train? The fresh air does you good. If you are in want of three
or four fine calves this market morning, my angel, I, Madame Doche,
shall be happy to deal with you. Behold these calves, Monsieur
Francois! Great Heaven, you are doubtful! Well, sir, walk round
and look about you. If you find better for the money, buy them.
If not, come to me!’ Monsieur Francois goes his way leisurely, and
keeps a wary eye upon the stock. No other butcher jostles Monsieur
Francois; Monsieur Francois jostles no other butcher. Nobody is
flustered and aggravated. Nobody is savage. In the midst of the
country blue frocks and red handkerchiefs, and the butchers’ coats,
shaggy, furry, and hairy: of calf-skin, cow-skin, horse-skin, and
bear-skin: towers a cocked hat and a blue cloak. Slavery! For OUR
Police wear great-coats and glazed hats.
But now the bartering is over, and the calves are sold. ‘Ho!
Gregoire, Antoine, Jean, Louis! Bring up the carts, my children!
Quick, brave infants! Hola! Hi!’
The carts, well littered with straw, are backed up to the edge of
the raised pavement, and various hot infants carry calves upon
their heads, and dexterously pitch them in, while other hot
infants, standing in the carts, arrange the calves, and pack them
carefully in straw. Here is a promising young calf, not sold, whom
Madame Doche unbinds. Pardon me, Madame Doche, but I fear this
mode of tying the four legs of a quadruped together, though
strictly a la mode, is not quite right. You observe, Madame Doche,
that the cord leaves deep indentations in the skin, and that the
animal is so cramped at first as not to know, or even remotely
suspect that HE is unbound, until you are so obliging as to kick
him, in your delicate little way, and pull his tail like a bellrope.
Then, he staggers to his knees, not being able to stand, and
stumbles about like a drunken calf, or the horse at Franconi’s,
whom you may have seen, Madame Doche, who is supposed to have been
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mortally wounded in battle. But, what is this rubbing against me,
as I apostrophise Madame Doche? It is another heated infant with a
calf upon his head. ‘Pardon, Monsieur, but will you have the
politeness to allow me to pass?’ ‘Ah, sir, willingly. I am vexed
to obstruct the way.’ On he staggers, calf and all, and makes no
allusion whatever either to my eyes or limbs.
Now, the carts are all full. More straw, my Antoine, to shake over
these top rows; then, off we will clatter, rumble, jolt, and
rattle, a long row of us, out of the first town-gate, and out at
the second town-gate, and past the empty sentry-box, and the little
thin square bandbox of a guardhouse, where nobody seems to live:
and away for Paris, by the paved road, lying, a straight, straight
line, in the long, long avenue of trees. We can neither choose our
road, nor our pace, for that is all prescribed to us. The public
convenience demands that our carts should get to Paris by such a
route, and no other (Napoleon had leisure to find that out, while
he had a little war with the world upon his hands), and woe betide
us if we infringe orders.
Drovers of oxen stand in the Cattle Market, tied to iron bars fixed
into posts of granite. Other droves advance slowly down the long
avenue, past the second town-gate, and the first town-gate, and the
sentry-box, and the bandbox, thawing the morning with their smoky
breath as they come along. Plenty of room; plenty of time.
Neither man nor beast is driven out of his wits by coaches, carts,
waggons, omnibuses, gigs, chaises, phaetons, cabs, trucks, boys,
whoopings, roarings, and multitudes. No tail-twisting is necessary
– no iron pronging is necessary. There are no iron prongs here.
The market for cattle is held as quietly as the market for calves.
In due time, off the cattle go to Paris; the drovers can no more
choose their road, nor their time, nor the numbers they shall
drive, than they can choose their hour for dying in the course of