HIS EXCELLENCY

[SON EXC. EUGÈNE ROUGON]

BY

ÉMILE ZOLA

WITH A PREFACE BY ERNEST A. VIZETELLY

SOLE AUTHORISED ENGLISH VERSION

LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1897

[CONTENTS]

[PREFACE]

We live at such high speed nowadays, and the Second French Empire is already so far behind us, that I am inclined to place Son Excellence Eugène Rougon in the category of historical novels. In some degree it certainly belongs to another class of fiction, the political novel, which in Great Britain sprouted, blossomed, and faded away contemporaneously with the career of Benjamin Disraeli. But, unlike Disraeli's work, it does not deal with theories or possibilities. Whatever political matter it may contain is a record of incidents which really occurred, of intrigues which were matured, of opinions which were more or less publicly expressed while the third Napoleon was ruling France. In my opinion, with all due allowance for its somewhat limited range of subject, Son Excellence Eugène Rougon is the one existing French novel which gives the reader a fair general idea of what occurred in political spheres at an important period of the Empire. It is a book for foreigners and particularly Englishmen to read with profit, for there are yet many among them who cherish the delusion that Napoleon III. was not only a good and true friend of England, but also a wise and beneficent ruler of France; and this, although his reign began with bloodshed and trickery, was prolonged by means of innumerable subterfuges, and ended in woe, horror, and disgrace.

The present translation of M. Zola's book was not made by me, but I have revised it somewhat severely with the object of ensuring greater accuracy in all the more important passages, and of improving the work generally. And, subject to those limitations which deference for the opinion of the majority of English-speaking readers has imposed on the translator and myself, I consider that this rendering fully conveys the purport of the original. During the work of revision I was struck by the great care shown by M. Zola in the handling of his subject. There is, of course, some fiction in the book; but, again and again, page after page, I have found a simple record of fact, just deftly adapted to suit the requirements of the narrative. The history of the Second Empire is probably as familiar to me as it is to M. Zola himself—for, like him, I grew to manhood in its midst, with better opportunities, too, than he had of observing certain of its distinguishing features—and thus I have been able to identify innumerable incidents and allusions, and trace to their very source some of the most curious passages in the book. And it is for this reason, and by virtue of my own knowledge and experience, that I claim for His Excellency the merit of reflecting things as they really were in the earlier years of the Imperial régime.

Against one surmise the reader must be cautioned. Napoleon III. and the Empress Eugénie figure in the following pages without disguise; and wherever the name of the Count de Marsy appears, that of the infamous Duke de Morny—whom Sir Robert Peel, in one of his most slashing speeches, did not scruple to call the greatest jobber in Europe—may be read without a moment's hesitation. But his Excellency Eugène Rougon is not, as many critics and others have supposed, a mere portrait or caricature of his Excellency Eugène Rouher, the famous Vice-Emperor of history. Symbolism is to be found in every one of M. Zola's novels, and Rougon, in his main lines, is but the symbol of a principle, or, to be accurate, the symbol of a certain form of the principle of authority. His face is Rouher's, like his build and his favourite gesture; but with Rouher's words, actions, opinions, and experiences are blended those of half-a-dozen other personages. The forgotten ones! the men whose names were once a terror, but who are as little remembered, as little known, in France to-day, as the satraps of the vanished Eastern realms, as the eunuchs who ruled the civilised world on behalf of effete Emperors when Byzantium, amidst all her splendour, was, like Paris, tottering to ruin. Baroche, Billault, Delangle, Fialin alias Persigny, Espinasse—there is something of each of these, as well as something of Rouher, in the career of Eugène Rougon as narrated by M. Zola. Words which one or another of these men wrote or uttered, things which one or another of them actually did, are fathered upon Rougon. He embodies them all: he is the incarnation of that craving, that lust for power which impelled so many men of ability to throw all principle to the winds and become the instruments of an abominable system of government. And his transformation at the close of the story is in strict accordance with historical facts. He salutes the rise of the so-called 'Liberal' Empire in the very words of Billault—the most tyrannical of all the third Napoleon's 'band.'

Rougon has a band of his own—they all had bands in those days, like the Emperor himself; and since that time we have in a similar way seen Gambetta and his queue and Boulanger and his clique. And, curiously enough, as in Rougon's case, those historic coteries were in each instance the prime factors in their leader's overthrow. Thus we have only to turn to the recorded incidents of history to realise the full truth of M. Zola's account of the Rougon gang. It is a masterly account, instinct with accuracy, as real as life itself.

And Rougon, on whatever patchwork basis he may have been built, is a living figure, one of a nature so direct, so free from intricacy, that few ignorant of the truth would imagine him to be a patchwork creation at all. Surely, to have so fully assimilated in one personage the characteristics of half-a-dozen known men in such wise that, without any clashing of individual proclivities, the whole six are truthfully embodied in one, is a signal proof of that form of genius which lies in the infinite capacity for taking pains.

