twenty sous, a crushing debt, which required the sale of an incalculable number of bunches of violets, for she could count upon no assistance from Marjolin.  Moreover, she was bound to return Leon’s hospitalities; and she even felt some little shame at never being able to offer him a scrap of meat.  He himself had now taken to purloining entire hams.  As a rule, he stowed everything away under his shirt; and at night when he reached his bedroom he drew from his bosom hunks of polony, slices of pate de foie gras, and bundles of pork rind.  They had to do without bread, and there was nothing to drink; but no matter.  One night Marjolin saw Leon kiss Cadine between two mouthfuls; however, he only laughed.  He could have smashed the little fellow with a blow from his fist, but he felt no jealousy in respect of Cadine.  He treated her simply as a comrade with whom he had chummed for years.

Claude never participated in these feasts.  Having caught Cadine one day stealing a beet-root from a little hamper lined with hay, he had pulled her ears and given her a sound rating.  These thieving propensities made her perfect as a ne’er-do-well.  However, in spite of himself, he could not help feeling a sort of admiration for these sensual, pilfering, greedy creatures, who preyed upon everything that lay about, feasting off the crumbs that fell from the giant’s table.

At last Marjolin nominally took service under Gavard, happy in having nothing to do except to listen to his master’s flow of talk, while Cadine still continued to sell violets, quite accustomed by this time to old Mother Chantemesse’s scoldings.  They were still the same children as ever, giving way to their instincts and appetites without the slightest shame—­they were the growth of the slimy pavements of the market district, where, even in fine weather, the mud remains black and sticky.  However, as Cadine walked along the footways, mechanically twisting her bunches of violets, she was sometimes disturbed by disquieting reveries; and Marjolin, too, suffered from an uneasiness which he could not explain.  He would occasionally leave the girl and miss some ramble or feast in order to go and gaze at Madame Quenu through the windows of her pork shop.  She was so handsome and plump and round that it did him good to look at her.  As he stood gazing at her, he felt full and satisfied, as though he had just eaten or drunk something extremely nice.  And when he went off, a sort of hunger and thirst to see her again suddenly came upon him.  This had been going on for a couple of months.  At first he had looked at her with the respectful glance which he bestowed upon the shop-fronts of the grocers and provision dealers; but subsequently, when he and Cadine had taken to general pilfering, he began to regard her smooth cheeks much as he regarded the barrels of olives and boxes of dried apples.