Quenu allowed himself to be drawn into a lavish expenditure of money; he laid out over thirty thousand francs in marble, glass, and gilding.  Lisa spent hours with the workmen, giving her views about the slightest details.  When she was at last installed behind the counter, customers arrived in a perfect procession, merely for the sake of examining the shop.  The inside walls were lined from top to bottom with white marble.  The ceiling was covered with a huge square mirror, framed by a broad gilded cornice, richly ornamented, whilst from the centre hung a crystal chandelier with four branches.  And behind the counter, and on the left, and at the far end of the shop were other mirrors, fitted between the marble panels and looking like doors opening into an infinite series of brightly lighted halls, where all sorts of appetising edibles were displayed.  The huge counter on the right hand was considered a very fine piece of work.  At intervals along the front were lozenge-shaped panels of pinky marble.  The flooring was of tiles, alternately white and pink, with a deep red fretting as border.  The whole neighbourhood was proud of the shop, and no one again thought of referring to the kitchen in the Rue Pirouette, where a man had died.  For quite a month women stopped short on the footway to look at Lisa between the saveloys and bladders in the window.  Her white and pink flesh excited as much admiration as the marbles.  She seemed to be the soul, the living light, the healthy, sturdy idol of the pork trade; and thenceforth one and all baptised her “Lisa the beauty.”

To the right of the shop was the dining-room, a neat looking apartment containing a sideboard, a table, and several cane-seated chairs of light oak.  The matting on the floor, the wallpaper of a soft yellow tint, the oil-cloth table-cover, coloured to imitate oak, gave the room a somewhat cold appearance, which was relieved only by the glitter of a brass hanging lamp, suspended from the ceiling, and spreading its big shade of transparent porcelain over the table.  One of the dining-room doors opened into the huge square kitchen, at the end of which was a small paved courtyard, serving for the storage of lumber—­tubs, barrels and pans, and all kinds of utensils not in use.  To the left of the water-tap, alongside the gutter which carried off the greasy water, stood pots of faded flowers, removed from the shop window, and slowly dying.

Business was excellent.  Quenu, who had been much alarmed by the initial outlay, now regarded his wife with something like respect, and told his friends that she had “a wonderful head.”  At the end of five years they had nearly eighty thousand francs invested in the State funds.  Lisa would say that they were not ambitious, that they had no desire to pile up money too quickly, or else she would have enabled her husband to gain hundreds and thousands of francs by prompting him to embark in the wholesale pig trade.  But they were still young, and had plenty of time before them; besides, they didn’t care about a rough, scrambling business, but preferred to work at their ease, and enjoy life, instead of wearing themselves out with endless anxieties.