them into yellow cups; then with a
ladle she filled the cups with liquor. Around her were saleswomen neatly
dressed, market gardeners in blouses, porters with coats soiled by the
loads they had carried, poor ragged vagabonds--in fact, all the early
hungry ones of the markets, eating, and scalding their mouths, and
drawing back their chins to avoid soiling them with the drippings from
their spoons. The delighted artist blinked, and sought a point of view
so as to get a good ensemble of the picture. That cabbage soup, however,
exhaled a very strong odour. Florent, for his part, turned his head
away, distressed by the sight of the full cups which the customers
emptied in silence, glancing around them the while like suspicious
animals. As the woman began serving a fresh customer, Claude himself was
affected by the odorous steam of the soup, which was wafted full in his
face.

He again tightened his sash, half amused and half annoyed. Then resuming
his walk, and alluding to the punch paid for by Alexandre, he said to
Florent in a low voice:

"It's very odd, but have you ever noticed that although a man can always
find somebody to treat him to something to drink, he can never find a
soul who will stand him anything to eat?"

The dawn was now rising. The houses on the Boulevard de Sebastopol at
the end of the Rue de la Cossonnerie were still black; but above the
sharp line of their slate roofs a patch of pale blue sky, circumscribed
by the arch-pieces of the covered way, showed like a gleaming half-moon.
Claude, who had been bending over some grated openings on a level with
the ground, through which a glimpse could be obtained of deep cellars
where gas lights glimmered, now glanced up into the air between the
lofty pillars, as though scanning the dark roofs which fringed the clear
sky. Then he halted again, with his eyes fixed on one of the light iron
ladders which connect the superposed market roofs and give access from
one to the other. Florent asked him what he was seeking there.

"I'm looking for that scamp of a Marjolin," replied the artist. "He's
sure to be in some guttering up there, unless, indeed, he's been
spending the night in the poultry cellars. I want him to give me a
sitting."

Then he went on to relate how a market saleswoman had found his friend
Marjolin one morning in a pile of cabbages, and how Marjolin had grown
up in all liberty on the surrounding footways. When an attempt had been
made to send him t