pavement. These retired tradesmen, oil dealers, and wholesale hatters, felt as if they were in a sort of fairyland. Never had they experienced such thrilling excitement before. They could not get over their surprise at discovering such heroes as Rougon, Granoux, and Roudier in their midst. At last, half stifled by the stuffy atmosphere, and tired of ever telling each other the same things, they decided to go off and spread the momentous news abroad. They glided away one by one, each anxious to have the glory of being the first to know and relate everything, and Felicite, as she leaned out of the window, on being left alone, saw them dispersing in the Rue de la Banne, waving their arms in an excited manner, eager as they were to diffuse emotion to the four corners of the town.
It was ten o’clock, and Plassans, now wide awake, was running about the streets, wildly excited by the reports which were circulating. Those who had seen or heard the insurrectionary forces, related the most foolish stories, contradicting each other, and indulging in the wildest suppositions. The majority, however, knew nothing at all about the matter; they lived at the further end of the town, and listened with gaping mouths, like children to a nursery tale, to the stories of how several thousand bandits had invaded the streets during the night and vanished before daybreak like an army of phantoms. A few of the most sceptical said: “Nonsense!” Yet some of the details were very precise; and Plassans at last felt convinced that some frightful danger had passed over it while it slept. The darkness which had shrouded this danger, the various contradictory reports that spread, all invested the matter with mystery and vague horror, which made the bravest shudder. Whose hand had diverted the thunderbolt from them? There seemed to be something quite miraculous about it. There were rumours of unknown deliverers, of a handful of brave men who had cut off the hydra’s head; but no one seemed acquainted with the exact particulars, and the whole story appeared scarcely credible, until the company from the yellow drawingroom spread through the streets, scattering tidings, ever repeating the same narrative at each door they came to.
It was like a train of powder. In a few minutes the story had spread from one end of the town to the other. Rougon’s name flew from mouth to mouth, with exclamations of surprise in the new town, and of praise in the old quarter. The idea of being without a subprefect, a mayor, a postmaster, a receiver of taxes, or authorities of any kind, at first threw the inhabitants into consternation. They were stupefied at having been able to sleep through the night and get up as usual, in the absence of any settled government. Their first stupor over, they threw themselves recklessly into the arms of their liberators. The few Republicans shrugged their shoulders, but the petty shopkeepers, the small householders, the Conservatives of all shades, invoked blessings on those modest heroes whose achievements had been shrouded by the night. When it was known that Rougon had arrested his own brother, the popular admiration knew no bounds. People talked of Brutus, and thus the indiscretion which had made Pierre rather anxious, really redounded to his glory. At this moment when terror still hovered over them, the townsfolk were virtually unanimous in their gratitude. Rougon was accepted as their saviour without the slightest show of opposition.
“Just think of it!” the poltroons exclaimed, “there were only forty-one of them!”
That number of forty-one amazed the whole town, and this was the origin of the Plassans legend of how forty-one bourgeois had made three thousand insurgents bite the dust. There were only a few envious spirits of the new town, lawyers without work and retired military men ashamed of having slept ingloriously through that memorable night, who raised any doubts. The insurgents, these sceptics hinted, had no doubt left the town of their own accord. There were no indications of a combat, no corpses, no bloodstains. So the deliverers had certainly had a very easy task.
“But the mirror, the mirror!” repeated the enthusiasts. “You can’t deny that the mayor’s mirror has been smashed; go and see it for yourselves.”
And, in fact, until nighttime, quite a stream of town’speople flowed, under one pretext or another, into the mayor’s private office, the door of which Rougon left wide open. The visitors planted themselves in front of the mirror, which the bullet had pierced and starred, and they all gave vent to the same exclamation: “By Jove; that ball must have had terrible force!”
Then they departed quite convinced.
Felicite, at her window, listened with delight to all the rumours and laudatory and grateful remarks which arose from the town. At that moment all Plassans was talking of her husband. She felt that the two districts below her were quivering, wafting her the hope of approaching triumph. Ah! how she would crush that town which she had been so long in getting beneath her feet! All her grievances crowded back to her memory, and her past disappointments redoubled her appetite for immediate enjoyment.
At last she left the window, and walked slowly round the drawingroom. It was there that, a little while previously, everybody had held out their hands to her husband and herself. He and she had conquered; the citizens were at their feet. The yellow drawingroom seemed to her a holy place. The dilapidated furniture, the frayed velvet, the chandelier soiled with fly-marks, all those poor wrecks now seemed to her like the glorious bullet-riddled debris of a battlefield. The plain of Austerlitz would not have stirred her to deeper emotion.
When she returned to the window, she perceived Aristide wandering about the place of the SubPrefecture, with his nose in the air. She beckoned to him to come up, which he immediately did. It seemed as if he had only been waiting for this invitation.
“Come in,” his mother said to him on the landing, seeing that he hesitated. “Your father is not here.”
Aristide evinced all the shyness of a prodigal son returning home. He had not been inside the yellow drawingroom for nearly four years. He still carried his arm in a sling.
“Does your hand still pain you?” his mother asked him, ironically.
He blushed as he answered with some embarrassment: “Oh! it’s getting better; it’s nearly well again now.”
Then he lingered there, loitering about and not knowing what to say. Felicite came to the rescue. “I suppose you’ve heard them talking about your father’s noble conduct?” she resumed.
He replied that the whole town was talking of it. And then, as he regained his self-possession, he paid his mother back for her raillery in her own coin. Looking her full in the face he added: “I came to see if father was wounded.”
“Come, don’t play the fool!” cried Felicite, petulantly. “If I were you I would act boldly and decisively. Confess now that you made a false move in joining those good-for-nothing Republicans. You would be very glad, I’m sure, to be well rid of them, and to return to us, who are the stronger party. Well, the house is open to you!”
But Aristide protested. The Republic was a grand idea. Moreover, the insurgents might still carry the day.
“Don’t talk nonsense to me!” retorted the old woman, with some irritation. “You’re afraid that your father won’t have a very warm welcome for you. But I’ll see to that. Listen to me: go back to your newspaper, and, between now and tomorrow, prepare a number strongly favouring the Coup d’Etat. Tomorrow evening, when this number has appeared, come back here and you will be received with open arms.”
Then seeing that the young man remained silent: “Do you hear?” she added, in a lower and more eager tone; “it is necessary for our sake, and for your own, too, that it should be done. Don’t let us have any more nonsense and folly. You’ve already compromised yourself enough in that way.”
The young man made a gesture — the gesture of a Caesar crossing the Rubicon — and by doing so escaped entering into any verbal engagement. As he was about to withdraw, his mother, looking for the knot in his sling, remarked: “First of all, you must let me take off this rag. It’s getting a little ridiculous,