If we pass from Rougon to Marsy we find another embodiment of that principle of authority which both help to represent. Rougon, as M. Zola says, is the shaggy fist which deals the knock-down blow, while Marsy is the gloved hand which stabs or throttles. Years ago, when I was unacquainted with this comparison, and was contrasting the rising genius of Emile Zola with that of his great and splendid rival, Alphonse Daudet, I likened M. Zola to the fist and M. Daudet to the rapier. A French critic had previously called the former a cactus and the latter an Arab steed. The cactus comparison, as applied to M. Zola, was a very happy one; for I defy anybody, even the smuggest of hypocrites, to read M. Zola's works without some prickings of conscience. And verily I believe that most of the opposition to the author of the Rougon-Macquart series arises from that very cause.

But I must return to Marsy, though he need not detain me long, for he only flits across the following pages with his regal air and sardonic smile. For a fuller and, in some degree, a more favourable portrait, one must turn to the pages of Daudet, who of course could not write ill of the man to whom he owed his start in life. In the present work, slight as is the sketch, Marsy, or Morny, the name signifies little, is shown as he really was—venal, immoral, witty, and exquisitely polite. Then there is Delestang, who, physically, represents M. Magne; while in like way Beulin-d'Orchère, the judge whose sister marries Rougon, is copied from Delangle, whose bulldog face is alluded to by most of the anecdotiers of the Empire. La Rouquette is, by name at all events, a connection of Forcade de la Roquette—a step-brother of Marshal St. Arnaud—who rose to influence and power in the latter days of the Empire; and M. de Plouguern, the profligate old senator, reminds me in some respects of that cynical and eccentric Anglomaniac, the Marquis de Boissy. The various members of Rougon's band are sketched from less-known people. Kahn I cannot quite identify, but I suspect him to be the deputy who was mixed up in the scandal of the Graissesac railway line, to which M. Zola refers as the line from Niort to Angers. However, there is no member of the band that I like better than Béjuin, the silent deputy, who never asks a favour, and yet has favours continually showered upon him. I have known a man of that character connected with English public life.

To return to those of M. Zola's masculine characters who may be identified with real personages, none is more genially, more truthfully, portrayed than Chevalier Rusconi, the Italian or, more correctly, Sardinian, Minister in Paris. Here we have that most amiable of men, Chevalier Nigra, of whom Prosper Mérimée once said in my presence: 'C'est un bohème tombé dans la diplomatie.' Withal, Chevalier Nigra—who, though very aged, still serves his country, I believe, with distinction at Vienna—was a very good diplomatist indeed; one of Cavour's right-hand men, one of those to whom Italy owes union and liberty. And what a career was his in France, and what memoirs might he not write! Few diplomatists ever had stranger experiences: from all the secret plotting which so largely helped to make Victor Emmanuel King of Italy to the surveillance so adroitly practised over the Empress Eugénie, whose support of Pope Pius IX. was ever an obstacle to Italian aspirations. For her Nigra-Rusconi became the handsome, gallant courtier; he was a musician, could sing and dance, was proficient in every society accomplishment, and before long the Empress's Monday receptions at the Tuileries, those petits Lundis enlivened by the wit of Mérimée, were never complete without him. Yet, all the time, a stern duel was being fought between him and the consort of Napoleon III. And so long as her husband ruled France she kept her adversary at bay. Rome, capital of Italy, was but the fruit of Sedan. Yet Nigra was chivalrous. When the bitter hour of reckoning arrived, he stood by the woman who had so long thwarted him. He and Prince Richard Metternich smuggled her out of the Tuileries in order that she might escape to England, beyond the reach of the infuriated Parisians.

We catch a few glimpses of the Empress in the pages of His Excellency. We find her at Compiègne surrounded by the ladies of her Court; we also see her riding in state to Notre Dame to attend the baptism of her infant son. A great day it was, when the Empire reached its zenith: a gorgeous ceremony, too, attended by every pomp. On referring to the newspapers of the time I have found M. Zola's description of the function to be remarkably accurate. We espy the Man of December raising the Prince Imperial in his arms, presenting the heir of the Napoleons to the assembled multitude—even as once before, and in the same cathedral, the victor of Austerlitz presented the infant King of Rome to the homage of France. But neither the son of Marie-Louise nor the son of Eugénie de Montijo was destined to reign. And what a mockery now seems that grand baptismal ceremony, as well as all the previous discussion in the Corps Législatif, of which M. Zola gives such an animated account. What a lesson, too, for human pride, and, in the sequel, what a punishment for human perversity! I often read, I often hear, words of compassion for the Prince Imperial's widowed mother, but they cannot move me to pity, for I think of all the hundreds, all the thousands, of mothers who lost their sons in that most wicked and abominable of wars in the declaration of which the Empress Eugénie played so prominent a part. Her evil influence triumphed in that hour of indecision which came upon her ailing husband; and her war—ma guerre à moi—ensued, with fatal consequences, which even yet disturb the world. And so, however great, however bitter, her punishment, who will dare to say that it was undeserved?

