Free The Belly of Paris by Émile Zola Page A

wood, glass, and iron with the power and grace of a machine with glowing furnaces and dizzily spinning wheels.
    Claude had enthusiastically leapt to his feet on the bench and forced his companion to admire daybreak on the vegetables. There was a sea of vegetables between the rows of pavilions from pointe Saint-Eustache to rue des Halles. At the two intersections at either end the seas grew higher, completely flooding the pavement. Dawn rose slowly in soft grays, coloring everything with a light wash of watercolors. The mounting piles, like a swelling sea, the river of greenery rushing through the streets like an autumnal torrent, took on delicate shadows and hues: tender violet, milk-blushed rose, a green steeped in yellows—all the soft, pale hues that change the sky into silk at sunrise. Step by step the fire of dawn rose higher, shooting up bursts of flame at the far end of rue Rambuteau as the vegetables brightened and grew more distinct from the bluish darkness that clung to the ground. Lettuce, escarole, and chicory, with rich earth still stuck to them, opened to expose swelling hearts. Bundles of spinach, bunches of sorrel, packets of artichokes, piles of peas and beans, mountains of romaine tied with straw, sang the full greenery repertoire from the shiny green lacquered pods to the deep green leaves—a continuous range of ascending and descending scales that faded away in the variegated heads of celery and bundles of leeks. But the most piercing note of all came from the flaming carrots and the snowy splotches of turnips, strewn in ample quantities all along the market and lighting it with their colors.
    At the intersection of rue des Halles were mountains of cabbages. There were enormous white cabbages that were hard and compact like metal balls, curly savoys whose great leaves made them look like basins of greening bronze, and red cabbages that thedawn seemed to change into exquisite flowery masses the color of wine, crimson and deep purple. At the other end, where pointe Saint-Eustache intersects rue Rambuteau, the route was blocked by swollen-bellied orange pumpkins crawling across the ground in two lines. The varnished brown of onions shone here and there in baskets and the bloodred heaps of tomatoes, the muted yellow of cucumbers, and the deep purple of eggplants, while thick black radishes in funereal drapes still held memories of the night amid this vibrant, jubilant new day.
    Claude clapped his hands at the sight. He found something extravagant, crazy, and sublime in all the jaunty vegetables. He insisted that they were absolutely not dead but, after being pulled from the earth the day before, were awaiting the next sunrise to make their farewells from the cobblestones of Les Halles. He saw them as alive, their leaves wide open, as though their roots were still embedded in warm, well-manured soil. He also claimed to hear in the market the death rattle of all the little gardens on the outskirts of the city.
    A crowd of white caps, black jackets, and blue overalls was converging in the narrow passages between piles. The forts' huge baskets made their way slowly over the heads of the crowd. The saleswomen, grocers, and fruit sellers were doing a brisk business. A group of corporals and a few nuns were huddled around mountains of cabbages, and institutional cooks were hunting for bargains. The unloading continued, the carts tossing their loads to the ground as though they were shipments of cobblestones, adding more and more waves to the sea of produce that was now spreading to the opposite pathway. And from the far end of the rue du Pont-Neuf, carts kept coming in a line without end.
    “It is phenomenally beautiful,” cooed the enraptured Claude.
    But Florent was in pain. He believed himself to be tested by some supernatural temptation and turned to look at the side facade of Saint Eustache, unable to look at the market any longer. From this view it seemed washed in sepia against the blue sky with its