n him, and
his whole being quivered with a sense of humiliation. Still, the young
scamps of the Rue de l'Estrapade had never manifested the savagery
of these fish-wives, the cruel tenacity of these huge females, whose
massive figures heaved and shook with a giant-like joy whenever he fell
into any trap. They stared him out of countenance with their red faces;
and in the coarse tones of their voices and the impudent gesture of
their hands he could read volumes of filthy abuse levelled at himself.
Gavard would have been quite in his element amidst all these petticoats,
and would have freely cuffed them all round; but Florent, who had
always been afraid of women, gradually felt overwhelmed as by a sort
of nightmare in which giant women, buxom beyond all imagination,
danced threateningly around him, shouting at him in hoarse voices and
brandishing bare arms, as massive as any prize-fighter's.

Amongst this hoard of females, however, Florent had one friend. Claire
unhesitatingly declared that the new inspector was a very good fellow.
When he passed in front of her, pursued by the coarse abuse of the
others, she gave him a pleasant smile, sitting nonchalantly behind her
stall, with unruly errant locks of pale hair straying over her neck and
her brow, and the bodice of her dress pinned all askew. He also often
saw her dipping her hands into her tanks, transferring the fish from
one compartment to another, and amusing herself by turning on the brass
taps, shaped like little dolphins with open mouths, from which the water
poured in streamlets. Amidst the rustling sound of the water she had
some of the quivering grace of a girl who has just been bathing and has
hurriedly slipped on her clothes.

One morning she was particularly amiable. She called the inspector to
her to show him a huge eel which had been the wonder of the market
when exhibited at the auction. She opened the grating, which she had
previously closed over the basin in whose depths the eel seemed to be
lying sound asleep.

"Wait a moment," she said, "and I'll show it to you."

Then she gently slipped her bare arm into the water; it was not a very
plump arm, and its veins showed softly blue beneath its satiny skin. As
soon as the eel felt her touch, it rapidly twisted round, and seemed to
fill the narrow trough with its glistening greenish coils. And directly
it had settled down to rest again Claire once more stirred it with her
fingertips.

"It is an enormous