ighted candle, standing near one basket, set amidst the
general blackness quite a melody of colour--the bright variegations
of marguerites, the blood-red crimson of dahlias, the bluey purple of
violets, and the warm flesh tints of roses. And nothing could have
been sweeter or more suggestive of springtide than this soft breath of
perfume encountered on the footway, on emerging from the sharp odours of
the fish market and the pestilential smell of the butter and the cheese.

Claude and Florent turned round and strolled about, loitering among the
flowers. They halted with some curiosity before several women who were
selling bunches of fern and bundles of vine-leaves, neatly tied up in
packets of five and twenty. Then they turned down another covered alley,
which was almost deserted, and where their footsteps echoed as though
they had been walking through a church. Here they found a little cart,
scarcely larger than a wheelbarrow, to which was harnessed a diminutive
donkey, who, no doubt, felt bored, for at sight of them he began braying
with such prolonged and sonorous force that the vast roofing of the
markets fairly trembled. Then the horses began to neigh in reply, there
was a sound of pawing and tramping, a distant uproar, which swelled,
rolled along, then died away.

Meantime, in the Rue Berger in front of them, Claude and Florent
perceived a number of bare, frontless, salesmen's shops, where, by the
light of flaring gas jets, they could distinguish piles of hampers and
fruit, enclosed by three dirty walls which were covered with addition
sums in pencil. And the two wanderers were still standing there,
contemplating this scene, when they noticed a well-dressed woman huddled
up in a cab which looked quite lost and forlorn in the block of carts as
it stealthily made its way onwards.

"There's Cinderella coming back without her slippers," remarked Claude
with a smile.

They began chatting together as they went back towards the markets.
Claude whistled as he strolled along with his hands in his pockets,
and expatiated on his love for this mountain of food which rises every
morning in the very centre of Paris. He prowled about the footways night
after night, dreaming of colossal still-life subjects, paintings of an
extraordinary character. He had even started on one, having his friend
Marjolin and that jade Cadine to pose for him; but it was hard work to
paint those confounded vegetables and fruit and fish and meat--th