du Fromage with the inexplicable behaviour of the inquisitive foreigner.
But the nefarious deed was already accomplished, and as we moved away
our last glimpse was of the little stove standing deserted, while Madame
hastened across the street in her clattering sabots to warn her friend.

The bustle of the market is soon ended. By ten o'clock the piles of
vegetables are sensibly diminished. By half-past ten the white-capped
maid-servants have carried the heavy baskets home, and are busy
preparing lunch. At eleven o'clock the sharp boy whose stock-in-trade
consisted of three trays of snails stuffed _à la_ Bourgogne has sold all
the large ones at 45 centimes a dozen, all the small at 25, and quite
two-thirds of the medium-sized at 35 centimes.

The clock points to eleven. The sun is high now. The vendors awaken to
the consciousness of hunger, and Madame of the _pommes frites_ stall,
whose assistant dexterously cuts the peeled tubers into strips, is fully
occupied in draining the crisp golden shreds from the boiling fat and
handing them over, well sprinkled with salt and pepper, to avid
customers, who devour them smoking hot, direct from their paper
cornucopias.

Long before the first gloom of the early mid-winter dusk, all has been
cleared away. The rickety stalls have been demolished; the unsold
remainder of the goods disposed of; the worthy country folks, their
pockets heavy with _sous_, are well on their journey homewards, and only
a litter of straw, of cabbage leaves and leek tops remains as evidence
of the lively market of the morning.

[Illustration: Chestnuts in the Avenue]