stead.

"There!" he exclaimed, coming to a halt, "look at the corner of the
footway yonder! Isn't that a picture readymade, ever so much more human
and natural than all their confounded consumptive daubs?"

Along the covered way women were now selling hot soup and coffee. At one
corner of the foot-pavement a large circle of customers clustered round
a vendor of cabbage soup. The bright tin caldron, full of broth, was
steaming over a little low stove, through the holes of which came the
pale glow of the embers. From a napkin-lined basket the woman took some
thin slices of bread and dropped them into yellow cups; then with a
ladle she filled the cups with liquor. Around her were saleswomen neatly
dressed, market gardeners in blouses, porters with coats soiled by the
loads they had carried, poor ragged vagabonds--in fact, all the early
hungry ones of the markets, eating, and scalding their mouths, and
drawing back their chins to avoid soiling them with the drippings from
their spoons. The delighted artist blinked, and sought a point of view
so as to get a good ensemble of the picture. That cabbage soup, however,
exhaled a very strong odour. Florent, for his part, turned his head
away, distressed by the sight of the full cups which the customers
emptied in silence, glancing around them the while like suspicious
animals. As the woman began serving a fresh customer, Claude himself was
affected by the odorous steam of the soup, which was wafted full in his
face.

He again tightened his sash, half amused and half annoyed. Then resuming
his walk, and alluding to the punch paid for by Alexandre, he said to
Florent in a low voice: