La Normande was now triumphant—­she strutted about her stall, and became more coquettish than ever, arranging her hair in the most elaborate manner.  Meeting the handsome Lisa one day she returned her look of scorn, and even burst out laughing in her face.  The certainty she felt of driving the mistress of the pork shop to despair by winning her cousin from her endowed her with a gay, sonorous laugh, which rolled up from her chest and rippled her white plump neck.  She now had the whim of dressing Muche very showily in a little Highland costume and velvet bonnet.  The lad had never previously worn anything but a tattered blouse.  It unfortunately happened, however, that just about this time he again became very fond of the water.  The ice had melted and the weather was mild, so he gave his Scotch jacket a bath, turning the fountain tap on at full flow and letting the water pour down his arm from his elbow to his hand.  He called this “playing at gutters.”  Then a little later, when his mother came up and caught him, she found him with two other young scamps watching a couple of little fishes swimming about in his velvet cap, which he had filled with water.

For nearly eight months Florent lived in the markets, feeling continual drowsiness.  After his seven years of suffering he had lighted upon such calm quietude, such unbroken regularity of life, that he was scarcely conscious of existing.  He gave himself up to this jog-trot peacefulness with a dazed sort of feeling, continually experiencing surprise at finding himself each morning in the same armchair in the little office.  This office with its bare hut-like appearance had a charm for him.  He here found a quiet and secluded refuge amidst that ceaseless roar of the markets which made him dream of some surging sea spreading around him, and isolating him from the world.  Gradually, however, a vague nervousness began to prey upon him; he became discontented, accused himself of faults which he could not define, and began to rebel against the emptiness which he experienced more and more acutely in mind and body.  Then, too, the evil smells of the fish market brought him nausea.  By degrees he became unhinged, his vague boredom developing into restless, nervous excitement.

All his days were precisely alike, spent among the same sounds and the same odours.  In the mornings the noisy buzzing of the auction sales resounded in his ears like a distant echo of bells; and sometimes, when there was a delay in the arrival of the fish, the auctions continued till very late.  Upon these occasions he remained in the pavilion till noon, disturbed at every moment by quarrels and disputes, which he endeavoured to settle with scrupulous justice.  Hours elapsed before he could get free of some miserable matter or other which was exciting the market.  He paced up and down amidst the crush and uproar of the sales, slowly perambulating the alleys and occasionally stopping in front of the stalls which fringed the