Coquilliere, inhaling the odour of truffles from the premises of a notable dealer in comestibles, which threw so strong a perfume into the street that Cadine and Marjolin closed their eyes and imagined they were swallowing all kinds of delicious things.  These perfumes, however, distressed Claude.  They made him realise the emptiness of his stomach, he said; and, leaving the “two animals” to feast on the odour of the truffles—­the most penetrating odour to be found in all the neighbourhood—­he went off again to the corn market by way of the Rue Oblin, studying on his road the old women who sold green-stuff in the doorways and the displays of cheap pottery spread out on the foot-pavements.

Such were their rambles in common; but when Cadine set out alone with her bunches of violets she often went farther afield, making it a point to visit certain shops for which she had a particular partiality.  She had an especial weakness for the Taboureau bakery establishment, one of the windows of which was exclusively devoted to pastry.  She would follow the Rue Turbigo and retrace her steps a dozen times in order to pass again and again before the almond cakes, the savarins, the St. Honore tarts, the fruit tarts, and the various dishes containing bunlike babas redolent of rum, eclairs combining the finger biscuit with chocolate, and choux a la creme, little rounds of pastry overflowing with whipped white of egg.  The glass jars full of dry biscuits, macaroons, and madeleines also made her mouth water; and the bright shop with its big mirrors, its marble slabs, its gilding, its bread-bins of ornamental ironwork, and its second window in which long glistening loaves were displayed slantwise, with one end resting on a crystal shelf whilst above they were upheld by a brass rod, was so warm and odoriferous of baked dough that her features expanded with pleasure when, yielding to temptation, she went in to buy a brioche for two sous.

Another shop, one in front of the Square des Innocents, also filled her with gluttonous inquisitiveness, a fever of longing desire.  This shop made a specialty of forcemeat pasties.  In addition to the ordinary ones there were pasties of pike and pasties of truffled foie gras; and the girl would gaze yearningly at them, saying to herself that she would really have to eat one some day.

Cadine also had her moments of vanity and coquetry.  When these fits were on her, she bought herself in imagination some of the magnificent dresses displayed in the windows of the “Fabriques de France” which made the Pointe Saint Eustache gaudy with their pieces of bright stuff hanging from the first floor to the footway and flapping in the breeze.  Somewhat incommoded by the flat basket hanging before her, amidst the crowd of market women in dirty aprons gazing at future Sunday dresses, the girl would feel the woollens, flannels, and cottons to test the texture and suppleness of the material; and she would promise herself a gown