As the old fish-wife, who was squatting, all of a heap, on her chair, spoke these words, she felt such a delicious thrill of satisfied vengeance that her huge body fairly quivered. Florent, still doubtful, glanced at the beautiful Norman; but the young woman, now completely reconciled with her mother, turned on her tap and slapped her fish, pretending not to hear what was being said. “You are quite sure?” said Florent to Mother Mehudin. “Oh, yes, indeed. Isn’t that so, Louise?” said the old woman in a shriller voice. Florent concluded that it must be some one who wanted to see him about the great business, and he resolved to go up to his room. He was just about to leave the pavilion, when, happening to turn round, he observed the beautiful Norman watching him with a grave expression on her face. Then he passed in front of the three gossips. “Do you notice that there’s no one in the pork shop?” remarked Mademoiselle Saget. “Beautiful Lisa’s not the woman to compromise herself.” The shop was, indeed, quite empty. The front of the house was still bright with sunshine; the building looked like some honest, prosperous pile guilelessly warming itself in the morning rays. Up above, the pomegranate on the balcony was in full bloom. As Florent crossed the roadway he gave a friendly nod to Logre and Monsieur Lebigre, who appeared to be enjoying the fresh air on the doorstep of the latter’s establishment. They returned his greeting with a smile. Florent was then about to enter the side-passage, when he fancied he saw Auguste’s pale face hastily vanishing from its dark and narrow depths. Thereupon he turned back and glanced into the shop to make sure that the middle-aged gentleman was not waiting for him there. But he saw no one but Mouton, who sat on a block displaying his double chin and bristling whiskers, and gazed at him defiantly with his great yellow eyes. And when he had at last made up his mind to enter the passage, Lisa’s face appeared behind the little curtain of a glazed door at the back of the shop.