ick and
grumbling loudly:

"Come, come, now, make haste! You must get on faster than that! Bring
the waggon a little more forward. How many yards' standing have you?
Four, isn't it?"

Then he gave a ticket to Madame Francois, who took some coppers out of a
little canvas bag and handed them to him; whereupon he went off to vent
his impatience and tap the ground with his stick a little further away.
Madame Francois took hold of Balthazar's bridle and backed him so as to
bring the wheels of the waggon close to the footway. Then, having marked
out her four yards with some wisps of straw, after removing the back of
the cart, she asked Florent to hand her the vegetables bunch by bunch.
She arranged them sort by sort on her standing, setting them out
artistically, the "tops" forming a band of greenery around each pile;
and it was with remarkable rapidity that she completed her show, which,
in the gloom of early morning, looked like some piece of symmetrically
coloured tapestry. When Florent had handed her a huge bunch of parsley,
which he had found at the bottom of the cart, she asked him for still
another service.

"It would be very kind of you," said she, "if you would look after my
goods while I put the horse and cart up. I'm only going a couple of
yards, to the Golden Compasses, in the Rue Montorgueil."

Florent told her that she might make herself easy. He preferred to
remain still, for his hunger had revived since he had begun to move
about. He sat down and leaned against a heap of cabbages beside Madame
Francois's stock. He was all right there, he told himself, and would
not go further afield, but wait. His head felt empty, and he had no very
clear notion as to where he was. At the beginning of September it
is quite dark in the early morning. Around him lighted lanterns were
flitting or standing stationary in the depths of the gloom. He was
sitting on one side of a broad street which he did not recognise; it
stretched far away into the blackness of the night. He could make
out nothing plainly, excepting the stock of which he had been left in
charge. All around him along the market footways rose similar piles of
goods. The middle of the roadway was blocked by huge grey tumbrels,
and from one end of the street to the other a sound of heavy breathing
passed, betokening the presence of horses which the eye could not
distinguish.

Shouts and calls, the noise of falling wood, or of iron chains slipping
to the ground, t