on as ours again becomes the stronger party."

Granoux was ready to embrace him. Roudier and Vuillet breathed more
easily.

"I shall want you shortly, gentlemen," the oil-dealer continued, with
an important air. "It is to us that the honour of restoring order in
Plassans is reserved."

"You may rely upon us!" cried Vuillet, with an enthusiasm which
disturbed Felicite.

Time was pressing. These singular defenders of Plassans, who hid
themselves the better to protect the town, hastened away, to bury
themselves in some hole or other. Pierre, on being left alone with
his wife, advised her not to make the mistake of barricading herself
indoors, but to reply, if anybody came to question her, that he, Pierre,
had simply gone on a short journey. And as she acted the simpleton,
feigning terror and asking what all this was coming to, he replied
abruptly: "It's nothing to do with you. Let me manage our affairs alone.
They'll get on all the better."

A few minutes later he was rapidly threading his way along the Rue de
la Banne. On reaching the Cours Sauvaire, he saw a band of armed workmen
coming out of the old quarter and singing the "Marseillaise."

"The devil!" he thought. "It was quite time, indeed; here's the town
itself in revolt now!"

He quickened his steps in the direction of the Porte de Rome. Cold
perspiration came over him while he waited there for the dilatory keeper
to open the gate. Almost as soon as he set foot on the high road, he
perceived in the moonlight at the other end of the Faubourg the column
of insurgents, whose gun barrels gleamed like white flames. So it was
at a run that he dived into the Impasse Saint-Mittre, and reached his
mother's house, which he had not visited for many a long year.

CHAPTER IV

Antoine Macquart had returned to Plassans after the fall of the first
Napoleon. He had had the incredible good fortune to escape all the
final murderous campaigns of the Empire. He had moved from barracks
to barracks, dragging on his brutifying military life. This mode of
existence brought his natural vices to full development. His idleness
became deliberate; his intemperance, which brought him countless
punishments, became, to his mind, a veritable religious duty. But that
which above all made him the worst of scapegraces was the supercilious
disdain which he entertained for the poor devils who had to earn their
bread.

"I've got money waiting for me at home," he often said to his comrade