“One can’t tell what may happen with children who have been so shockingly brought up,” she observed.

“Yes, indeed; you are quite right,” replied Mademoiselle Saget, who happened to be present.

When Muche, who was barely seven years old, came in tears to his mother to tell her of what had happened, La Normande broke out into a terrible passion.  At the first moment she felt a strong inclination to rush over to the Quenu-Gradelles’ and smash everything in their shop.  But eventually she contented herself with giving Muche a whipping.

“If ever I catch you going there again,” she cried, boiling over with anger, “you’ll get it hot from me, I can tell you!”

Florent, however, was the real victim of the two women.  It was he, in truth, who had set them by the ears, and it was on his account that they were fighting each other.  Ever since he had appeared upon the scene things had been going from bad to worse.  He compromised and disturbed and embittered all these people, who had previously lived in such sleek peace and harmony.  The beautiful Norman felt inclined to claw him when he lingered too long with the Quenus, and it was chiefly from an impulse of hostile rivalry that she desired to win him to herself.  The beautiful Lisa, on her side, maintained a cold judicial bearing, and although extremely annoyed, forced herself to silence whenever she saw Florent leaving the pork shop to go to the Rue Pirouette.

Still, there was now much less cordiality than formerly round the Quenus’ dinner-table in the evening.  The clean, prim dining-room seemed to have assumed an aspect of chilling severity.  Florent divined a reproach, a sort of condemnation in the bright oak, the polished lamp, and the new matting.  He scarcely dared to eat for fear of letting crumbs fall on the floor or soiling his plate.  There was a guileless simplicity about him which prevented him from seeing how the land really lay.  He still praised Lisa’s affectionate kindliness on all sides; and outwardly, indeed, she did continue to treat him with all gentleness.

“It is very strange,” she said to him one day with a smile, as though she were joking; “although you don’t eat at all badly now, you don’t get fatter.  Your food doesn’t seem to do you any good.”

At this Quenu laughed aloud, and tapping his brother’s stomach, protested that the whole contents of the pork shop might pass through it without depositing a layer of fat as thick as a two-sou piece.  However, Lisa’s insistence on this particular subject was instinct with that same suspicious dislike for fleshless men which Madame Mehudin manifested more outspokenly; and behind it all there was likewise a veiled allusion to the disorderly life which she imagined Florent was leading.  She never, however, spoke a word to him about La Normande.  Quenu had attempted a joke on the subject one evening, but Lisa had received it so icily that the good man had not ventured to