his glass, he went to chat with Monsieur Lebigre in a little glazed
compartment at the end of the room, where the gas had not yet been
lighted.

[*] At the Paris central markets potatoes are sold by the
hamper, not by the sack as in England.--Translator.

"What will you take?" Claude asked of Florent.

He had on entering grasped the hand of the person who had called out
to him. This was a market porter,[*] a well-built young man of two and
twenty at the most. His cheeks and chin were clean-shaven, but he wore
a small moustache, and looked a sprightly, strapping fellow with his
broad-brimmed hat covered with chalk, and his wool-worked neck-piece,
the straps falling from which tightened his short blue blouse. Claude,
who called him Alexandre, patted his arms, and asked him when they were
going to Charentonneau again. Then they talked about a grand excursion
they had made together in a boat on the Marne, when they had eaten a
rabbit for supper in the evening.

[*] _Fort_ is the French term, literally "a strong man," as
every market porter needs to be.--Translator.

"Well, what will you take?" Claude again asked Florent.

The latter looked at the counter in great embarrassment. At one end of
it some stoneware pots, encircled with brass bands and containing punch
and hot wine, were standing over the short blue flames of a gas stove.
Florent at last confessed that a glass of something warm would be
welcome. Monsieur Lebigre thereupon served them with three glasses of