ss all along the Rue du Pont Neuf, the vehicles
being drawn up close to the edge of the footways, while their teams
stood motionless in close order as at a horse fair. Florent felt
interested in one enormous tumbrel which was piled up with magnificent
cabbages, and had only been backed to the kerb with the greatest
difficulty. Its load towered above the lofty gas lamp whose bright light
fell full upon the broad leaves which looked like pieces of dark green
velvet, scalloped and goffered. A young peasant girl, some sixteen years
old, in a blue linen jacket and cap, had climbed on to the tumbrel,
where, buried in the cabbages to her shoulders, she took them one by one
and threw them to somebody concealed in the shade below. Every now and
then the girl would slip and vanish, overwhelmed by an avalanche of
the vegetables, but her rosy nose soon reappeared amidst the teeming
greenery, and she broke into a laugh while the cabbages again flew down
between Florent and the gas lamp. He counted them mechanically as they
fell. When the cart was emptied he felt worried.

The piles of vegetables on the pavement now extended to the verge of the
roadway. Between the heaps, the market gardeners left narrow paths to
enable people to pass along. The whole of the wide footway was covered
from end to end with dark mounds. As yet, in the sudden dancing gleams
of light from the lanterns, you only just espied the luxuriant fulness
of the bundles of artichokes, the delicate green of the lettuces, the
rosy coral of the carrots, and dull ivory of the turnips. And these
gleams of rich colour flitted along the heaps, according as the lanterns
came and went. The footway was now becoming populated: a crowd of people
had awakened, and was moving hither and thither amidst the vegetables,
stopping at times, and chattering and shouting. In the distance a loud
voice could be heard crying, "Endive! who's got endive?" The gates of
the pavilion devoted to the sale of ordinary vegetables had just been
opened; and the retail dealers who had stalls there, with white caps on
their heads, fichus knotted over their black jackets, and skirts pinned
up to keep them from getting soiled, now began to secure their stock for
the day, depositing their purchases in some huge porters' baskets placed
upon the ground. Between the roadway and the pavilion these baskets were
to be seen coming and going on all sides, knocking against the
crowded heads of the bystanders, who res