Chapter 1 of The Belly of Paris:
A farm woman, Madam Francois, almost runs a man over while driving her horse and cart to Paris' markets one early, misty morning. He was a ragged character, all dressed in black, passed out in the street. When he says he is trying to get to Paris, she offers him a ride, and he passes out, once again, in the cart. He appears to be a drunk, left out in the streets after a rough night, but it is soon revealed that he, Florent, has just escaped from the Penal Colony of Cayenne to which he had been sent for his participation in the resistance to Louis Napoleon's Coup d'Etat. After several years of imprisonment, he was finally able to escape and return to his beloved city where he plans to live a quiet life and avoid the police at all costs.
All along the ride to the markets, it is blatant that Florent is raving with hunger. Though his situation is sad, there is a comical irony that he is literally surrounded by food, but his pride and manners prevents him from asking the woman for a spare carrot.
When Madam Francois and Florent finally arrive in Paris, it is almost a new city. New markets have been established since Florent has been deported. It is when they arrive in the city that Florent's experience in Cayenne is revealed by the narrator. Florent had been caught as being resistant to Napoleon's Coup d'Etat. He had been walking with a crowd of other resistors when the police began to open fire on the group. As chaos broke out, Florent was trampled and knocked unconscious. When he finally awoke, he was surrounded by dead bodies and even had the body of a dead woman slumped over him, her blood spilling onto his hands and lap.
He hurriedly pushed her off and in a daze, found himself in a wine shop. Upon hearing a group of men talk about throwing up barricades, he offered to help them, but fell asleep from exhaustion after they had built the barricade. Florent awoke to finding that his comrades had abandoned him and in the grasp of the police. The police reported him as being, "very dangerous" because of the blood they found on his hand. He was tried, convicted, and sent to Cayenne without anyone to defend him and without any evidence being adduced.

Florent, who had previously been a student who studied law and firmly believed in the brotherhood of man, was crudely abused by the systems of justice and humanity, systems that he had devotedly trusted.

While in Cayenne, Florent, "had never again been free from hunger" (18) and he "could not recollect a single hour of satiety" (18). But he finally returns to Paris, on a carriage of vegetables, and finds it "fat and sleek and flourishing, teeming with food" (18). Paris becomes almost a character in itself, "the luxurious, greedy city," and "in harmony with those huge markets, whose gigantic breathing, still heavy from the indigestion of the previous day, he now began to hear" (18). Paris and the market places are humanized and personified, and readers quickly become aware that Paris is going to be a character. Paris is going to have a personality and a disposition. The characters are going to directly be affected by Paris.
We also see this personification in the lines that describe Paris when Florent returns to the city, "Paris, looking like a patch of star-spread sky that had fallen upon the black earth, seem to him to wear a forbidding aspect, as though angry at his return" (10). Even when Florent leaves the city and is violently torn from it,  Paris shows its response:

It was a joyous carnival night. The windows of the restaurants on the boulevards glittered with lights. At the top of the Rue Vivienne, just at the spot where he always saw the young woman lying dead - that unknown young woman whose image he always bore with him - he now beheld a large carriage in which a party of masked women, with care shoulders and laughing voices, were venting their impatience at being detained, and expressing their horror of the endless procession of convicts. (18)

Zola is showing that Paris is not happy with Florent's return, despite his great love for the city. I think that Paris is also celebrating while Florent is departing. These could be foreboding signs of Florent's future in the story.

At the market, Madam Francois shows Florent around and introduces him to her friend, the artist Claude. Claude agrees to take Florent around the marketplace more as Madam Francois sets up her stand. He shows that he has a great passion for food and the market place. He loves, not to eat the food, but to paint it.  But Claude proves not to be a very trustworthy or reliable guide, because Florent is soon abandoned.

While in the market, Florent experiences two overwhelming feelings:
1. Distrust and Paranoia. Because of the circumstances surrounding his removal from Paris, Florent feels distrustful of all those who question him or look at him suspiciously (41). He has abandoned all his previous beliefs in trust and comradery. He now is suspicious that everyone would willingly send him back to Cayenne without the blink of an eye. He is even distrustful of Madam Francois, the woman who helped him. While Madam Francois tries to make conversation with him and ask him questions, he feels disinclined to talk and overcome with a feeling of distrust, "His head was teeming with old stories of the police, stories of spies prowling about at every street corner, and of women selling the secrets which they managed to worm out of the unhappy fellows they deluded" (19).

 2. Besides extreme distrust, Florent also experiences extreme hunger. Despite his location among hundreds of different types of food, Florent cannot afford any of it. He is ironically starving while drowning in the savory smells of fish, fruit, pork, and butter. Cruel, cruel irony.

While aimlessly wandering around, Florent sees an old, close friend, Garvard. He calls out to him, and Garvard is both surprised and extremely happy to see him. Garvard tells Florent to follow him, but at a distance (Garvard knows the reasons of Florent's sudden departure so many years ago) and he leads him to a beautiful little butcher shop. When they enter the shop, Florent is reunited with his younger brother, Quenu.

The chapter ends with Florent being reunited with his beloved (and fattened) brother, introduced to his brother's wife, Lisa, and presented to their daughter, little Pauline. The family has done very well for themselves, as apparent by the description of the house pet, "The very cat, whose skin was distended by fat, dilated its yellow eyes and scrutinized him with an air of distrust" (54). There is a clear contrast between the experiences the two brothers have had in the past few years, and the family does not seem aware of Florent's trials or current malnurished condition.

"You'll wait till we have breakfast, won't you?" asked Quenu. "We have it early, at ten o'clock." A penetrating odor of the cookery pervaded the place; and Florent looked back upon the terrible night which he had just spent, his arrival amongst the vegetables, his agony in the midst of the markets, the endless avalanches of food from which he had just escaped. And then in a low tone with a gentle smile he responded: "No; I'm really very hungry, you see."

This story is both sad and comical. The irony and sick humor kind of remind me of Catch 22 by Joseph Heller upon which there are outlandishly funny things said and done, but in a devastatingly awful setting. I think that food, and the contrast between the struggling Florent and the thriving Paris, will be a constant image throughout the story.