became more and more numerous and disquieting, the artist and Florent
rushed amongst the wheels of the drays laden with butter and eggs and
cheese, huge yellow vehicles bearing coloured lanterns, and drawn by
four horses. The market porters carried the cases of eggs, and baskets
of cheese and butter, into the auction pavilion, where clerks were
making entries in note books by the light of the gas.

Claude was quite charmed with all this uproar, and forgot everything to
gaze at some effect of light, some group of blouses, or the picturesque
unloading of a cart. At last they extricated themselves from the crowd,
and as they continued on their way along the main artery they presently
found themselves amidst an exquisite perfume which seemed to be
following them. They were in the cut-flower market. All over the
footways, to the right and left, women were seated in front of large
rectangular baskets full of bunches of roses, violets, dahlias, and
marguerites. At times the clumps darkened and looked like splotches
of blood, at others they brightened into silvery greys of the softest
tones. A lighted candle, standing near one basket, set amidst the
general blackness quite a melody of colour--the bright variegations
of marguerites, the blood-red crimson of dahlias, the bluey purple of
violets, and the warm flesh tints of roses. And nothing could have
been sweeter or more suggestive of springtide than this soft breath of
perfume encountered on the footway, on emerging from the sharp odours of
the fish market and the pestilential smell of the butter and the cheese.

Claude and Florent turned round and strolled about, loitering among the
flowers. They halted with some curiosity before several women who were
selling bunches of fern and bundles of vine-leaves, neatly tied up in
packets of five and twenty. Then they turned down another covered alley,
which was almost deserted, and where their footsteps echoed as though