walk through the market alleys as warily as though he were in a hostile
country. He was splashed with water from the sponges employed to
cleanse the slabs; he stumbled and almost fell over slippery refuse
intentionally spread in his way; and even the porters contrived to run
their baskets against the nape of his neck. One day, moreover, when two
of the fish-wives were quarrelling, and he hastened up to prevent them
coming to blows, he was obliged to duck in order to escape being slapped
on either cheek by a shower of little dabs which passed over his head.
There was a general outburst of laughter on this occasion, and Florent
always believed that the two fish-wives were in league with the
Mehudins. However, his old-time experiences as a teacher had endowed
him with angelic patience, and he was able to maintain a magisterial
coolness of manner even when anger was hotly rising within him, and
his whole being quivered with a sense of humiliation. Still, the young
scamps of the Rue de l'Estrapade had never manifested the savagery
of these fish-wives, the cruel tenacity of these huge females, whose
massive figures heaved and shook with a giant-like joy whenever he fell
into any trap. They stared him out of countenance with their red faces;
and in the coarse tones of their voices and the impudent gesture of
their hands he could read volumes of filthy abuse levelled at himself.
Gavard would have been quite in his element amidst all these petticoats,
and would have freely cuffed them all round; but Florent, who had
always been afraid of women, gradually felt overwhelmed as by a sort
of nightmare in which giant women, buxom beyond all imagination,
danced threateningly around him, shouting at him in hoarse voices and
brandishing bare arms, as massive as any prize-fighter's.

Amongst this hoard of females, however, Florent had one friend. Claire
unhesitatingly declared that the new inspector was a very good fellow.
When he passed in front of her, pursued by the coarse abuse of the