“Hallo, the fat woman’s got up!” the beautiful Norman would exclaim.  “She ties herself up as tightly as her sausages!  Ah, she’s got Saturday’s collar on again, and she’s still wearing that poplin dress!”

At the same moment, on the opposite side of the street, beautiful Lisa was saying to her shop girl:  “Just look at that creature staring at us over yonder, Augustine!  She’s getting quite deformed by the life she leads.  Do you see her earrings?  She’s wearing those big drops of hers, isn’t she?  It makes one feel ashamed to see a girl like that with brilliants.”

All complaisance, Augustine echoed her mistress’s words.

When either of them was able to display a new ornament it was like scoring a victory—­the other one almost choked with spleen.  Every day they would scrutinise and count each other’s customers, and manifest the greatest annoyance if they thought that the “big thing over the way” was doing the better business.  Then they spied out what each had for lunch.  Each knew what the other ate, and even watched to see how she digested it.  In the afternoon, while the one sat amidst her cooked meats and the other amidst her fish, they posed and gave themselves airs, as though they were queens of beauty.  It was then that the victory of the day was decided.  The beautiful Norman embroidered, selecting the most delicate and difficult work, and this aroused Lisa’s exasperation.

“Ah!” she said, speaking of her rival, “she had far better mend her boy’s stockings.  He’s running about quite barefooted.  Just look at that fine lady, with her red hands stinking of fish!”

For her part, Lisa usually knitted.

“She’s still at that same sock,” La Normande would say, as she watched her.  “She eats so much that she goes to sleep over her work.  I pity her poor husband if he’s waiting for those socks to keep his feet warm!”

They would sit glowering at each other with this implacable hostility until evening, taking note of every customer, and displaying such keen eyesight that they detected the smallest details of each other’s dress and person when other women declared that they could see nothing at such a distance.  Mademoiselle Saget expressed the highest admiration for Madame Quenu’s wonderful sight when she one day detected a scratch on the fish-girl’s left cheek.  With eyes like those, said the old maid, one might even see through a door.  However, the victory often remained undecided when night fell; sometimes one or other of the rivals was temporarily crushed, but she took her revenge on the morrow.  Several people of the neighbourhood actually laid wagers on these contests, some backing the beautiful Lisa and others the beautiful Norman.

At last they ended by forbidding their children to speak to one another.  Pauline and Muche had formerly been good friends, notwithstanding the girl’s stiff petticoats and lady-like demeanour, and the lad’s tattered appearance, coarse language, and rough manners.  They had at times played together at horses on the broad footway in front of the fish market, Pauline always being the horse and Muche the driver.  One day, however, when the boy came in all simplicity to seek his playmate, Lisa turned him out of the house, declaring that he was a dirty little street arab.