es on the boxes of sardines piled up in
metallic columns amidst the cases and sacks. In the Rue Montorgueil
and the Rue Montmartre were other tempting-looking groceries and
restaurants, from whose basements appetising odours were wafted, with
glorious shows of game and poultry, and preserved-provision shops, which
last displayed beside their doors open kegs overflowing with yellow
sourkrout suggestive of old lacework. Then they lingered in the Rue
Coquilliere, inhaling the odour of truffles from the premises of a
notable dealer in comestibles, which threw so strong a perfume into the
street that Cadine and Marjolin closed their eyes and imagined they
were swallowing all kinds of delicious things. These perfumes, however,
distressed Claude. They made him realise the emptiness of his stomach,
he said; and, leaving the "two animals" to feast on the odour of
the truffles--the most penetrating odour to be found in all the
neighbourhood--he went off again to the corn market by way of the Rue
Oblin, studying on his road the old women who sold green-stuff in
the doorways and the displays of cheap pottery spread out on the
foot-pavements.

Such were their rambles in common; but when Cadine set out alone with
her bunches of violets she often went farther afield, making it a point
to visit certain shops for which she had a particular partiality. She
had an especial weakness for the Taboureau bakery establishment, one of
the windows of which was exclusively devoted to pastry. She would follow
the Rue Turbigo and retrace her steps a dozen times in order to pass
again and again before the almond cakes, the _savarins_, the St. Honore
tarts, the fruit tarts, and the various dishes containing bunlike
_babas_ redolent of rum, eclairs combining the finger biscuit with
chocolate, and _choux a la creme_, little rounds of pastry overflowing
with whipped white of egg. The glass jars full of dry biscuits,
macaroons, and _madeleines_ also made her mouth water; and the bright
shop with its big mirrors, its marble slabs, its gilding, its bread-bins
of ornamental ironwork, and its second window in which long glistening
loaves were displayed slantwise, with one end resting on a crystal
shelf whilst above they were upheld by a brass rod, was so warm and
odoriferous of baked dough that her features expanded with pleasure
when, yielding to temptation, she went in to buy a _brioche_ for two
sous.

Another shop, one in front of the Square des Innocent