But whilst I consider the Empress to have been, in more than one momentous circumstance, the evil genius of France, even as Marie Antoinette was the evil genius of the crumbling Legitimate monarchy, I am not one of those who believe in all the malicious reports of her to be found in la chronique scandaleuse. That she threw herself at the Emperor's head and compelled him to marry her, may be true, but that is all that can be alleged against her with any show of reason. She undoubtedly proved a faithful wife to a man who was notoriously a most unfaithful husband. There are those who may yet remember how one November morning in the year 1860 the Empress arrived in London, scarcely attended, drove in a growler to Claridge's Hotel, and thence hurried off to Scotland. Her flight from the Tuileries had caused consternation there. For four days the Moniteur remained ominously silent, and when it at last spoke out it was to announce with the utmost brevity that her Majesty was in very delicate health, and had betaken herself to Scotland—in November!—for a change of air. This ridiculous explanation deceived nobody. The simple truth was that the Empress had obtained proof positive of another of her husband's infidelities.

It is needless for me to enlarge upon the subject; I have only mentioned it in corroboration of the portrait of Napoleon III. which M. Zola traces in His Excellency. The Emperor was an immoral man—the Beauharnais if not the Bonaparte blood coursed in his veins—and the names of several of his mistresses are perfectly well known. For the rest, M. Zola pictures him very accurately: moody, reserved, with vague humanitarian notions, and as great a predilection for secret police spying as was evinced by Louis XV. The intrigue between him and M. Zola's heroine, Clorinde, is no extravagant notion. Here again a large amount of actual fact is skilfully blended with a little fiction. Clorinde Balbi at once suggests the beautiful Countess de Castiglione; but in the account of her earlier career one finds a suggestion of the behaviour which innumerable scandalmongers impute—wrongly, I believe—to the Empress Eugénie. In Clorinde's mother, the Contessa Balbi, there is more than a suggestion of Madame de Montijo, who was undoubtedly an adventuress of good birth. Both the Balbis are very cleverly drawn; they typify a class of women that has long flourished in France, where it still has some notorious representatives. It is a class of great popularity with novelists and playwrights, possibly because contemporary history has furnished so many examples of it, from the aforementioned Countess de Castiglione who laid siege to Napoleon III. in order to induce him to further the designs of Cavour and Victor Emmanuel, to the Baroness de Kaulla, who ensnared poor General de Cissey that she might extract from him the military and Foreign Office secrets of France. And with half-a-dozen historical instances in my mind, I find no exaggeration in the character of Clorinde as portrayed in His Excellency.

Having thus passed M. Zola's personages in review, I would now refer to the actual scenes which he describes. The account of the sitting of the Corps Législatif, given in the opening chapter, is as accurate as the official report in the Moniteur of that time. The report on the estimates for the baptism of the Prince Imperial is taken from the Moniteur verbatim. In Chapter III., when the Balbis are shown at home, the description of the house in the Champs Élysées is assuredly that of the famous niche à Fidèle. The baptism, described in Chapter IV., is, as I have already mentioned, very faithfully dealt with. I have by me an account of the day's proceedings written for the Illustrated Times by my uncle, the late Frank Vizetelly, who was killed in the Soudan; and I find him laying stress on the very points which M. Zola brings into prominence, often indeed using almost the same words. However, this is but one of the curious coincidences on which malicious critics found ridiculous charges of plagiarism; for I am convinced that M. Zola never saw the Illustrated Times in his life, and moreover he knows no English. Passing to Chapter V., which narrates the horse-whipping administered by Clorinde to Rougon—an incident which it has been necessary to 'tone down' in this English version—I may remark that this is founded on contemporary scandal, according to which the true scene of the affair would be the Imperial stables at Compiègne, and the recipient of the whipping none other than Napoleon III. himself. In Chapter VI., the scheme for reclaiming the waste Landes of Gascony is well-known matter of history. Suggested to the Emperor, this scheme was ultimately taken up by him with considerable vigour, and though it was never fully carried out it may rank as one of the few really beneficent enterprises of the Imperial régime.

