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Lantier didn't like the wine from Francois's, so he persuaded Gervaise to buy her wine from Vigouroux, the coal-dealer. Then he decided that Coudeloup's bread was not baked to his satisfaction, so he sent Augustine to the Viennese bakery on the Faubourg Poissonniers for their bread. He changed from the grocer Lehongre but kept the butcher, fat Charles, because of his political opinions.
If he had accepted Madame Francois's charity, if he had not felt such idiotic fear of Claude, he would not now have been stranded there groaning in the midst of these cabbages. And he was especially angry with himself for not having questioned the artist when they were in the Rue Pirouette. Now, alas! he was alone and deserted, liable to die in the streets like a homeless dog.
And then one morning in August, amidst the busy awakening of the markets, Claude Lantier, sauntering about in the thick of the arriving vegetables, with his waist tightly girded by his red sash, came to grasp Madame Francois's hand close by Saint Eustache. She was sitting on her carrots and turnips, and her long face looked very sad.
Modern painter, cosmopolitan, elegant, and cultivated gentleman, he could still become frolicsome and frivolous with nonsense in happy company. M. Darbois, ordinarily so quiet, laughed at his antics till the tears came, while Mme. Darbois smiled that pleasant smile that had first long ago appealed to Francois's heart. As to Mlle. Frahender, the artist's wit fairly made her dizzy.
Buck stood and looked on, the successful champion, the dominant primordial beast who had made his kill and found it good. "Eh? Wot I say? I spik true w'en I say dat Buck two devils." This was Francois's speech next morning when he discovered Spitz missing and Buck covered with wounds. He drew him to the fire and by its light pointed them out.
The huskies had chewed through the sled lashings and canvas coverings. In fact, nothing, no matter how remotely eatable, had escaped them. They had eaten a pair of Perrault's moose-hide moccasins, chunks out of the leather traces, and even two feet of lash from the end of Francois's whip. He broke from a mournful contemplation of it to look over his wounded dogs.
"Impossible," rejoined another. "We must make a second rope. Francois's shirt still remains, and our leggings we can use them." This was the mode suggested by Francois and Norman, and Lucien seemed to assent to it. They had already commenced untying their leggings, when Basil uttered the ejaculation "Stop!" "Well, what is it, brother?" asked Lucien. "I think I can free the rope at the other end.
I was hurried out to the court, one adviser counselling me to beware of François's lunge in tierce, another to close on him at once, and so on. For a long time after we had crossed swords, I remained purely on the defensive; at last, after a desperate rally, he made a lunge at my chest, which I received in the muscles of my back; and, wheeling round, I buried my blade in his body.
Then, he spent the rest of the twenty sous at old Francois's, at the corner of the Rue de la Goutte-d'Or, where there was a famous wine, quite young, which tickled your gullet. This was an old-fashioned place with a low ceiling. There was a smoky room to one side where soup was served.
Basil had already arrived with a fine prairie hen which he had shot, and Sandy had brought back a squirrel; so that, with François's fish, of which a sufficient number had been caught, Lucien was likely to be able to keep his promise about the dinner. François, however, could not yet comprehend how the soup was to be boiled in a wooden pot; and, indeed, Basil was unable to guess.
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