quite touched when he read her some words from a scrap of soiled newspaper wrapped round a slice of conger-eel.  By degrees, indeed, she began to think, though without admitting it, that Florent could not really be a bad sort of fellow.  She felt respect for his knowledge, mingled with an increasing curiosity to see more of him and learn something of his life.  Then, all at once, she found an excuse for gratifying this inquisitiveness.  She would use it as a means of vengeance.  It would be fine fun to make friends with Florent and embroil him with that great fat Lisa.

“Does your good friend Florent ever speak to you about me?” she asked Muche one morning as she was dressing him.

“Oh, no,” replied the boy.  “We enjoy ourselves.”

“Well, you can tell him that I’ve quite forgiven him, and that I’m much obliged to him for having taught you to read.”

Thenceforward the child was entrusted with some message every day.  He went backwards and forwards from his mother to the inspector, and from the inspector to his mother, charged with kindly words and questions and answers, which he repeated mechanically without knowing their meaning.  He might, indeed, have been safely trusted with the most compromising communications.  However, the beautiful Norman felt afraid of appearing timid, and so one day she herself went to the inspector’s office and sat down on the second chair, while Muche was having his writing lesson.  She proved very suave and complimentary, and Florent was by far the more embarrassed of the two.  They only spoke of the lad; and when Florent expressed a fear that he might not be able to continue the lessons in the office, La Normande invited him to come to their home in the evening.  She spoke also of payment; but at this he blushed, and said that he certainly would not come if any mention were made of money.  Thereupon the young woman determined in her own mind that she would recompense him with presents of choice fish.

Peace was thus made between them; the beautiful Norman even took Florent under her protection.  Apart from this, however, the whole market was becoming reconciled to the new inspector, the fish-wives arriving at the conclusion that he was really a better fellow than Monsieur Verlaque, notwithstanding his strange eyes.  It was only old Madame Mehudin who still shrugged her shoulders, full of rancour as she was against the “long lanky-guts,” as she contemptuously called him.  And then, too, a strange thing happened.  One morning, when Florent stopped with a smile before Claire’s tanks, the girl dropped an eel which she was holding and angrily turned her back upon him, her cheeks quite swollen and reddened by temper.  The inspector was so much astonished that he spoke to La Normande about it.

“Oh, never mind her,” said the young woman; “she’s cracked.  She makes a point of always differing from everybody else.  She only behaved like that to annoy me.”