mullet with larger scales and coarser markings; large turbot and huge
brill with firm flesh white like curdled milk; tunny-fish, smooth and
glossy, like bags of blackish leather; and rounded bass, with widely
gaping mouths which a soul too large for the body seemed to have rent
asunder as it forced its way out amidst the stupefaction of death. And
on all sides there were sole, brown and grey, in pairs; sand-eels, slim
and stiff, like shavings of pewter; herrings, slightly twisted, with
bleeding gills showing on their silver-worked skins; fat dories tinged
with just a suspicion of carmine; burnished mackerel with green-streaked
backs, and sides gleaming with ever-changing iridescence; and rosy
gurnets with white bellies, their head towards the centre of the baskets
and their tails radiating all around, so that they simulated some
strange florescence splotched with pearly white and brilliant vermilion.
There were rock mullet, too, with delicious flesh, flushed with the
pinky tinge peculiar to the Cyprinus family; boxes of whiting with
opaline reflections; and baskets of smelts--neat little baskets, pretty
as those used for strawberries, and exhaling a strong scent of violets.
And meantime the tiny black eyes of the shrimps dotted as with beads
of jet their soft-toned mass of pink and grey; and spiny crawfish and
lobsters striped with black, all still alive, raised a grating sound as
they tried to crawl along with their broken claws.

Florent gave but indifferent attention to Monsieur Verlaque's
explanations. A flood of sunshine suddenly streamed through the lofty
glass roof of the covered way, lighting up all these precious colours,
toned and softened by the waves--the iridescent flesh-tints of the
shell-fish, the opal of the whiting, the pearly nacre of the mackerel,
the ruddy gold of the mullets, the plated skins of the herrings, and
massive silver of the salmon. It was as though the jewel-cases of some
sea-nymph had been emptied there--a mass of fantastical, undreamt-of