In the ensuing chapter we come to Compiègne, and here I have found nothing to call in question. I was twice at Compiègne myself under the Empire, of course not as a guest, but in connection with work for the Illustrated London News, which brought my father and myself into constant intercourse with the Imperial Court over a term of years. And, judging by my personal recollections, I consider M. Zola's picture of life at Compiègne to be a very true one. He has been attacked, however, for having based his descriptions on a work called Les Confidences d'un Valet de Chambre. Some few years ago Mr. Andrew Lang, in criticising the French original of His Excellency in an English review, sternly reproved M. Zola for relying, in any degree, upon such back-stairs gossip. But a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Whatever its title may be, Les Confidences d'un Valet de Chambre was not written by a valet de chambre at all. I have a copy of it among my collection of books relating to the Empire. It is brimful of information, bald in style, but severely accurate. As for its authorship, these are the facts: The Court's sojourn at Compiègne, which lasted for a month or six weeks every autumn—having been suggested in part by the Voyages à Fontainebleau of the ancien régime, and in part by the Empress's partiality for the place where she had been wooed and won by Napoleon—had long been the subject of tittle-tattle among the Parisians. The newspapers dared not publish any of the current scandal for fear of being immediately suppressed; however, the impression prevailed, especially among the lower classes, that the Court only betook itself to Compiègne to indulge in a month's orgie far from such prying eyes as might have spied upon any similar excesses at the Tuileries. So many reports circulated, that it was at last deemed expedient to give the entrée to the château to a Court chronicler, who should report what actually took place there, and in this way show the Parisians how foolish were the stories circulated through the cafés and wine-shops. The soi-disant valet de chambre was then, purely and simply, a journalist recommended by Théophile Gautier; and his accounts of the Court at Compiègne were published, in part at all events, by the Paris Figaro, and were subsequently collected in volume form. There is no scandal of any kind in the book: it simply chronicles the day's doings, with descriptions of the various rooms of the château, and accounts of certain Court customs thrown in here and there. Nobody desirous of describing life in Imperial circles at second-hand could do without this little volume, and it is only natural that M. Zola should have consulted it. Its general accuracy I can, by personal knowledge, fully confirm. Among the various incidents which M. Zola has adapted from it I may mention that of the aged dignitary who fondles first the Prince Imperial and afterwards the Emperor's dog Nero. This aged dignitary is a little bit of invention, the real hero of the incident having been a certain M. Leciel, an adjoint to the Mayor of Compiègne, who subsequently got into hot water with the Empress owing to his partiality for irreverent witticisms which usually turned upon his own name. In English we might have called him Mr. Heaven. His residence at Compiègne adjoined the somewhat dirty little inn of the Holy Ghost, which it was at one time proposed to demolish in order to build a new theatre, which was to have been connected with the château by means of a suspension bridge. This gave M. Leciel an opportunity for a most deplorable pun concerning himself and the inn, which he calmly repeated to the Empress, who was considerably incensed thereat. And in the result M. Leciel received no further invitations to the château.

But I must pass from Compiègne to M. Zola's next chapter, in which he deals, indirectly, with the famous Orsini conspiracy. Here we find a story of how the authorities were warned of the approaching attempt at assassination—a story which I have heard told by M. Claude, the famous ex-chief of the detective police, when I was his neighbour at Vincennes in 1881. Something similar, I believe, figures in the so-called Mémoires de M. Claude, but these, based on Claude's papers, which were 'worked up' after his death by an imaginative penny-a-liner, are worthy of little or no credence. It is, however, certain that the French authorities were not only warned from London about the Orsini plot, but obtained additional information in the manner described by M. Zola, and that the incident became the stepping-stone of Claude's subsequent fortune. In His Excellency the Orsini affair is followed by Rougon's return to power. For Rougon one should here read General Espinasse, to whom the Emperor undoubtedly addressed the words: 'No moderation; you must make yourself feared.' All that M. Zola says of the wholesale arrests of French Republicans at that time is quite true. Even the brief interview of the Prefect of the Somme with Rougon is based on historical documents; while that in which figures the editor whose newspaper publishes a story of feminine infidelity is derived from the autobiography of Henri de Villemessant.

