“Madame Taboureau said that?” murmured Lisa thoughtfully.

“Yes, indeed she did; and Madame Taboureau is a woman whose advice is worth listening to.  Try to find out the meaning of all those red bands; and if you do, you’ll tell me, won’t you?”

Lisa, however, was no longer listening to her.  She was gazing abstractedly at the edible snails and Gervais cheeses between the festoons of sausages in the window.  She seemed absorbed in a mental conflict, which brought two little furrows to her brow.  The old maid, however, poked her nose over the dishes on the counter.

“Ah, some slices of saveloy!” she muttered, as though she were speaking to herself.  “They’ll get very dry cut up like that.  And that black-pudding’s broken, I see—­a fork’s been stuck into it, I expect.  It might be taken away—­it’s soiling the dish.”

Lisa, still absent-minded, gave her the black-pudding and slices of saveloy.  “You may take them,” she said, “if you would care for them.”

The black bag swallowed them up.  Mademoiselle Saget was so accustomed to receiving presents that she had actually ceased to return thanks for them.  Every morning she carried away all the scraps of the pork shop.  And now she went off with the intention of obtaining her dessert from La Sarriette and Madame Lecoeur, by gossiping to them about Gavard.

When Lisa was alone again she installed herself on the bench, behind the counter, as though she thought she would be able to come to a sounder decision if she were comfortably seated.  For the last week she had been very anxious.  Florent had asked Quenu for five hundred francs one evening, in the easy, matter-of-course way of a man who had money lying to his credit at the pork shop.  Quenu referred him to his wife.  This was distasteful to Florent, who felt somewhat uneasy on applying to beautiful Lisa.  But she immediately went up to her bedroom, brought the money down and gave it to him, without saying a word, or making the least inquiry as to what he intended to do with it.  She merely remarked that she had made a note of the payment on the paper containing the particulars of Florent’s share of the inheritance.  Three days later he took a thousand francs.

“It was scarcely worth while trying to make himself out so disinterested,” Lisa said to Quenu that night, as they went to bed.  “I did quite right, you see, in keeping the account.  By the way, I haven’t noted down the thousand francs I gave him to-day.”

She sat down at the secretaire, and glanced over the page of figures.  Then she added:  “I did well to leave a blank space.  I’ll put down what I pay him on the margin.  You’ll see, now, he’ll fritter it all away by degrees.  That’s what I’ve been expecting for a long time past.”