bedroom, where Augustine had left scraps of ribbons, souvenirs, and other feminine trifles lying about.  There still remained some hair-pins on the mantelpiece, with gilt cardboard boxes of buttons and lozenges, cutout pictures, and empty pomade pots that retained an odour of jasmine.  Then there were some reels of thread, needles, and a missal lying by the side of a soiled Dream-book in the drawer of the rickety deal table.  A white summer dress with yellow spots hung forgotten from a nail; while upon the board which served as a toilet-table a big stain behind the water-jug showed where a bottle of bandoline had been overturned.  The little chamber, with its narrow iron bed, its two rush-bottomed chairs, and its faded grey wallpaper, was instinct with innocent simplicity.  The plain white curtains, the childishness suggested by the cardboard boxes and the Dream-book, and the clumsy coquetry which had stained the walls, all charmed Florent and brought him back to dreams of youth.  He would have preferred not to have known that plain, wiry-haired Augustine, but to have been able to imagine that he was occupying the room of a sister, some bright sweet girl of whose budding womanhood every trifle around him spoke.

Yet another pleasure which he took was to lean out of the garret window at nighttime.  In front of it was a narrow ledge of roof, enclosed by an iron railing, and forming a sort of balcony, on which Augustine had grown a pomegranate in a box.  Since the nights had turned cold, Florent had brought the pomegranate indoors and kept it by the foot of his bed till morning.  He would linger for a few minutes by the open window, inhaling deep draughts of the sharp fresh air which was wafted up from the Seine, over the housetops of the Rue de Rivoli.  Below him the roofs of the markets spread confusedly in a grey expanse, like slumbering lakes on whose surface the furtive reflection of a pane of glass gleamed every now and then like a silvery ripple.  Farther away the roofs of the meat and poultry pavilions lay in deeper gloom, and became mere masses of shadow barring the horizon.  Florent delighted in the great stretch of open sky in front of him, in that spreading expanse of the markets which amidst all the narrow city streets brought him a dim vision of some strip of sea coast, of the still grey waters of a bay scarce quivering from the roll of the distant billows.  He used to lose himself in dreams as he stood there; each night he conjured up the vision of some fresh coast line.  To return in mind to the eight years of despair which he had spent away from France rendered him both very sad and very happy.  Then at last, shivering all over, he would close the window.  Often, as he stood in front of the fireplace taking off his collar, the photograph of Auguste and Augustine would fill him with disquietude.  They seemed to be watching him as they stood there, hand in hand, smiling faintly.

Florent’s first few weeks at the fish market were very painful to him.  The Mehudins treated him with open hostility, which infected the whole market with a spirit of opposition.  The beautiful Norman intended to revenge herself on the handsome Lisa, and the latter’s cousin seemed a victim ready to hand.