In Chapter X., which deals with Rougon's experiences at Niort, we have the story of the arrest of the old notary Martineau. This, again, is true, line for line, almost word for word; but the incident really occurred at Charost, not Coulonges, and the notary's real name was Lebrun. He was a cousin of the illustrious parliamentarian, Michel of Bourges. And once again, fact is piled upon fact in Chapter XI., which describes the Ministerial Council at St. Cloud. The project for the creation of a new nobility emanated from Persigny and Magne; numerous documents concerning it were discovered in the Emperor's study after Sedan; and I may here remark en passant that M. Zola has frequently and rightly availed himself of those Papiers trouvés aux Tuileries as published by the Government of National Defence. And he carries accuracy to such a point that in Chapter XIII., when he is describing Rougon's resignation, he dates the Emperor's acceptance of it from Fontainebleau, as actually happened in the case of Espinasse; and gives us a charity fair at the orangery of the Tuileries as the scene of the minister's receipt of that acceptance—again an historical incident. And finally, in the last chapter, which, like the opening one, deals with the Corps Législatif, we read the very words of Jules Favre and Billault. Moreover, when we here find a clerical deputy exclaiming, 'It displeases me that proud Venice, the Queen of the Adriatic, should become the obscure vassal of Turin,' we must not attribute the remark to M. Zola's imagination; for those words were spoken in that very debate by Kolb. Bernard, who, with Vicomte Lemercier, led the parliamentary group which opposed the Emperor's liberal policy in Italy.

Some readers and some reviewers may think that I have acted somewhat unkindly to M. Zola in thus partially dissecting Son Excellence Eugène Rougon, in showing how little it is a work of imagination and how much a work based upon fact. I could have given many more instances than those I have quoted, but this preface has already stretched to such length that I must stay my hand. I would mention, however, that I could in a similar way dissect most volumes of the Rougon-Macquart series, for these books are novels in their arrangement only. Even when they do not deal with historical personages and publicly recorded facts, they are based on incidents which really happened, and more frequently than otherwise portray people who really lived. The whole series constitutes a truthful, life-like synthesis of a period; and if certain readers recoil from some of the portraits contained in it, this is simply because they will not face the monstrosities of human life. And far from doing my good and clear friend, the author of this imperishable literary edifice, an unkindness by pointing out where and how he has borrowed and adapted, I conceive that I am rendering him a service, for how often has not his accuracy been impugned! Moreover, it is not upon power of imagination that he particularly prides himself—though imagination, and of a high order, is undoubtedly a feature of his genius—he claims rank chiefly by reason of his power of delineation, his power of analysing, blending and grouping facts and characteristics. In one word, he is a Realist. And if he is to describe people as they have lived, incidents as they have really occurred, how can he do otherwise than turn to the records of actual experience, to the unchallenged descriptions of historical episodes? Plagiarism forsooth! When every situation, every dilemma, every experience, every characteristic and every emotion that can enter into the history of the human race have been dealt with time without number by thousands of writers of fiction, either in the form of the novel or the drama! How, then, is it possible for anybody, however great his genius, to be absolutely and perfectly original? Such originality is dead. Let us bow to its grave; we shall never see it more. The only genius in literature which can remain to the writers of to-day and to-morrow is that genius which may lie in the handling of one's materials. The human range of ideas is limited; even madmen—so closely allied to men of genius—cannot carry their fancy beyond certain bounds; and thus the old saws must crop up again and again, distinguished one from another simply by mode of treatment. And as for such charges of plagiarism that may have been brought against M. Zola, I apply to him the words which Molière applied to himself: Il prend son bien où il le trouve. And I will add that he does well in following this course, for over all he casts the magnificent mantle of powers which none of his contemporaries can equal.

E. A. V.

MERTON, SURREY, April 1897.

[HIS EXCELLENCY]

I

THE CORPS LÉGISLATIF

For a moment the President remained standing amidst the slight commotion which his entrance had caused. Then he took his seat, saying carelessly and in an undertone: 'The sitting has commenced.'

He next began to arrange the legislative bills lying upon the desk in front of him. On his left, a short-sighted clerk, with his nose close to the paper he held, read the minutes of the previous sitting in a rapid and confused manner, none of the deputies paying attention to him. In the buzzing noise that filled the Chamber, these minutes were only heard by the ushers, who maintained a very dignified and decorous bearing which contrasted with the lounging attitudes of the deputies.

There were not a hundred members present. Some were reclining in their red velvet-covered seats, with listless eyes, already half-asleep. Others, leaning over their desks, as though wearied by the compulsory labour of a public sitting, were beating a gentle tattoo on the mahogany with their finger-tips. Through the ceiling-window, which revealed a crescent of grey sky, the light of a rainy May afternoon streamed down perpendicularly upon the pompous severity of the Chamber. It spread over the desks in a sheet of gloomy ruddiness, brightening into a rosy glow here and there where some seat remained unoccupied; while, behind the President, the statues and sculpture-work showed in clear white patches.

One of the deputies on the third row to the right still remained standing in the narrow passage between the seats. He was rubbing his rough fringe of grizzly beard with a thoughtful air, but as an usher came by, he stopped him and asked a question in an undertone.

'No, Monsieur Kahn,' replied the usher, 'the President of the Council of State has not yet arrived.'

M. Kahn thereupon sat down, and, abruptly turning to his neighbour on the left, inquired, 'Tell me, Béjuin, have you seen Rougon this morning?'

