tints leading up to brilliant flashes of colour. The red tongues seemed
to thrust themselves out like greedy flames, and the black-puddings,
surrounded by pale sausages, suggested a dark night fraught with
terrible indigestion. I had produced, you see, a picture symbolical of
the gluttony of Christmas Eve, when people meet and sup--the midnight
feasting, the ravenous gorging of stomachs void and faint after all the
singing of hymns.[*] At the top of everything a huge turkey exhibited
its white breast, marbled blackly by the truffles showing through its
skin. It was something barbaric and superb, suggesting a paunch amidst
a halo of glory; but there was such a cutting, sarcastic touch about it
all that people crowded to the window, alarmed by the fierce flare of
the shop-front. When my aunt Lisa came back from the kitchen she was
quite frightened, and thought I'd set the fat in the shop on fire;
and she considered the appearance of the turkey so indelicate that she
turned me out of the place while Auguste re-arranged the window after
his own idiotic fashion. Such brutes will never understand the language
of a red splotch by the side of a grey one. Ah, well! that was my
masterpiece. I have never done anything better."

[*] An allusion to the "midnight mass" usually celebrated in
Roman Catholic churches on Christmas Eve.--Translator.

He relapsed into silence, smiling and dwelling with gratification on
this reminiscence. The cart had now reached the Arc de Triomphe, and
strong currents of air swept from the avenues across the expanse of open
ground. Florent sat up, and inhaled with zest the first odours of grass
wafted from the fortifications. He turned his back on Paris, anxious
to behold the country in the distance. At the corner of the Rue de
Longchamp, Madame Francois pointed out to him the spot where she had
picked him up. This rendered him thoughtful, and he gazed at her as
she sat there, so healthy-looking and serene, with her arms slightly
extended so as to grasp the reins. She looked even handsomer than Lisa,
with her neckerchief tied over her head, her robust glow of health, and
her brusque, kindly air. When she gave a slight cluck with her tongue,
Balthazar pricked up his ears and rattled down the road at a quicker
pace.

On arriving at Nanterre, the cart turned to the left into a narrow lane,
skirted some blank walls, and finally came to a standstill at the end of
a sort of blind alley. It was the