Read Online The Belly of Paris by Émile Zola - Free Book Online Page A

and suburbs, its boulevards and roads, plazas and intersections, all suddenly sheltered from a rainy day by a huge roof dropped into place as though by the whimsy of some giant.
    The shadows that lingered in the crevices of the roof multiplied the forest of pillars and expanded the delicate ribbing, the fretwork balconies, the slatted windows. And there, high above the town, nestled in the shadows, was an immense metal jungle, with stems and vines and tangled branches covering this little world that resembled the foliage of an age-old forest.
    Some sections of the market were still sleeping behind irongates. The butter and poultry stands had long rows of trellised stalls that the gas lighting showed to be deserted. The fish pavilion was opening, and women were scurrying among the white stone slabs, which were littered with baskets and forgotten rags. The noise and activity were slowly picking up over at the vegetables, the fruit, and the flowers. Little by little morning was coming, from the working-class neighborhood, where the cabbage was piled at four in the morning, to the lazy, privileged zone, which began hanging its chickens and pheasants at eight.
    The main covered passageways teemed with life. All along the sidewalks there were many produce sellers, including small-scale gardeners from the outskirts of Paris showing their little harvests of vegetable bunches and fruit bundles from the previous night. In the midst of the crowd's incessant comings and goings, carts pulled in under the vaulted roof, the clop of the horses' hooves slowing down. Two of the wagons blocked the intersection, and in order to get around them Florent had to press against some shabby bundles that looked like coal sacks and were so heavy that they bowed the axle of the wagon carrying them. They were damp and gave off a scent of seaweed, and huge black mussels were spilling out of the split end of one sack.
    At every step they took, Claude and Florent were forced to stop for something. The seafood was arriving, and, one after another, railroad carts pulled up with tall wooden cages loaded with the bins and hampers that had been shipped by train from the coast. Trying to get out of the way of the fish carts, which were coming with increasing urgency, Claude and Florent practically dived under the wheels of the wagons filled with butter, eggs, and cheese, huge yellow chariots drawn by four-horse teams and decorated with colored lanterns. Workers were bringing down cases of eggs and baskets of cheeses and butter, which they carried into the auction room, where men in caps made entries in notebooks by gaslight. Claude was enthralled by the scene, lost in admiration for the lighting on a group in overalls unloading a cart. Finally they moved on.
    Still traveling down the main route, they walked in a heady fragrancethat surrounded them and seemed to follow them. They were in the midst of the cut flower market. On the ground, to the right and left, women sat with square baskets in front of them filled with bunches of roses, violets, dahlias, and daisies. Some bunches were darker, like bloodstains; others brightened into delicate, silvery grays. A lighted candle near one of the baskets gave the surrounding blackness a sudden burst of color, the bright plumage of the daisies, the bloodred of the dahlias, the rich blueness of violets, the brilliant tints of roses. And nothing was more like spring than the tenderness of this perfume on the pavement after the biting breath of seafood and the pungent scent of butter and cheese.
    The two men went on their way meandering among the flowers. Out of curiosity they stopped in front of the women selling bunches of ferns and vine leaves, neatly tied-up bundles with twenty-five pieces in each. Then they went down a nearly deserted alley, where their footsteps echoed as though they were in a church. There they found a small cart the size of a wheelbarrow with an undersized donkey hitched to it, which was probably bored