M. Béjuin, a small, thin man of dark complexion and silent demeanour, raised his head nervously as though his thoughts were altogether elsewhere. He had drawn out the slide of his desk, and was writing a letter on some blue paper with a business heading formed of these words: 'Béjuin and Co. The Saint-Florent Cut-Glass Works.'

'Rougon?' he repeated. 'No, I haven't seen him. I did not have time to go over to the State Council.'

Then he quietly reverted to his work, consulting a memorandum-book, and beginning a second letter, amidst the confused buzzing murmur of the clerk, who was finishing his reading of the minutes.

M. Kahn leant back in his seat and crossed his arms. He had a face with strongly marked features, and his big but well-shaped nose testified to a Jewish descent. He seemed out of sorts. He gazed upwards at the gilt rose-work on the ceiling and listened to the plashing of a shower which at that moment burst down upon the skylight; and then with vaguely wondering eyes he seemed to be examining the intricate ornamentation of the great wall in front of him. His glance lingered for a few seconds upon two panels hung with green velvet and decked with gilt borders and emblems. Then, after he had scanned the columns between which allegorical statues of Liberty and Public Order showed their marble faces and pupil-less eyes, his attention was turned to a curtain of green silk which concealed a fresco representing King Louis Philippe taking the oath to the Constitution.

By this time the clerk had sat down; nevertheless, the scene remained one of noisy confusion. The President was still leisurely arranging his papers. He again and again pressed his hand on his bell, but its loud ringing failed to check any of the private conversations that were going on. However, he at last stood up amidst all the hubbub and for a moment remained waiting and silent.

'Gentlemen,' he began, 'I have received a letter——' Then he stopped short to ring his bell again, and once more kept silent, his grave, bored face looking down from the monumental desk which spread out beneath him with panels of red marble bordered with white. His frock-coat, which was buttoned up, showed conspicuously against the bas-relief behind him, rising like a black bar between the peplum-robed figures of Agriculture and Industry with antique profiles.

'Gentlemen,' he resumed, when he had succeeded in obtaining something like silence, 'I have received a letter from Monsieur de Lamberthon, in which he apologises for not being able to attend to-day's sitting.'

At this a laugh resounded on the sixth row of seats in front of the desk. It came from a deputy who could not have been more than twenty-eight years old. He was fair and effeminately pretty, and was trying with his white hands to stifle an outburst of girlish rippling laughter. One of his colleagues, a man of huge build, came up to him and whispered in his ear: 'Is it really true that Lamberthon has found his wife? Tell me all about it, La Rouquette.'

The President, however, had taken up a handful of papers. He was speaking in monotonous tones, and stray fragments of sentences reached the far end of the Chamber. 'There are applications for leave of absence from Monsieur Blachet, Monsieur Buquin-Lecomte, Monsieur de la Villardière—'

While the Chamber was granting these different requests, M. Kahn, who had probably grown weary of examining the green silk curtain stretched before the seditious portrait of Louis Philippe, turned to glance at the galleries. Above the wall of yellow marble veined with lake red, there was a gallery with hand-rests of amaranthine velvet spanning the spaces from one column to another; and higher up a mantle of embossed leather failed to conceal the gaps left by the suppression of a second tier of seats which had been assigned to journalists and the general public previous to the Empire. The narrow, gloomy boxes between the massive yellowish marble pillars, which stood in somewhat heavy splendour round the semicircle, were for the most part empty, although here and there they were brightened by the light-tinted toilettes of some ladies.

'Ah! so Colonel Jobelin has come!' murmured M. Kahn.

And forthwith he smiled at the colonel, who had perceived him. Colonel Jobelin was wearing the dark-blue frock-coat which he had adopted as a kind of civilian uniform ever since his retirement from the service. He sat quite alone in the questors' gallery, and his rosette as an officer of the Legion of Honour was so large as to look almost like the bow of a cravat.

But M. Kahn's eyes had already strayed to a young man and woman who were nestling in a corner of the gallery of the Council of State. The young man was continually bending his head and whispering to the young woman, who smiled with a gentle air, but did not turn to look at him, her eyes being fixed upon the allegorical figure of Public Order.

'I say, Béjuin,' M. Kahn remarked, nudging his colleague with his knee.

M. Béjuin, who was now busy with his fifth letter, again raised his head with an expression of absent-mindedness.

'Look up there,' continued M. Kahn; 'don't you see little Escorailles and pretty Madame Bouchard? I'll be bound he's making love to her. What eyes she's got! All Rougon's friends seem to have made a point of coming to-day. There's Madame Correur and the Charbonnels up there in the public gallery.'

However, the bell sounded again for some moments, and an usher called out in a fine bass voice: 'Silence, gentlemen!'

