However, there was a knock at the passage door, and Gavard, who stayed at Monsieur Lebigre’s every evening until midnight, came in.  He had called for a definite answer about the fish inspectorship.

“You must understand,” he said, “that Monsieur Verlaque cannot wait any longer; he is too ill.  So Florent must make up his mind.  I have promised to give a positive answer early to-morrow.”

“Well, Florent accepts,” Lisa quietly remarked, taking another nibble at some black-pudding.

Florent, who had remained in his chair, overcome by a strange feeling of prostration, vainly endeavoured to rise and protest.

“No, no, say nothing,” continued Lisa; “the matter is quite settled.  You have suffered quite enough already, my dear Florent.  What you have just been telling us is enough to make one shudder.  It is time now for you to settle down.  You belong to a respectable family, you received a good education, and it is really not fitting that you should go wandering about the highways like a vagrant.  At your age childishness is no longer excusable.  You have been foolish; well, all that will be forgotten and forgiven.  You will take your place again among those of your own class—­the class of respectable folks—­and live in future like other people.”

Florent listened in astonishment, quite unable to say a word.  Lisa was, doubtless, right.  She looked so healthy, so serene, that it was impossible to imagine that she desired anything but what was proper.  It was he, with his fleshless body and dark, equivocal-looking countenance, who must be in the wrong, and indulging in unrighteous dreams.  He could, indeed, no longer understand why he had hitherto resisted.

Lisa, however, continued to talk to him with an abundant flow of words, as though he were a little boy found in fault and threatened with the police.  She assumed, indeed, a most maternal manner, and plied him with the most convincing reasons.  And at last, as a final argument, she said: 

“Do it for us, Florent.  We occupy a fair position in the neighbourhood which obliges us to use a certain amount of circumspection; and, to tell you the truth, between ourselves, I’m afraid that people will begin to talk.  This inspectorship will set everything right; you will be somebody; you will even be an honour to us.”

Her manner had become caressingly persuasive, and Florent was penetrated by all the surrounding plenteousness, all the aroma filling the kitchen, where he fed, as it were, on the nourishment floating in the atmosphere.  He sank into blissful meanness, born of all the copious feeding that went on in the sphere of plenty in which he had been living during the last fortnight.  He felt, as it were, the titillation of forming fat which spread slowly all over his body.  He experienced the languid beatitude of shopkeepers, whose chief concern is to fill their bellies.  At this late hour of night, in the warm atmosphere of the kitchen, all his acerbity and determination melted away.  That peaceable evening, with the odour of the black-pudding and the lard, and the sight of plump little Pauline slumbering on his knee, had so enervated him that he found himself wishing for a succession of such evenings—­endless ones which would make him fat.