others, the Olivets, wrapped in walnut leaves, like the carrion
which peasants cover with branches as it lies rotting in the hedgerow
under the blazing sun.

The heat of the afternoon had softened the cheeses; the patches of mould
on their crusts were melting, and glistening with tints of ruddy bronze
and verdigris. Beneath their cover of leaves, the skins of the Olivets
seemed to be heaving as with the slow, deep respiration of a sleeping
man. A Livarot was swarming with life; and in a fragile box behind the
scales a Gerome flavoured with aniseed diffused such a pestilential
smell that all around it the very flies had fallen lifeless on the
gray-veined slap of ruddy marble.

This Gerome was almost immediately under Mademoiselle Saget's nose; so
she drew back, and leaned her head against the big sheets of white and
yellow paper which were hanging in a corner.

"Yes," she repeated, with an expression of disgust, "he comes from the
galleys! Ah, those Quenu-Gradelles have no reason to put on so many
airs!"

Madame Lecoeur and La Sarriette, however, had burst into exclamations of
astonishment: "It wasn't possible, surely! What had he done to be sent
to the galleys? Could anyone, now, have ever suspected that Madame
Quenu, whose virtue was the pride of the whole neighbourhood, would
choose a convict for a lover?"

"Ah, but you don't understand at all!" cried the old maid impatiently.
"Just listen, now, while I explain things. I was quite certain that I
had seen that great lanky fellow somewhere before."

Then she proceeded to tell them Florent's story. She had recalled to
mind a vague report which had circulated of a nephew of old Gradelle
being transported to Cayenne for murdering six gendarmes at a barricade.
She had even seen this nephew on one occasion in the Rue Pirouette. The
pretended cousin was undoubtedly the same man. Then she began to bemoan
her waning powers. Her memory was quite going, she said; she would soon
be unable to remember anything. And she bewailed her perishing memory
as bitterly as any learned man might bewail the loss of his notes
representing the work of a life-time, on seeing them swept away by a
gust of wind.

"Six gendarmes!" murmured La Sarriette, admiringly; "he must have a very
heavy fist!"

"And he's made away with plenty of others, as well," added Mademoiselle
Saget. "I shouldn't advise you to meet him at night!"

"What a villain!" stammered out Madame Lecoeur, quite terrified.