Bags of young carp were being gently emptied into the basins.  The fish spun round, then remained motionless for a moment, and at last shot away and disappeared.  Little eels were turned out of their hampers in a mass, and fell to the bottom of the compartments like tangled knots of snakes; while the larger ones—­those whose bodies were about as thick as a child’s arm—­raised their heads and slipped of their own accord into the water with the supple motion of serpents gliding into the concealment of a thicket.  And meantime the other fish, whose death agony had been lasting all the morning as they lay on the soiled osiers of the basket-trays, slowly expired amidst all the uproar of the auctions, opening their mouths as though to inhale the moisture of the air, with great silent gasps, renewed every few seconds.

However, Monsieur Verlaque brought Florent back to the salt water fish.  He took him all over the place and gave him the minutest particulars about everything.  Round the nine salesmen’s desks ranged along three sides of the pavilion there was now a dense crowd of surging, swaying heads, above which appeared the clerks, perched upon high chairs and making entries in their ledgers.

“Are all these clerks employed by the salesmen?” asked Florent.

By way of reply Monsieur Verlaque made a detour along the outside footway, led him into the enclosure of one of the auctions, and then explained the working of the various departments of the big yellow office, which smelt strongly of fish and was stained all over by drippings and splashings from the hampers.  In a little glazed compartment up above, the collector of the municipal dues took note of the prices realised by the different lots of fish.  Lower down, seated upon high chairs and with their wrists resting upon little desks, were two female clerks, who kept account of the business on behalf of the salesmen.  At each end of the stone table in front of the office was a crier who brought the basket-trays forward in turn, and in a bawling voice announced what each lot consisted of; while above him the female clerk, pen in hand, waited to register the price at which the lots were knocked down.  And outside the enclosure, shut up in another little office of yellow wood, Monsieur Verlaque showed Florent the cashier, a fat old woman, who was ranging coppers and five-franc pierces in piles.

“There is a double control, you see,” said Monsieur Verlaque; “the control of the Prefecture of the Seine and that of the Prefecture of Police.  The latter, which licenses the salesmen, claims to have the right of supervision over them; and the municipality asserts its right to be represented at the transactions as they are subject to taxation.”

He went on expatiating at length in his faint cold voice respecting the rival claims of the two Prefectures.  Florent, however, was paying but little heed, his attention being concentrated on a female clerk sitting on one of the high chairs just in front of him.  She was a tall, dark woman of thirty, with big black eyes and an easy calmness of manner, and she wrote with outstretched fingers like a girl who had been taught the regulation method of the art.