Then, as though he were in a sort of ecstasy, he continued in lingering notes, as he gazed at Lisa, “Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!” This quite touched Madame Quenu.  She had prevailed upon Gavard to keep him in his service.  It was on the occasions when he so humbly vented his admiration that she caressed his chin, and told him that he was a good lad.  He smiled with childish satisfaction, at times closing his eyes like some domestic pet fondled by its mistress; and Lisa thought to herself that she was making him some compensation for the blow with which she had felled him in the cellar of the poultry market.

However, the Quenus’ establishment still remained under a cloud.  Florent sometimes ventured to show himself, and shook hands with his brother, while Lisa observed a frigid silence.  He even dined with them sometimes on Sundays, at long intervals, and Quenu then made great efforts at gaiety, but could not succeed in imparting any cheerfulness to the meal.  He ate badly, and ended by feeling altogether put out.  One evening, after one of these icy family gatherings, he said to his wife with tears in his eyes: 

“What can be the matter with me?  Is it true that I’m not ill?  Don’t you really see anything wrong in my appearance?  I feel just as though I’d got a heavy weight somewhere inside me.  And I’m so sad and depressed, too, without in the least knowing why.  What can it be, do you think?”

“Oh, a little attack of indigestion, I dare say,” replied Lisa.

“No, no; it’s been going on too long for that; I feel quite crushed down.  Yet the business is going on all right; I’ve no great worries, and I am leading just the same steady life as ever.  But you, too, my dear, don’t look well; you seem melancholy.  If there isn’t a change for the better soon, I shall send for the doctor.”

Lisa looked at him with a grave expression.

“There’s no need of a doctor,” she said, “things will soon be all right again.  There’s something unhealthy in the atmosphere just now.  All the neighbourhood is unwell.”  Then, as if yielding to an impulse of anxious affection, she added:  “Don’t worry yourself, my dear.  I can’t have you falling ill; that would be the crowning blow.”

As a rule she sent him back to the kitchen, knowing that the noise of the choppers, the tuneful simmering of the fat, and the bubbling of the pans had a cheering effect upon him.  In this way, too, she kept him at a distance from the indiscreet chatter of Mademoiselle Saget, who now spent whole mornings in the shop.  The old maid seemed bent on arousing Lisa’s alarm, and thus driving her to some extreme step.  She began by trying to obtain her confidence.

“What a lot of mischievous folks there are about!” she exclaimed; “folks who would be much better employed in minding their own business.  If you only knew, my dear Madame Quenu—­but no, really, I should never dare to repeat such things to you.”