They followed the baskets into the depths of the cellar, watching them glide down the rails laid over the steps, and listening to the rasping noise which the casters of these osier waggons made in their descent.  Down below there was a scene of exquisite horror.  They entered into a charnel-house atmosphere, and walked along through murky puddles, amidst which every now and then purple eyes seem to be glistening.  At times the soles of their boots stuck to the ground, at others they splashed through the horrible mire, anxious and yet delighted.  The gas jets burned low, like blinking, bloodshot eyes.  Near the water-taps, in the pale light falling through the gratings, they came upon the blocks; and there they remained in rapture watching the tripe men, who, in aprons stiffened by gory splashings, broke the sheep’s heads one after another with a blow of their mallets.  They lingered there for hours, waiting till all the baskets were empty, fascinated by the crackling of the bones, unable to tear themselves away till all was over.  Sometimes an attendant passed behind them, cleansing the cellar with a hose; floods of water rushed out with a sluice-like roar, but although the violence of the discharge actually ate away the surface of the flagstones, it was powerless to remove the ruddy stains and stench of blood.

Cadine and Marjolin were sure of meeting Claude between four and five in the afternoon at the wholesale auction of the bullocks’ lights.  He was always there amidst the tripe dealers’ carts backed up against the kerb-stones and the blue-bloused, white-aproned men who jostled him and deafened his ears by their loud bids.  But he never felt their elbows; he stood in a sort of ecstatic trance before the huge hanging lights, and often told Cadine and Marjolin that there was no finer sight to be seen.  The lights were of a soft rosy hue, gradually deepening and turning at the lower edges to a rich carmine; and Claude compared them to watered satin, finding no other term to describe the soft silkiness of those flowing lengths of flesh which drooped in broad folds like ballet dancers’ skirts.  He thought, too, of gauze and lace allowing a glimpse of pinky skin; and when a ray of sunshine fell upon the lights and girdled them with gold an expression of languorous rapture came into his eyes, and he felt happier than if he had been privileged to contemplate the Greek goddesses in their sovereign nudity, or the chatelaines of romance in their brocaded robes.

The artist became a great friend of the two young scapegraces.  He loved beautiful animals, and such undoubtedly they were.  For a long time he dreamt of a colossal picture which should represent the loves of Cadine and Marjolin in the central markets, amidst the vegetables, the fish, and the meat.  He would have depicted them seated on some couch of food, their arms circling each other’s waists, and their lips exchanging an idyllic kiss.  In this conception he saw a manifesto proclaiming the