“Come along; don’t let us stop here,” he said. “There are too many eyes
and tongues about.”
When they were in the covered way they began to chat. Florent related
how he had gone to the Rue Pirouette, at which Gavard seemed much
amused and laughed heartily. Then he told Florent that his brother
Quenu had moved from that street and had reopened his pork shop close
by, in the Rue Rambuteau, just in front of the markets. And afterwards
he was again highly amused to hear that Florent had been wandering
about all that morning with Claude Lantier, an odd kind of fish, who,
strangely enough, said he, was Madame Quenu’s nephew. Thus chatting,
Gavard was on the point of taking Florent straight to the pork shop,
but, on hearing that he had returned to France with false papers, he
suddenly assumed all sorts of solemn and mysterious airs, and insisted
upon walking some fifteen paces in front of him, to avoid attracting
attention. After passing through the poultry pavilion, where he hung
his geese up in his stall, he began to cross the Rue Rambuteau, still
followed by Florent; and then, halting in the middle of the road, he
glanced significantly towards a large and well-appointed pork shop.
The sun was obliquely enfilading the Rue Rambuteau, lighting up the
fronts of the houses, in the midst of which the Rue Pirouette formed a
dark gap. At the other end the great pile of Saint Eustache glittered
brightly in the sunlight like some huge reliquary. And right through
the crowd, from the distant crossway, an army of street-sweepers was
advancing in file down the road, the brooms swishing rhythmically,
while scavengers provided with forks pitched the collected refuse into
tumbrels, which at intervals of a score of paces halted with a noise
like the chattering of broken pots. However, all Florent’s attention
was concentrated on the pork shop, open and radiant in the rising sun.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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