f her younger days, but still wore
the flowered gown, the yellow kerchief, and turban-like head-gear of
the classic fish-wife, besides retaining the latter's loud voice and
rapidity of gesture as she stood with her hands on her hips, shouting
out the whole abusive vocabulary of her calling.

She looked back regretfully to the old Marche des Innocents, which the
new central markets had supplanted. She would talk of the ancient rights
of the market "ladies," and mingle stories of fisticuffs exchanged with
the police with reminiscences of the visits she had paid the Court in
the time of Charles X and Louis Philippe, dressed in silk, and carrying
a bouquet of flowers in her hand. Old Mother Mehudin, as she was now
generally called, had for a long time been the banner-bearer of the
Sisterhood of the Virgin at St. Leu. She would relate that in the
processions in the church there she had worn a dress and cap of tulle
trimmed with satin ribbons, whilst holding aloft in her puffy fingers
the gilded staff of the richly-fringed silk standard on which the figure
of the Holy Mother was embroidered.

According to the gossip of the neighbourhood, the old woman had made a
fairly substantial fortune, though the only signs of it were the massive
gold ornaments with which she loaded her neck and arms and bosom on
important occasions. Her two daughters got on badly together as they
grew up. The younger one, Claire, an idle, fair-complexioned girl,
complained of the ill-treatment which she received from her sister
Louise, protesting, in her languid voice, that she could never submit to
be the other's servant. As they would certainly have ended by coming
to blows, their mother separated them. She gave her stall in the fish
market to Louise, while Claire, whom the smell of the skate and the
herrings affected in the lungs, installed herself among the fresh water
fish. And from that time the old mother, although she pretended to
have retired from business altogether, would flit from one stall to the
other, still interfering in the selling of the fish, and causing her
daughters continual annoyance by the foul insolence with which she would
at times speak to customers.

Claire was a fantastical creature, very gentle in her manner, and yet
continually at loggerheads with others. People said that she invariably
followed her own whimsical inclinations. In spite of her dreamy, girlish
face she was imbued with a nature of silent firmness, a spirit o