The Fat and the Thin eBook

Émile Gaboriau
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 490 pages of information about The Fat and the Thin.

The Fat and the Thin eBook

Émile Gaboriau
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 490 pages of information about The Fat and the Thin.

It stood very near the corner of the Rue Pirouette and provided quite a feast for the eyes.  Its aspect was bright and smiling, touches of brilliant colour showing conspicuously amidst all the snowy marble.  The sign board, on which the name of QUENU-GRADELLE glittered in fat gilt letters encircled by leaves and branches painted on a soft-hued background, was protected by a sheet of glass.  On two panels, one on each side of the shop-front, and both, like the board above, covered with glass, were paintings representing various chubby little cupids playing amidst boars’ heads, pork chops and strings of sausages; and these latter still-life subjects, embellished with scrolls and bows, had been painted in such soft tones that the uncooked pork which they represented had the pinkiness of raspberry jam.  Within this pleasing framework arose the window display, arranged upon a bed of fine blue-paper shavings.  Here and there fern-leaves, tastefully disposed, changed the plates which they encircled into bouquets fringed with foliage.  There was a wealth of rich, luscious, melting things.  Down below, quite close to the window, jars of preserved sausage-meat were interspersed with pots of mustard.  Above these were some small, plump, boned hams.  Golden with their dressings of toasted bread-crumbs, and adorned at the knuckles with green rosettes.  Next came the larger dishes, some containing preserved Strasburg tongues, enclosed in bladders coloured a bright red and varnished, so that they looked quite sanguineous beside the pale sausages and trotters; then there were black-puddings coiled like harmless snakes, healthy looking chitterlings piled up two by two; Lyons sausages in little silver copes that made them look like choristers; hot pies, with little banner-like tickets stuck in them; big hams, and great glazed joints of veal and pork, whose jelly was as limpid as sugar-candy.  In the rear were other dishes and earthen pans in which meat, minced and sliced, slumbered beneath lakes of melted fat.  And betwixt the various plates and dishes, jars and bottle of sauce, cullis, stock and preserved truffles, pans of foie gras and boxes of sardines and tunny-fish were strewn over the bed of paper shavings.  A box of creamy cheeses, and one of edible snails, the apertures of whose shells were dressed with butter and parsley, had been placed carelessly at either corner.  Finally, from a bar overhead strings of sausages and saveloys of various sizes hung down symmetrically like cords and tassels; while in the rear fragments of intestinal membranes showed like lacework, like some guipure of white flesh.  And on the highest tier in this sanctuary of gluttony, amidst the membranes and between two bouquets of purple gladioli, the window stand was crowned by a small square aquarium, ornamented with rock-work, and containing a couple of gold-fish, which were continually swimming round it.

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Project Gutenberg
The Fat and the Thin from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.