amongst the sea water fish: there was a riverside scent, as of
sun-warmed water slumbering on a bed of sand.

A great number of crawfishes had arrived from Germany that morning in
cases and hampers, and the market was also crowded with river fish from
Holland and England. Several men were unpacking shiny carp from the
Rhine, lustrous with ruddy metallic hues, their scales resembling
bronzed _cloisonne_ enamel; and others were busy with huge pike, the
cruel iron-grey brigands of the waters, who ravenously protruded their
savage jaws; or with magnificent dark-hued with verdigris. And amidst
these suggestions of copper, iron, and bronze, the gudgeon and perch,
the trout, the bleak, and the flat-fish taken in sweep-nets showed
brightly white, the steel-blue tints of their backs gradually toning
down to the soft transparency of their bellies. However, it was the
fat snowy-white barbel that supplied the liveliest brightness in this
gigantic collection of still life.

Bags of young carp were being gently emptied into the basins. The fish
spun round, then remained motionless for a moment, and at last shot away
and disappeared. Little eels were turned out of their hampers in a mass,
and fell to the bottom of the compartments like tangled knots of snakes;
while the larger ones--those whose bodies were about as thick as a
child's arm--raised their heads and slipped of their own accord into the
water with the supple motion of serpents gliding into the concealment
of a thicket. And meantime the other fish, whose death agony had
been lasting all the morning as they lay on the soiled osiers of the
basket-trays, slowly expired amidst all the uproar of the auctions,
opening their mouths as though to inhale the moisture of the air, with
great silent gasps, renewed every few seconds.

However, Monsieur Verlaque brought Florent back to the salt water fish.
He took him all over the place and gave him the minutest particulars
about everything. Round the nine salesmen's desks ranged along three
sides of the