Then he vanished.  He was quite ignorant of Florent’s name, and, after favouring him with his views on art, parted from him as he had met him, at the roadside.

Florent was now alone, and at first this pleased him.  Ever since Madame Francoise had picked him up in the Avenue de Neuilly he had been coming and going in a state of pain fraught somnolence which had quite prevented him from forming any definite ideas of his surroundings.  Now at last he was at liberty to do what he liked, and he tried to shake himself free from that intolerable vision of teeming food by which he was pursued.  But his head still felt empty and dizzy, and all that he could find within him was a kind of vague fear.  The day was now growing quite bright, and he could be distinctly seen.  He looked down at his wretched shabby coat and trousers.  He buttoned the first, dusted the latter, and strove to make a bit of a toilet, fearing lest those black rags of his should proclaim aloud whence he had come.  He was seated in the middle of the bench, by the side of some wandering vagabonds who had settled themselves there while waiting for the sunrise.  The neighbourhood of the markets is a favourite spot with vagrants in the small hours of the morning.  However, two constables, still in night uniform, with cloaks and kepis, paced up and down the footway side by side, their hands resting behind their backs; and every time they passed the bench they glanced at the game which they scented there.  Florent felt sure that they recognised him, and were consulting together about arresting him.  At this thought his anguish of mind became extreme.  He felt a wild desire to get up and run away; but he did not dare to do so, and was quite at a loss as to how he might take himself off.  The repeated glances of the constables, their cold, deliberate scrutiny caused him the keenest torture.  At length he rose from the bench, making a great effort to restrain himself from rushing off as quickly as his long legs could carry him; and succeeded in walking quietly away, though his shoulders quivered in the fear he felt of suddenly feeling the rough hands of the constables clutching at his collar from behind.

He had now only one thought, one desire, which was to get away from the markets as quickly as possible.  He would wait and make his investigations later on, when the footways should be clear.  The three streets which met here—­the Rue Montmartre, Rue Montorgueil, and Rue Turbigo—­filled him with uneasiness.  They were blocked by vehicles of all kinds, and their footways were crowded with vegetables.  Florent went straight along as far as the Rue Pierre Lescot, but there the cress and the potato markets seemed to him insuperable obstacles.  So he resolved to take the Rue Rambuteau.  On reaching the Boulevard de Sebastopol, however, he came across such a block of vans and carts and waggonettes that he turned back and proceeded along the Rue Saint Denis.  Then he got amongst the vegetables once