the medley of their two colours.

At the crossway in the Rue des Halles cabbages were piled up in
mountains; there were white ones, hard and compact as metal balls, curly
savoys, whose great leaves made them look like basins of green bronze,
and red cabbages, which the dawn seemed to transform into superb masses
of bloom with the hue of wine-lees, splotched with dark purple and
carmine. At the other side of the markets, at the crossway near Saint
Eustache, the end of the Rue Rambuteau was blocked by a barricade of
orange-hued pumpkins, sprawling with swelling bellies in two superposed
rows. And here and there gleamed the glistening ruddy brown of a hamper
of onions, the blood-red crimson of a heap of tomatoes, the quiet yellow
of a display of marrows, and the sombre violet of the fruit of the
eggplant; while numerous fat black radishes still left patches of gloom
amidst the quivering brilliance of the general awakening.

Claude clapped his hands at the sight. He declared that those
"blackguard vegetables" were wild, mad, sublime! He stoutly maintained
that they were not yet dead, but, gathered in the previous evening,
waited for the morning sun to bid him good-bye from the flag-stones
of the market. He could observe their vitality, he declared, see their
leaves stir and open as though their roots were yet firmly and warmly
embedded in well-manured soil. And here, in the markets, he added, he
heard the death-rattle of all the kitchen gardens of the environs of
Paris.

A crowd of white caps, loose black jackets, and blue blouses was
swarming in the narrow paths between the various piles. The big baskets
of the market porters passed along slowly, above the heads of the
throng. Retail dealers, costermongers, and greengrocers were making