I.
Marie Famette is the prettiest girl in the market-place of Aubette. Her eyes are of such a sweet, soft blue, deeply shaded by long black lashes: her eyebrows are not black, but they are of a much darker tint than her hair, which (so much of it as can be seen under her full white cap-border) is a golden yellow. But it is not her eyes and her hair that make Marie so attractive: she has charmed young and old alike ever since she came, a toddling damsel of two years, and took her place beside her mother in the market-place of Aubette.
Madame Famette's was the best fruit-stall of the market. No one else could show such baskets of peaches and hampers of pears; and as to the citrouilles and potirons, their reputation was so established that by ten o'clock there was little to be seen of them among the glowing vegetables which decked the stall. Such radishes were not to be seen elsewhere—white and purple, as thick as carrots; and the carrots themselves like lumps of red gold, lying nestling beneath their feathered tops or setting off the creamy whiteness of the cauliflowers ranged in a formal row in front of them.
But Marie had always eclipsed all other beauty in the stall, and now that she had grown too big to be patted on the cheek and kissed by grown-up admirers, she had a host of victims in the sturdy young countrymen who came in to Aubette—either to bring mothers and sisters with their produce or to purchase for themselves.
Madame Famette has weak health, and lately Marie comes often to the market by herself, and is able to flirt to her heart's content, unchecked by her mother's presence. She is so bright, so arch, so ready with a sparkling answer, that it is no wonder her stall is always thronged and that her fruit and her vegetables disappear so rapidly.
There is an extra buzz in the market to-day. It is September, the epoch of the Mascaret, for the dreaded flood-tide seldom visits the Seine more than twice a year, and always draws dwellers in the neighboring towns to see its autumn fury. There is an influx of strange faces in the little place beneath the richly-sculptured spire of Notre Dame—the cathedral of Aubette, as strangers call it, although it is only the parish church of the quaint little town—and a certain extra excitement is communicated to the settlers under the canvas-covered booths and to the humbler sellers of wares in baskets. Mademoiselle Lesage, a short, plump young woman dressed in black, flits in and out of the chattering crowd more busily than usual. Mademoiselle holds herself of a rank above the country-folk who bring in their poultry and garden produce to Aubette. In token of this she wears a round black mushroom-shaped hat, and a holland apron with two deep pockets in virtue of her office; for Mademoiselle Lesage has an enterprising spirit. She found herself at thirty years old left alone in the world with an ugly face and with an insufficient "dot." Mademoiselle Lesage is ambitious: she does not care to marry a very poor man, and she has managed to give the town council of Aubette such security that it allows her to farm the market yearly for some hundreds of francs. Watch her collecting her dues. She goes rapidly from stall to stall, jingling her pockets, laughing and chatting with the farmers' wives, all the time keeping a hawk's eye on the basket-carriers, not one of whom may presume to sell so much as an onion without the weekly toll of one sou. She darts in and out among them, and her pockets swell out in front as if they were stuffed with apples.
She has left Marie Famette's stall till the last. She crosses over to it now as quickly as she can go, but there is no means of darting in and out here, as there was just now among the basket-women. Old Floris Marceau has covered a good-sized space with his heap of green and yellow melons, and he stands behind these marchandéing, gesticulating, brandishing the knife with which he slices his citrouilles and inveighing against the folly of his customers. "Will mam'selle believe," he says, addressing her as she approaches, and wiping his knife on his often-patched blouse, "they come to buy fruit of a respectable vegetable-seller and they don't know the price of a melon? Ten sous for a cantaloupe like that!" His blue eyes gleamed furiously under his frowning gray eyebrows. "Ten sous! I told them to be off and buy chickens." He broke into a laugh, and pointed to a tall, bent old gentleman, who seemed covered with confusion at this public rebuke, and sidled his way out of the throng without attempting an answer.
"Buy a turkey, m'sieur?" A smiling, dark-eyed woman in a close-setting white cap went on with the joke and pointed to her basket, but the old gentleman had had enough: he hurried away with a rueful glance at the basket in which, divided only by the handle, sat two fat turkey poults and two chickens. One of the turkeys stirred and got a wing free, but it was remorselessly tucked in again and reduced to passive endurance, with "Keep quiet then, ne soyez pas bête."
Mademoiselle Lesage approaches Marie's stall at a leisurely pace: she wishes to see her ground before she speaks. By the extra sweetness of her smile one might suppose that mademoiselle loved the gay little beauty: "Bonjour, Marie. Madame Famette trusts you alone again, I see?"
