"That makes no difference. Oh! it was a long time ago. But come in, Mademoiselle Célestine." She escorts us, with ceremony, into the back shop, where four other domestics are already gathered about a round table. "Oh! you will have an anxious time of it, my poor young woman," groaned the grocer, as she offered me a chair. "It is not because they do not patronize me at the château; but I can truly say that it is an infernal house, infernal! Is it not so, Mesdemoiselles?" "For sure!" answer in chorus, with like gestures and like grimaces, the four domestics thus appealed to. Madame Gouin continues: "Oh! thank you, I would not like to sell to people who are continually haggling, and crying out, like pole-cats, that they are being robbed, that they are being injured. They may go where they like." The chorus of servants responds: "Surely they may go where they like." To which Madame Gouin, addressing Rose more particularly, adds, in a firm tone: "They do not run after them, do they, Mam'zelle Rose? Thank God! we have no need of them, do we?" Rose contents herself with a shrug of her shoulders, putting into this gesture all the concentrated gall, spite, and contempt at her command. And the huge musketeer hat emphasizes the energy of these violent sentiments by the disorderly swaying of its black plumes. Then, after a silence: "Oh! well, let us talk no more about these people. Every time that I speak of them it turns my stomach." Thereupon the stories and gossip begin again. An uninterrupted flow of filth is vomited from these sad mouths, as from a sewer. The back-shop seems infected with it. The impression is the more disagreeable because the room is rather dark and the faces take on fantastic deformities. It is lighted only by a narrow window opening on a damp and filthy court,--a sort of shaft formed by moss-eaten walls. An odor of pickle, of rotting vegetables, of red herring, persists around us, impregnating our garments. It is intolerable. Then each of these creatures, heaped up on their chairs like bundles of dirty linen, plunges into the narration of some dirty action, some scandal, some crime. Coward that I am, I try to smile with them, to applaud with them; but I feel something insurmountable, something like frightful disgust. A nausea turns my stomach, forces its way to my throat, leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and presses my temples. I should like to go away. I cannot, and I remain there, like an idiot, heaped up like them on my chair, making the same gestures that they make,--I remain there, stupidly listening to these shrill voices that sound to me like dish-water gurgling and dripping through sinks and pipes.