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?"