only a few bunches of carrots left when Lacaille once more made his
appearance with his sack.

"Well," said he, "will you take a sou now?"

"I knew I should see you again," the good woman quietly answered. "You'd
better take all I have left. There are seventeen bunches."

"That makes seventeen sous."

"No; thirty-four."

At last they agreed to fix the price at twenty-five sous. Madame
Francois was anxious to be off.

"He'd been keeping his eye upon me all the time," she said to Florent,
when Lacaille had gone off with the carrots in his sack. "That old rogue
runs things down all over the markets, and he often waits till the last
peal of the bell before spending four sous in purchase. Oh, these Paris
folk! They'll wrangle and argue for an hour to save half a sou, and then
go off and empty their purses at the wine shop."

Whenever Madame Francois talked of Paris she always spoke in a tone of
disdain, and referred to the city as though it were some ridiculous,
contemptible, far-away place, in which she only condescended to set foot
at nighttime.

"There!" she continued, sitting down again, beside Florent, on some
vegetables belonging to a neighbour, "I can get away now."

Florent bent his head. He had just committed a theft. When Lacaille
went off he had caught sight of a carrot lying on the ground, and having
picked it up he was holding it tightly in his right hand. Behind him
were some bundles of celery and bunches of parsley were diffusing
pungent odours which painfully affected him.

"Well, I'm off now!" said Madame Francois.

However, she felt interested in this stranger, and could divine that
he was suffering there on that foot-pavement, from which he had never
stirred. She made him fresh offers of assistance, but he again refused
them, with a still more bitter show of pride. He even got up and
remained standing to prove that he was quite strong again. Then, as
Madame Francois turned her head away, he put the carrot to his mouth.
But he had to remove it for a moment, in spite of the terrible longing
which he felt to dig his teeth into it; for Madame Francois turned round
again and looking him full in the face, began to question him with
her good-natured womanly curiosity. Florent, to avoid speaking, merely
answered by nods and shakes of the head. Then, slowly and gently, he
began to eat the carrot.

The worthy woman was at last on the point of going off, when a powerful
voice exclaimed close beside he