pire had continued all-powerful in the town, so popular that
it had obtained there at the plebiscite an overwhelming majority. But
since the disasters the town had become republican, the quarter St. Marc
had returned to its secret royalist intrigues, while the old quarter and
the new town had sent to the chamber a liberal representative, slightly
tinged with Orleanism, and ready to take sides with the republic, if
it should triumph. And, therefore, it was that Felicite, like the
intelligent woman she was, had withdrawn her attention from politics,
and consented to be nothing more than the dethroned queen of a fallen
government.

But this was still an exalted position, surrounded by a melancholy
poetry. For sixteen years she had reigned. The tradition of her two
_salons_, the yellow _salon_, in which the _coup d'etat_ had matured,
and the green _salon_, later the neutral ground on which the conquest
of Plassans was completed, embellished itself with the reflection of the
vanished past, and was for her a glorious history. And besides, she was
very rich. Then, too, she had shown herself dignified in her fall, never
uttering a regret or a complaint, parading, with her eighty years,
so long a succession of fierce appetites, of abominable maneuvers, of
inordinate gratifications, that she became august through them. Her only
happiness, now, was to enjoy in peace her large fortune and her past
royalty, and she had but one passion left--to defend her past, to extend
its fame, suppressing everything that might tarnish it later. Her pride,
which lived on the double exploit of which the inhabitants still
spoke, watched with jealous care, resolved to leave in existence only
creditable documents, those traditions which caused her to be saluted
like a fallen queen when she walked through the town.

She went to the door of the chamber and listened to the persistent noise
of the pestle, which did not cease. Then, with an anxious brow, she
returned to Clotilde.

"Good Heavens! What is he making? You know that he is doing himself the
greatest harm with his new drug. I was told, the other day, that he came
near killing one of his patients."

"Oh, grandmother!" cried the young girl.

But she was now launched.

"Yes, exactly. The good wives say many other things, besides! Why, go
question them, in the faubourg! They will tell you that he grinds dead
men's bones in infants' blood."

This time, while even Martine protested, Clotilde, w