Meantime the fresh air had restored Marjolin to consciousness, and he opened his eyes in wide astonishment.  He looked round at everybody, and then, observing Lisa bending over him, he gently smiled at her with an expression of mingled humility and affection.  He seemed to have forgotten all that had happened.  Lisa, feeling relieved, said that he ought to be taken to the hospital at once, and promised to go and see him there, and take him some oranges and biscuits.  However, Marjolin’s head had fallen back, and when the stretcher was carried away Cadine followed it, with her flat basket slung round her neck, and her hot tears rolling down upon the bunches of violets in their mossy bed.  She certainly had no thoughts for the flowers that she was thus scalding with her bitter grief.

As Lisa went back to her shop, she heard Claude say, as he shook hands with Florent and parted from him:  “Ah! the confounded young scamp!  He’s quite spoiled my day for me!  Still, we had a very enjoyable time, didn’t we?”

Claude and Florent had returned both worried and happy, bringing with them the pleasant freshness of the country air.  Madame Francois had disposed of all her vegetables that morning before daylight; and they had all three gone to the Golden Compasses, in the Rue Montorgueil, to get the cart.  Here, in the middle of Paris, they found a foretaste of the country.  Behind the Restaurant Philippe, with its frontage of gilt woodwork rising to the first floor, there was a yard like that of a farm, dirty, teeming with life, reeking with the odour of manure and straw.  Bands of fowls were pecking at the soft ground.  Sheds and staircases and galleries of greeny wood clung to the old houses around, and at the far end, in a shanty of big beams, was Balthazar, harnessed to the cart, and eating the oats in his nosebag.  He went down the Rue Montorgueil at a slow trot, seemingly well pleased to return to Nanterre so soon.  However, he was not going home without a load.  Madame Francois had a contract with the company which undertook the scavenging of the markets, and twice a week she carried off with her a load of leaves, forked up from the mass of refuse which littered the square.  It made excellent manure.  In a few minutes the cart was filled to overflowing.  Claude and Florent stretched themselves out on the deep bed of greenery; Madame Francois grasped her reins, and Balthazar went off at his slow, steady pace, his head somewhat bent by reason of there being so many passengers to pull along.

This excursion had been talked of for a long time past.  Madame Francois laughed cheerily.  She was partial to the two men, and promised them an omelette au lard as had never been eaten, said she, in “that villainous Paris.”  Florent and Claude revelled in the thought of this day of lounging idleness which as yet had scarcely begun to dawn.  Nanterre seemed to be some distant paradise into which they would presently enter.