These last remarks were addressed to Florent.  And, seating herself by his side, Madame Francois resumed:  “If you’ve been a long time away from Paris, you perhaps don’t know the new markets.  They haven’t been built for more than five years at the most.  That pavilion you see there beside us is the flower and fruit market.  The fish and poultry markets are farther away, and over there behind us come the vegetables and the butter and cheese.  There are six pavilions on this side, and on the other side, across the road, there are four more, with the meat and the tripe stalls.  It’s an enormous place, but it’s horribly cold in the winter.  They talk about pulling down the houses near the corn market to make room for two more pavilions.  But perhaps you know all this?”

“No, indeed,” replied Florent; “I’ve been abroad.  And what’s the name of that big street in front of us?”

“Oh, that’s a new street.  It’s called the Rue du Pont Neuf.  It leads from the Seine through here to the Rue Montmartre and the Rue Montorgueil.  You would soon have recognized where you were if it had been daylight.”

Madame Francois paused and rose, for she saw a woman heading down to examine her turnips.  “Ah, is that you, Mother Chantemesse?” she said in a friendly way.

Florent meanwhile glanced towards the Rue Montorgueil.  It was there that a body of police officers had arrested him on the night of December 4.[*] He had been walking along the Boulevard Montmartre at about two o’clock, quietly making his way through the crowd, and smiling at the number of soldiers that the Elysee had sent into the streets to awe the people, when the military suddenly began making a clean sweep of the thoroughfare, shooting folks down at close range during a quarter of an hour.  Jostled and knocked to the ground, Florent fell at the corner of the Rue Vivienne and knew nothing further of what happened, for the panic-stricken crowd, in their wild terror of being shot, trampled over his body.  Presently, hearing everything quiet, he made an attempt to rise; but across him there lay a young woman in a pink bonnet, whose shawl had slipped aside, allowing her chemisette, pleated in little tucks, to be seen.  Two bullets had pierced the upper part of her bosom; and when Florent gently removed the poor creature to free his legs, two streamlets of blood oozed from her wounds on to his hands.  Then he sprang up with a sudden bound, and rushed madly away, hatless and with his hands still wet with blood.  Until evening he wandered about the streets, with his head swimming, ever seeing the young woman lying across his legs with her pale face, her blue staring eyes, her distorted lips, and her expression of astonishment at thus meeting death so suddenly.  He was a shy, timid fellow.  Albeit thirty years old he had never dared to stare women in the face; and now, for the rest of his life, he was to have that one fixed in his heart and memory.  He felt as though he had lost some loved one of his own.