The Belly of Paris - Emile Zola [44]
The other boy Auguste Landois, was from Troyes. Bulging with unhealthy fat and with an oversize head that was already balding, he was twenty-eight years old. The first night he went up the stairs with Florent, he told him his life story in a rambling, confused narration. He had come to Paris only to perfect his skills so he could open a shop back in Troyes, where his cousin Augustine Landois was waiting for him. They had the same godfather and he and she had been given the same first name. But he had grown ambitious in Paris and now hoped to set up shop in Paris, with the help of the money his mother had left him, which he had entrusted to a lawyer before leaving Champagne. At this point in the story they had reached the fifth floor, but Auguste delayed Florent on the landing to tell him how wonderful he thought Madame Quenu was. She had agreed to send for Augustine to replace a girl who had not worked out. Though he now knew the trade thoroughly, she was just beginning to learn. In a year or eighteen months, they would get married and set up a charcuterie in Plaisance or some busy Parisian neighborhood. There was no hurry to get married because pork fat products were not getting a good price that year. He went on to say that they had been photographed at a fair in Saint-Ouen. Then he went into the attic to have another look at the picture, which he had left on the mantel so the room for Madame Quenu's cousin would look nice.
For a moment, he was lost standing there in the pale yellow glow of a candle, studying the room in which that young woman still had a presence. Then he walked up to the bed and asked Florent if it was comfortable. She, Augustine, now slept downstairs and would be better off there. The attic was very cold in the wintertime. Finally he departed, leaving Florent alone with the bed and the photograph in which Auguste appeared as a pale Quenu and Augustine as an unripened Lisa.
Florent, befriended by the boys, spoiled by his brother, and accepted by Lisa, ended up completely bored. He had looked for classes to teach but had not been successful. He had avoided the Quartier des Ecoles, where he was afraid of being recognized. Lisa had very gently suggested that he approach some of the commercial houses, where he might take care of the correspondence and keep the books. She kept coming back to this idea and finally offered to find him a spot herself. It was slowly getting on her nerves, seeing him not working and idly wondering what to do with himself. At first it was only a normal dislike of seeing someone dividing his time between eating and folding his arms. She wouldn't have dreamed of asking him to eat elsewhere, but she would say to him, “Personally, I couldn't bear spending all my time daydreaming. I can't imagine how you can feel hungry in the evening … you know, you need something to tire you out.”
Gavard, for his part, looked for a job for Florent. But he looked in strange and suspicious ways. He wanted to find some employment that was dramatic, had bitter irony, or was in someway suitable for “an outlaw.” Gavard had a contrary nature. He was just over fifty and prided himself in having already witnessed the fall of four governments. Charles X, the clerics, the aristocrats, the rabble shoved out the door, all that simply made him shrug his shoulders. Louis-Philippe had been an imbecile with his myth of the citizen king who concealed big money in his wool stocking. As for the republic of ‘48, it was a farce. The workers had sold out, but he no longer even admitted to having supported the coup d’état because he now regarded Napoleon