Then the deputies began to listen, and the President spoke the following words, not a syllable of which was lost: 'Monsieur Kahn asks permission to publish the speech which he delivered on the bill for the establishment of a municipal tax upon vehicles and horses in Paris.'

A murmur ran along the benches, and then the different conversations were resumed. Quitting his own place, M. La Rouquette came and sat down near M. Kahn. 'So you work for the people, eh?' he said playfully, and, without waiting for a reply, he added: 'You haven't seen or heard anything of Rougon, have you? Everyone is talking about the matter, but it seems that nothing is definitely settled yet.' Then he turned round and glanced at the clock. 'Twenty minutes past two already!' he exclaimed. 'Well, I should certainly be off now, if it were not for the reading of that confounded report. Is it really to come off to-day?'

'We have all been notified to that effect,' M. Kahn replied, 'and I have heard nothing of any change of plans. You had better remain. The 400,000 francs[1] for the baptism will be voted straight off.'

'No doubt,' said La Rouquette. 'Old General Legrain, who has lost the use of both legs, has had himself carried here by his servant, and is now in the Conference Hall waiting till the vote comes on. The Emperor is quite right in reckoning upon the devotion of the whole Corps Législatif. All our votes ought to be given him upon this solemn occasion.'

While speaking the young deputy did his utmost to assume the expression of a serious politician. His doll-like face, which was ornamented by a few pale hairs, wagged gravely over his collar, and he seemed to be relishing the flavour of the two last sentences he had uttered—sentences which he had remembered from somebody else's speech. Then he suddenly broke into a laugh. 'Good gracious!' he exclaimed, 'what frights those Charbonnels are!'

M. Kahn and himself thereupon began to make merry at the Charbonnels' expense. The wife was wearing an outrageous yellow shawl, and her husband sported a country-cut frock-coat which looked as though it had been hewn into shape with an axe. They were both very short, stout and red, and were eagerly pressing forward, with their chins almost resting upon the balustrade of the gallery in order to get a better view of the proceedings, which, judging by their blank, staring eyes, were utterly unintelligible to them.

'If Rougon gets the sack,' said La Rouquette, 'I wouldn't give a couple of sous for the Charbonnels' case. It will be just the same with Madame Correur.' Then he inclined his head towards M. Kahn's ear, and continued in a very low tone: 'You, now, who know Rougon, just tell me who and what that Madame Correur is. She formerly kept a lodging-house, didn't she? Rougon used to lodge with her, and it is even said that she lent him money. What does she do now?'

M. Kahn assumed a very grave expression and slowly rubbed his beard. 'Madame Correur is a highly respectable lady,' he replied curtly.

This answer checked La Rouquette's curiosity. He bit his lips with the expression of a school-boy who has just been lectured. For a moment they both looked in silence at Madame Correur, who was sitting near the Charbonnels. She was wearing a very showy dress of mauve silk, with a profusion of lace and ornaments. Her face showed too much colour, her forehead was covered with little fair dollish curls, and her plump neck, still very comely in spite of her eight-and-forty years, was fully exposed to view.

Just at this moment, however, the sudden sound of a door opening and a rustle of skirts at the far end of the Chamber caused all heads to turn. A tall girl exquisitely beautiful, but strangely dressed in an ill-made sea-green satin gown, had entered the box assigned to the diplomatic body, followed by an elderly lady in black.

'Ah! there's the fair Clorinde!' said M. La Rouquette, who had risen to bow at random.

M. Kahn had also risen; but he stooped towards M. Béjuin, who was now enclosing his letters in envelopes: 'Countess Balbi and her daughter are there,' he said. 'I am going up to ask them if they have seen Rougon.'

The President meanwhile had taken a fresh handful of papers from his desk. Without ceasing his perusal of them he cast a glance at the beautiful Clorinde Balbi, whose arrival had given rise to a buzz of comments in the Chamber. Then, while he passed the papers one by one to a clerk, he said in monotonous tones, never even pausing to punctuate his words: 'Presentation of a bill to continue certain extra duties in the town of Lille ... of a bill to unite into one single commune the communes of Doulevant-le-Petit and Ville-en-Blaisais (Haute-Marne)——'

When M. Kahn came back again he seemed quite disconsolate. 'Really, no one appears to have seen anything of him,' he said to his colleagues, Béjuin and La Rouquette, whom he met at the foot of the semicircle. 'I hear that the Emperor sent for him yesterday evening, but I haven't been able to learn the result of their interview. There is nothing so provoking as being unable to get a satisfactory account of what happens.'

La Rouquette turned round and whispered into M. Béjuin's ear: 'Poor Kahn is terribly afraid lest Rougon should get into disfavour at the Tuileries. He might fish for his railway if that should occur.'

