spoke, a gleam shot from her dim eyes. La Sarriette, however,
laughed and wagged her little face, bright with the freshness of the
morning air.

"You should hear what Jules says of those who speak against the Empire,"
she remarked. "They ought all to be thrown into the Seine, he told me;
for it seems there isn't a single respectable person amongst them."

"Oh! there's no harm done, of course, so long as only people like myself
hear their foolish talk," resumed Mademoiselle Saget. "I'd rather cut
my hand off, you know, than make mischief. Last night now, for instance,
Monsieur Quenu was saying----"

She again paused. Lisa had started slightly.

"Monsieur Quenu was saying that the Ministers and Deputies and all who
are in power ought to be shot."

At this Lisa turned sharply, her face quite white and her hands clenched
beneath her apron.

"Quenu said that?" she curtly asked.

"Yes, indeed, and several other similar things that I can't recollect
now. I heard him myself. But don't distress yourself like that, Madame
Quenu. You know very well that I sha'n't breathe a word. I'm quite old
enough to know what might harm a man if it came out. Oh, no; it will go
no further."

Lisa had recovered her equanimity. She took a pride in the happy
peacefulness of her home; she would not acknowledge that there had ever
been the slightest difference between herself and her husband. And so
now she shrugged her shoulders and said with a smile: "Oh, it's all a
pack of foolish nonsense."

When the three others were in the street together they agreed that
handsome Lisa had pulled a very doleful face; and they were unanimously
of opinion that the mysterious goings-on of the cousin, the Mehudins,
Gavard, and the Quenus would end in trouble. Madame Lecoeur inquired
what was done to the people who got arrested "for politics," but on this
point Mademoiselle Saget could not enlighten her; she only knew that
they were never seen again--no, never. And this induced La Sarriette to
suggest that perhaps they were thrown into the Seine, as Jules had said
they ought to be.

Lisa avoided all reference to the subject at breakfast and dinner that
day; and even in the evening, when Florent and Quenu went off together
to Monsieur Lebigre's, there was no unwonted severity in her glance. On
that particular evening, however, the question of framing a constitution
for the future came under discussion, and it was one o'clock in the
morning before the po