The Belly of Paris - Emile Zola [142]
“I saw Madame Quenu chatting by her doorway,” she would say in the evening. “It's incredible how well that woman takes care of herself. And so clean—she looks like a real lady. It's the counter, you see. A good counter is the mark of a real lady, that is what makes her distinguished.”
Hidden in this was a reference to Monsieur Lebigre's proposals. The Beautiful Norman did not answer but sat for a moment lost in thought. She imagined herself at the other end of rue Pirouette behind the wine merchant's counter, making a bookend with Beautiful Lisa. This was the first wavering of her affections for Florent.
In truth, Florent was becoming very hard to defend. The entire neighborhood was turning against him. It seemed as though every one of them had a reason to want to be rid of him. In Les Halles there were those who swore he was a paid police informant. Others swore they had seen him in the butter cellars trying to make holes in the wire netting for throwing in lighted matches. The slander had built to a torrent of accusations.
There were ever more sources for it without anyone knowing where it had all originated. The fish market was the last to revolt because the fish women liked his gentle ways. For a time they defended him, but then, under pressure from the women in the butter and fruit markets, they too gave in. After that the fight was on—the thin man against enormous bellies and ponderous bosoms. Once again he was lost among the skirts, stuffed bodices nearly bursting and heaving extravagantly all around his pointy shoulders. But Florent noticed nothing and marched straight on toward his plan.
Now, all hours of the day on most any corner, the black hat of Mademoiselle Saget could be seen amid the turmoil. Her pale little face seemed to be multiplying. She had sworn a terrible revenge on the group that met in Monsieur Lebigre's glass-paneled room. She accused them of spreading the story that she ate leftovers. In truth it was Gavard, who one evening had told them how that old goat who spied on them ate leftover garbage that the Bonapartists threw out. This made Clémence ill, and Robine quickly gulped down some beer to cleanse his mouth. But Gavard repeated his quip, “The Tuileries have belched on it.”
He said these words with a grimace of disgust. Those slices of meat taken from the emperor's plate were unspeakable filth, the vomit of politics, the spoiled remains of all the corrupt excess of the regime. After that, as far as the people at Monsieur Lebigre's were concerned, no one would touch Mademoiselle Saget except with a pair of tweezers; she was living dung, a vile animal feeding on rot that even a dog wouldn't touch. Clémence and Gavard peddled the story around Les Halles so thoroughly that the old woman's relationship with the shopkeepers was very much damaged. When she tried to haggle over prices or stood there chatting without buying, she was sent off to the leftover stand. This cut off her sources of information. Some days she had no idea what was going on. She wept with rage. And it was on such an occasion that she said bluntly to La Sarriette and Madame Lecœur, “You don't have to push me any further. I'm going to take care of your friend Gavard.”
The other two were a little taken aback, but they didn't argue. The next day Mademoiselle Saget seemed to have calmed down and seemed to have again warmed to that poor Monsieur Gavard, who got such bad advice and was speeding toward ruin.
Gavard was certainly putting himself in a difficult position. Ever since the conspiracy had begun to ripen, he had been walking around with the revolver that had frightened his concierge, Madame Léonce. It was a menacingly large revolver that he had bought