recalled the accursed field of Waterloo as she observed how mournful
and deserted the place was. Then, as her husband said nothing, she
mechanically went to the window--that window where she had inhaled with
delight the incense of the entire town. She perceived numerous groups
below on the square, but she closed the blinds upon seeing some heads
turn towards their house, for she feared that she might be hooted. She
felt quite sure that those people were speaking about them.

Indeed, voices rose through the twilight. A lawyer was clamouring in the
tone of a triumphant pleader. "That's just what I said; the insurgents
left of their own accord, and they won't ask the permission of the
forty-one to come back. The forty-one indeed! a fine farce! Why, I
believe there were at least two hundred."

"No, indeed," said a burly trader, an oil-dealer and a great politician,
"there were probably not even ten. There was no fighting or else we
should have seen some blood in the morning. I went to the town-hall
myself to look; the courtyard was as clean as my hand."

Then a workman, who stepped timidly up to the group, added: "There was
no need of any violence to seize the building; the door wasn't even
shut."

This remark was received with laughter, and the workman, thus
encouraged, continued: "As for those Rougons, everybody knows that they
are a bad lot."

This insult pierced Felicite to the heart. The ingratitude of the
people was heartrending to her, for she herself was at last beginning to
believe in the mission of the Rougons. She called for her husband. She
wanted him to learn how fickle was the multitude.

"It's all a piece with their mirror," continued the lawyer. "What a fuss
they made about that broken glass! You know that Rougon is quite capable
of having fired his gun at it just to make believe there had been a
battle."

Pierre restrained a cry of pain. What! they did not even believe in his
mirror now! They would soon assert that he had not heard a bullet whiz
past his ear. The legend of the Rougons would be blotted out; nothing
would remain of their glory. But his torture was not at an end yet.
The groups manifested their hostility as heartily as they had displayed
their approval on the previous evening. A retired hatter, an old man
seventy years of age, whose factory had formerly been in the Faubourg,
ferreted out the Rougons' past history. He spoke vaguely, with the
hesitation of a wandering memory, about the