Marie does exactly that which Mademoiselle Lesage intended to make her do: she starts violently and she looks annoyed.
Elise Lesage glances quickly from Marie to the two young men who stand beside her. One of these, tall, well-dressed, with a Jewish face, and a sparkling pin in his brilliant blue scarf, is Alphonse Poiseau, the son of Monsieur Poiseau of the large clockmaker's and jeweler's shop at the corner of the place next the church: the other is Nicolas Marais, a handsome, gypsy-looking fellow with no decided occupation. He is sometimes at work on his uncle's farm at Vatteville, and when he falls out with his uncle and tires of Vatteville he comes across the Seine and gets employed by Léon Roussel, the chief timber-merchant of Aubette.
People say that old Marais, the miser of Vatteville, means to make Nicolas his heir; but Nicolas takes no pains to please the old man: he goes here and there at his pleasure, a favorite wherever he shows his handsome dark eyes and his saucy smile. The men like him as much as the women do, he has such a ready, amusing tongue, and he never says a spiteful word; so that more than one of the keen, observant poultry-sellers standing beside their baskets near Marie's stall have commented on the scowl with which for full five minutes Léon Roussel has regarded Nicolas. Léon Roussel is a middle-sized, in no way remarkable-looking person, with honest brown eyes and a square, sensible face. His father, the wealthy timber-merchant on the Yvetôt road, died when he was a boy, and Léon is one of the most prosperous citizens of Aubette, and well thought of by all. Léon is ostensibly in consultation with Monsieur Houlard, tailor and town councillor, but as he stands at the worthy's shop-door he is raised above the level of the place, and is exactly opposite the stall of Marie Famette.
"Nicolas is out of favor with Monsieur Roussel: he has worked badly in the lumber-yard," says La Mère Robillard.
"Chut! chut!" says her gossip, Madelaine Manget, and she gives at the same time a pat to a refractory chicken. "Nicolas looks too hard at Marie Famette. Ma foi! there are men in the manger as well as dogs. If Monsieur Léon wants Marie to be for his eyes only, why does he not ask for her and marry her, the proud simpleton?"
"Ah, but look you, Madelaine, Léon is not proud: he never turns a poor man from his door without a morsel to quiet hunger, and he must be clever or his business would not prosper."
La Mère Manget shrugs her shoulders. "Will you then not buy turkeys at eleven francs the couple, ma belle dame?" she cries shrilly to a passer-by.
While Marie Famette recovers herself, Nicolas answers Mam'selle Lesage. "Pardon, Mam'selle Lesage, but Mam'selle Marie is not alone," he says, raising his hat with exquisite politeness—Alphonse Poiseau tries to follow suit, but his bow is stiff and pompous—"the whole market is her body-guard, and she permits Monsieur Poiseau and myself to act as sentinels." He throws an insinuating glance at Marie, which deepens the gloom on Léon Roussel's face.
Elise Lesage has taken in the whole situation, and she knows exactly where to look for the timber-merchant. An uneasy consciousness makes Marie follow her glance: she looks red and confused when she sees Léon's stern, disapproving face. His eyes are fixed on her as she looks across, but he withdraws them instantly and turns to Monsieur Houlard.
Marie bites her pretty red under-lip: she can hardly keep from crying: "If we were alone and he scolded me, I would not mind; but he has no right to frown at me before the whole town. It is enough to compromise me. It will be said presently that I am a bold girl, while I only amuse myself, and never move a step from my stall to speak to any one. It is too bad!"
She gulps down a lump in her throat, and gives Nicolas Marais a smile that makes the clockmaker long to knock his rival's head against the gray buttress of the old church.
"Sentinels!" Elise Lesage laughs. "Is Marie afraid, then, that some one will steal her?"
"Marie is afraid of nothing, Mademoiselle Lesage." The little beauty is glad to be able to vent her vexation on some one. "What right has she to call me Marie?" she says to Nicolas in a very audible under-tone.
Mademoiselle's black eyes close till they look like lines: Marie does not see her face, but Nicolas Marais shivers, he hardly knows why.
A restraint has come over the merry trio, and Nicolas abhors restraint. "Tiens!" he says carelessly, "there is a fresh bevy of basket-women, Mam'selle Lesage."
Elise darts off like a greyhound, and Marie forgets her vexation and laughs out merrily at Nicolas's ruse: "She is such a busybody!" The girl glances across to see what has become of Léon: he is talking to Mademoiselle Lesage.
Alphonse Poiseau has kept silence, but he has observed. "I should not like to offend mam'selle," he says, "her eyes are so like a snake's."