to blows, their mother separated them. She gave her stall in the fish
market to Louise, while Claire, whom the smell of the skate and the
herrings affected in the lungs, installed herself among the fresh water
fish. And from that time the old mother, although she pretended to
have retired from business altogether, would flit from one stall to the
other, still interfering in the selling of the fish, and causing her
daughters continual annoyance by the foul insolence with which she would
at times speak to customers.

Claire was a fantastical creature, very gentle in her manner, and yet
continually at loggerheads with others. People said that she invariably
followed her own whimsical inclinations. In spite of her dreamy, girlish
face she was imbued with a nature of silent firmness, a spirit of
independence which prompted her to live apart; she never took things
as other people did, but would one day evince perfect fairness, and the
next day arrant injustice. She would sometimes throw the market into
confusion by suddenly increasing or lowering the prices at her stall,
without anyone being able to guess her reason for doing so. She
herself would refuse to explain her motive. By the time she reached her
thirtieth year, her delicate physique and fine skin, which the water
of the tanks seemed to keep continually fresh and soft, her small,
faintly-marked face and lissome limbs would probably become heavy,
coarse, and flabby, till she would look like some faded saint that had
stepped from a stained-glass window into the degrading sphere of the
markets. At twenty-two, however, Claire, in the midst of her carp and
eels, was, to use Claude Lantier's expression, a Murillo. A Murillo,
that is, whose hair was often in disorder, who wore heavy shoes and
clumsily cut dresses, which left her without any figure. But she was
free from all coquetry, and she assumed an air of scornful contempt when
Louise, displaying her bows and ribbons, chaffed her about her clumsily