The son of a bitch is plastered. Shove him in the gutter.”

In the meantime, the man had opened his eyes. He stared, motionless, at Madame François, with a look of bewilderment. She too thought that he must be drunk.

“You can't stay there, you're going to get yourself run over,” she told him. “Where were you going?”

“I don't know,” the man replied in a feeble voice. Then, with great effort and a worried face, “I was going to Paris, and I fell. I don't know …”

Now she could see him better, and he was pathetic with his black pants and black overcoat, so threadbare that they showed the contour of his bare bones. Underneath a hat of coarse black cloth that he had pulled down as though afraid of being recognized, two large brown eyes of a rare gentleness could be seen on a hard and tormented face. Madame François thought that this man was much too feeble to have been drinking.

“Where in Paris were you going?” she asked.

He didn't answer right away. This cross-examination was worrying him. After a moment's reflection, he cautiously replied, “Over there, by Les Halles.”

With great difficulty he had almost stood up again and seemed anxious to be on his way. But Madame François noticed him trying to steady himself against one of the wagon shafts.

“You're tired?”

“Very tired,” he mumbled.

Adopting a gruff tone, as though annoyed, and giving him a shove, she shouted, “Go on, move it! Get up in my wagon! You're wasting my time. I'm going to Les Halles, and I can drop you off with my vegetables.”

When he refused, she practically threw him onto the turnips and carrots in the back with her thick arms and shouted impatiently, “That's enough! No more trouble from you. You're beginning to annoy me, my friend. Didn't I tell you that I'm headed to the market anyway? Go to sleep up there. I'll wake you when we get there.”

She climbed back up, sat sideways with her back against the plank again, and took Balthazar's reins. He started up sleepily, twitching his ears. The other carts followed. The column resumed its slow march in the dark, the sound of wheels on the paving stones again thudding against the sleeping housefronts. The wagoneers, wrapped in their coats, returned to their snoozing. The one who had called out to Madame François grumbled as he lay down, “Damn, does she have to take care of every bum? You are something, lady.”

The carts rolled on, the horses, with their heads bowed, leading themselves. The man Madame François had picked up was lying on his stomach, his long legs lost in the turnips, which filled the back of the cart, while his head was buried in the spreading carrot bunches. With weary outstretched arms he seemed to hug his bed of vegetables for fear a jolt of the cart would send him sprawling in the road. He watched the two endless columns of gaslights ahead of him, which vanished in the distance into a confusion of other lights. A large white cloud nuzzled the horizon, so that Paris appeared to be sleeping in a glowing mist illuminated by all the lamps.

“I'm from Nanterre. My name is Madame François,” the woman said after a moment's silence. “Ever since I lost my poor husband, I go to Les Halles every morning. It's a hard life, but what can you do. And you?”

“My name is Florent, I come from far away,” the stranger replied awkwardly. “I'm really sorry, but I'm so exhausted that it's hard to talk.”

He did not want to say any more, so Madame François became silent too, letting the reins fall loosely on the back of Balthazar, who seemed to know every paving stone along the route.

In the meantime, Florent, staring at the broadening sparkle of Paris in the distance, contemplated the story that he had decided not to tell the woman.