Marjolin was quite out of breath.  When they reached the stone blocks where the poultry were killed, and where the gas burnt more brightly, Lisa could see that he was perspiring, and had bold, glistening eyes.  She thought he looked very handsome like that, with his broad shoulders, big flushed face, and fair curly hair, and she looked at him so complacently, with that air of admiration which women feel they may safely express for quite young lads, that he relapsed into timid bashfulness again.

“Well, Monsieur Gavard isn’t here, you see,” she said.  “You’ve only made me waste my time.”

Marjolin, however, began rapidly explaining the killing of the poultry to her.  Five huge stone slabs stretched out in the direction of the Rue Rambuteau under the yellow light of the gas jets.  A woman was killing fowls at one end; and this led him to tell Lisa that the birds were plucked almost before they were dead, the operation thus being much easier.  Then he wanted her to feel the feathers which were lying in heaps on the stone slabs; and told her that they were sorted and sold for as much as nine sous the pound, according to their quality.  To satisfy him, she was also obliged to plunge her hand into the big hampers full of down.  Then he turned the water-taps, of which there was one by every pillar.  There was no end to the particulars he gave.  The blood, he said, streamed along the stone blocks, and collected into pools on the paved floor, which attendants sluiced with water every two hours, removing the more recent stains with coarse brushes.

When Lisa stooped over the drain which carries away the swillings, Marjolin found a fresh text for talk.  On rainy days, said he, the water sometimes rose through this orifice and flooded the place.  It had once risen a foot high; and they had been obliged to transport all the poultry to the other end of the cellar, which is on a higher level.  He laughed as he recalled the wild flutter of the terrified creatures.  However, he had now finished, and it seemed as though there remained nothing else for him to show, when all at once he bethought himself of the ventilator.  Thereupon he took Lisa off to the far end of the cellar, and told her to look up; and inside one of the turrets at the corner angles of the pavilion she observed a sort of escape-pipe, by which the foul atmosphere of the storerooms ascended into space.

Here, in this corner, reeking with abominable odours, Marjolin’s nostrils quivered, and his breath came and went violently.  His long stroll with Lisa in these cellars, full of warm animal perfumes, had gradually intoxicated him.

She had again turned towards him.  “Well,” said she, “it was very kind of you to show me all this, and when you come to the shop I will give you something.”