Then the fish became soft again, and unpleasant odours mingled with the
smell of mud wafted from the neighbouring streets. These odours were as
yet vague, tempered by the moisture which clung to the ground. But in
the blazing June afternoons a reeking stench arose, and the atmosphere
became heavy with a pestilential haze. The upper windows were then
opened, and huge blinds of grey canvas were drawn beneath the burning
sky. Nevertheless, a fiery rain seemed to be pouring down, heating the
market as though it were a big stove, and there was not a breath of air
to waft away the noxious emanations from the fish. A visible steam went
up from the stalls.

The masses of food amongst which Florent lived now began to cause him
the greatest discomfort. The disgust with which the pork shop had filled
him came back in a still more intolerable fashion. He almost sickened
as he passed these masses of fish, which, despite all the water lavished
upon them, turned bad under a sudden whiff of hot air. Even when he shut
himself up in his office his discomfort continued, for the abominable
odour forced its way through the chinks in the woodwork of the window
and door. When the sky was grey and leaden, the little room remained
quite dark; and then the day was like a long twilight in the depths of
some fetid march. He was often attacked by fits of nervous excitement,
and felt a craving desire to walk; and he would then descend into the
cellars by the broad staircase opening in the middle of the pavilion. In
the pent-up air down below, in the dim light of the occasional gas jets,
he once more found the refreshing coolness diffused by pure cold water.
He would stand in front of the big tank where the reserve stock of live
fish was kept, and listen to the ceaseless murmur of the four streamlets
of water falling from the four corners of the central urn, and then
spreading into a broad stream and gliding beneath the locked gratings of
the basins with a gentle and continuous flow. This subterranean spring,