He had suffered too much
through them not to make them the dearest occupation of his life. Under
other conditions he might have become a good provincial schoolmaster,
happy in the peaceful life of some little town. But he had been treated
as though he were a wolf, and felt as though he had been marked out
by exile for some great combative task. His nervous discomfort was the
outcome of his long reveries at Cayenne, the brooding bitterness he had
felt at his unmerited sufferings, and the vows he had secretly sworn to
avenge humanity and justice--the former scourged with a whip, and the
latter trodden under foot. Those colossal markets and their teeming
odoriferous masses of food had hastened the crisis. To Florent they
appeared symbolical of some glutted, digesting beast, of Paris,
wallowing in its fat and silently upholding the Empire. He seemed to be
encircled by swelling forms and sleek, fat faces, which ever and
ever protested against his own martyrlike scragginess and sallow,
discontented visage. To him the markets were like the stomach of the
shopkeeping classes, the stomach of all the folks of average rectitude
puffing itself out, rejoicing, glistening in the sunshine, and declaring
that everything was for the best, since peaceable people had never
before grown so beautifully fat. As these thoughts passed through his
mind Florent clenched his fists, and felt ready for a struggle, more
irritated now by the thought of his exile than he had been when he first
returned to France. Hatred resumed entire possession of him. He often
let his pen drop and became absorbed in dreams. The dying fire cast a
bright glow upon his face; the lamp burned smokily, and the chaffinch
fell asleep again on one leg, with its head tucked under its wing.

Sometimes Auguste, on coming upstairs at eleven o'clock and seeing the
light shining under the door, would knock, before going to bed. Florent
admitted him with some impatience. The assistant sat down in front of
the fire, speaking but little, and never saying why he had come. His
eyes would all the time remain fixed upon the photograph of himself and
Augustine in their Sunday finery. Florent came to the conclusion that
the young man took a pleasure in visiting the room for the simple reason
that it had been occupied by his sweetheart; and one evening he asked
him with a smile if he had guessed rightly.

"Well, perhaps it is so," replied Auguste, very much surprised at the
discovery which