Claire said in her quiet voice that it served her mother and sister right, a remark which nearly resulted in the two girls tearing each other’s hair out that evening when they returned home to the Rue Pirouette.  However, when the Mehudins came back to the market at the week’s end, they remained very quiet, reserved, and curt of speech, though full of a cold-blooded wrath.  Moreover, they found the pavilion quite calm and restored to order again.  From that day forward the beautiful Norman must have harboured the thought of some terrible vengeance.  She felt that she really had Lisa to thank for what had happened.  She had met her, the day after the battle, carrying her head so high, that she had sworn she would make her pay dearly for her glance of triumph.  She held interminable confabulations with Madame Saget, Madame Lecoeur, and La Sarriette, in quiet corners of the market; however, all their chatter about the shameless conduct which they slanderously ascribed to Lisa and her cousin, and about the hairs which they declared were found in Quenu’s chitterlings, brought La Normande little consolation.  She was trying to think of some very malicious plan of vengeance, which would strike her rival to the heart.

Her child was growing up in the fish market in all freedom and neglect.  When but three years old the youngster had been brought there, and day by day remained squatting on some rag amidst the fish.  He would fall asleep beside the big tunnies as though he were one of them, and awake among the mackerel and whiting.  The little rascal smelt of fish as strongly as though he were some big fish’s offspring.  For a long time his favourite pastime, whenever his mother’s back was turned, was to build walls and houses of herrings; and he would also play at soldiers on the marble slab, arranging the red gurnets in confronting lines, pushing them against each other, and battering their heads, while imitating the sound of drum and trumpet with his lips; after which he would throw them all into a heap again, and exclaim that they were dead.  When he grew older he would prowl about his aunt Claire’s stall to get hold of the bladders of the carp and pike which she gutted.  He placed them on the ground and made them burst, an amusement which afforded him vast delight.  When he was seven he rushed about the alleys, crawled under the stalls, ferreted amongst the zinc bound fish boxes, and became the spoiled pet of all the women.  Whenever they showed him something fresh which pleased him, he would clasp his hands and exclaim in ecstasy, “Oh, isn’t it stunning!” Muche was the exact word which he used; muche being the equivalent of “stunning” in the lingo of the markets; and he used the expression so often that it clung to him as a nickname.  He became known all over the place as “Muche.”  It was Muche here, there and everywhere; no one called him anything else.  He was to be met with in every nook; in out-of-the-way corners of the offices in