Julius Read Online Free PDF Page A

spend a sou?’
    Grandpère was just behind him, coughing and choking.
    ‘Oh! it’s always the same now,’ he grumbled; ‘you can spare your voice, my poor boy, no one will put his hand in his pocket because of this stinking war.’
    ‘Everybody must eat, the war makes no difference to stomachs,’ said Mère impatiently, and she stood with her hands on her hips, red in the face because of the heat, and the dust and the flies.
    There was no denying that business was bad. People were timid of spending, they bought small quantities at a time and then hoarded. It was all the fault of the louse-ridden Prussians. Nobody knew when the war was going to end or how or what it was all about. Things were little better under the Republic than they had been during the reign of the Emperor.
    The only thing that mattered to the market folk was for prices at the Halles to touch normal again, the quality and quantity of produce to resume their usual standard, and above all for the purchaser to throw aside mistrust and open his purse once more with confidence.
    ‘Let all governments go to the devil,’ laughed Jean Blançard, ‘it’s their affair, isn’t it? Nothing counts but that people must eat to live. Come on, messieurs, mesdames, come and empty your purses and fill your bellies. The good times are just ahead. Ah! Ha! you’re laughing, my little lady with the scarlet petticoat - what are you laughing at? Don’t you need good butter and cheese to make you round and plump? Come and see, then, I’ll sell cheaper to you because of your smile. Well, what about it? That doesn’t please you, eh? You don’t want any cheese to-day . . . But what do you want, my mignonne, my flower? Go to the legumes at the next stall, it’s a kilo of carrots you’ll need before you’re satisfied.’ He stood with his arms folded, his head thrown back, a colossal figure of self-confidence and scorn, his prices were the fairest and his produce the best in the whole market, if people were not pleased, let them go elsewhere and poison themselves, he did not care. They would always come back to him in the end. That little woman in the red petticoat, wasn’t she smiling at him over her shoulder? ‘So you’ve changed your mind, my beauty? It’s cheese after all and not carrots—Here you are, then, half a pound and no more. Anything else to-day? Hoo! I know what you’d like me to show you . . .’
    She scuttled away, blushing and confused, and he shouted with laughter, winking a blue eye at his friend the butcher opposite. ‘They’re all the same, aren’t they? I know them. What a trade, what a life! Come and see, messieurs, mesdames, come and see. Impossible to find anything better in the market. Well - haven’t you hands - haven’t you mouths?’
    Julius looked up at his grandfather and smiled. What a figure he was, what a grand fellow! He over-topped the world, he made the other market folk seem dwarfed and pallid with his great strength and health, his vigorous personality.White-haired, blue-eyed, red-faced, was he really sixty-five and an old man! Père, in the corner of the stall, thin and drooping, he didn’t exist beside him. Julius stuck out his chest and folded his arms. Wasn’t he a Blançard too, even if he was only ten years old?
    ‘Come on, come on. It costs nothing to throw an eye over the stall. But I can see you, monsieur; with your hungry glance at the crate of eggs, are you paralysed that you can’t put your hand in your pocket? New-laid eggs, fifteen sous the dozen . . . Yes, mademoiselle, this is the best quality butter in the whole of Paris. Am I a robber, am I a liar? Try it, mademoiselle, such butter is made for young women like yourself - it is fresh, it is clean, it has a taste . . . No, I’m not cheeky. I’m not a child - I tell you I know a thing or two ... You’ll take a pound, then? Thank you, mademoiselle.’ Julius threw back his head like his grandfather, he winked at the butcher’s son. Oh! it was good