nchet's pressing invitations to go upstairs to
the _entresol_, he chose as his favorite seat, during the evening which
he had to spend at Planchet's house, the shop itself, where his fingers
could always find whatever his nose had first detected for him. The
delicious figs from Provence, filberts from the forest, Tours plums,
were subjects of his interrupted attention for five consecutive hours.
His teeth, like millstones, cracked heaps of nuts, the shells of which
were scattered all over the floor, where they were trampled by every one
who went in and out of the shop; Porthos pulled from the stalk with his
lips, at one mouthful, bunches of the rich Muscatel raisins with their
beautiful bloom and a half-pound of which passed at one gulp from his
mouth to his stomach. In one of the corners of the shop, Planchet's
assistants, crouching down in a fright, looked at each other without
venturing to open their lips. They did not know who Porthos was, for
they had never seen him before. The race of those Titans, who had worn
the cuirasses of Hugues Capet, Philip Augustus and Francis the First,
had already begun to disappear. They could not help thinking he might
possibly be the ogre of the fairytale, who was going to turn the whole
contents of Planchet's shop into his insatiable stomach, and that, too,
without in the slightest degree displacing the barrels and chests that
were in it. Cracking, munching, chewing, nibbling, sucking, and
swallowing, Porthos occasionally said to the grocer:

"You do a very good business here, friend Planchet."

"He will very soon have none at all to do, if this continues," grumbled
the foreman, who had Planchet's word that he should be his successor.
And, in his despair, he approached Porthos, who blocked up the whole of
the passage leading from the back shop to the shop itself. He hoped that
Porthos would rise, and that this movement would distract his devouring
ideas.

"What do you want, my man?" asked Porthos, very affably.

"I should like to pass you, monsieur, if it is not troubling you too
much."

"Very well," said Porthos, "it does not trouble me in the least."

At the same moment he took hold of the young fellow by the waistband,
lifted him off the ground, and placed him very gently on the other side,
smiling all the while with the same affable expression. As soon as
Porthos had placed him on the ground, the lad's legs so shook under him
that he fell back upon some sacks of corks. But