In reply M. Béjuin, who was of a taciturn disposition, said very gravely: 'The day when Rougon retires from the Council of State, we shall all be losers.' Then he beckoned to one of the ushers and gave him the letters which he had just written, to post.

The three deputies remained standing on the left of the President's desk, discreetly discussing the disfavour with which Rougon was threatened. It was an intricate story. A distant relation of the Empress, one Señor Rodriguez, had been claiming a sum of two million francs from the French Government since the year 1808. During the war with Spain, a vessel freighted with sugar and coffee, and belonging to this Rodriguez, who was a shipowner, had been taken in the Bay of Biscay by a French frigate, the Vigilante, and brought to Brest. Acting upon information received from a local commission, the administrative officials had declared the capture to be a valid one, without referring the matter to the Prize Committee. Rodriguez, however, had promptly appealed to the Council of State, and, after his death, his son, under every successive Government, had vainly tried to bring the matter to an issue until the day came when a word from his distant cousin, Eugénie de Montijo, now all-powerful, had secured the insertion of his action in the official cause list.

Of this the three deputies talked, while the President's monotonous voice still resounded above their heads: 'Presentation of a bill authorising the department of Calvados to borrow 300,000 francs ... of a bill authorising the town of Amiens to borrow 200,000 francs for the purpose of making new promenades ... of a bill authorising the department of Côtes-du-Nord to borrow 345,000 francs to cover the deficiencies in the revenues of the last five years.'

'The truth is,' said M. Kahn, again lowering his voice, 'that this Rodriguez had a very artful method of managing his business. He and a son-in-law of his, residing at New York, were the owners of vessels which sailed either under the American flag or the Spanish, according as one or the other might subject them to the least risk during their passage. Rougon told me that the captured vessel was exclusively the property of Rodriguez, and that there is no valid ground whatever for the claims that are made.'

'And then,' interposed M. Béjuin, 'the steps that were taken by the officials cannot be impugned. The administrative officer at Brest was perfectly right in declaring the capture a valid one in accordance with the customs of the port, without referring the matter to the Prize Committee.'

Then they lapsed into silence for a moment while La Rouquette, with his back resting against the marble wall, raised his head, and tried to attract the attention of the fair Clorinde. 'But,' he asked naïvely, 'why does Rougon object to the two millions being paid to Rodriguez? What difference would it make to him?'

'It is a matter of conscience,' said M. Kahn solemnly.

M. La Rouquette glanced at his colleagues one after the other, but, seeing them both so grave, he did not even venture to smile.

'Then, too,' continued M. Kahn, as though he were dwelling upon some thought which he had not expressed aloud, 'Rougon has had a good deal of bother since Marsy has been Minister of the Interior. They have never been able to get on together. Rougon himself told me that, if it had not been for his attachment to the Emperor, for whom he has already done so much, he would long ago have retired into private life. He no longer seems welcome at the Tuileries, and he feels that a change has become necessary for him.'

'He is acting like an honourable man,' remarked M. Béjuin.

'Yes, indeed,' said M. La Rouquette, with a wise look, 'if he wants to retire, the opportunity is a good one. All the same, his friends will be greatly grieved. Just look at the colonel up there, with his anxious face! He has been hoping to fasten the ribbon of Commander of the Legion of Honour round his neck on the 15th of next August. And pretty Madame Bouchard, too, swore that worthy Monsieur Bouchard should be head of department at the Ministry of the Interior before six months were over. Little Escorailles, Rougon's pet, was to put the nomination under Monsieur Bouchard's napkin on Madame's birthday. But where have they got to, pretty Madame Bouchard and little Escorailles?'

The three deputies looked about for them, and at last discovered them ensconced at the back of the gallery, in the front part of which they had been seated at the opening of the sitting. They had taken refuge in the gloom there behind a bald old gentleman, and were both very quiet, though very red.

However, the President was now coming to the end of his reading.

'A bill,' said he, 'to sanction an increase in the rate of interest upon a loan authorised by an Act of the 9th of June, 1853, and to impose an extraordinary rate in the department of La Manche.'

Just then M. Kahn ran forward to meet a deputy who was entering the Chamber, and as he brought him along he exclaimed, 'Here is Monsieur de Combelot. He will give us some news.'

M. de Combelot, an imperial chamberlain whom the department of the Landes had chosen as deputy upon the formally expressed desire of the Emperor, bowed with a discreet air while waiting to be questioned. He was a tall, handsome man, with a very white skin, and an inky black beard which had been the means of winning him great favour among the ladies.

'Well,' asked M. Kahn, 'what do they say at the Tuileries? What has the Emperor decided upon?'

'Well, indeed,' replied M. de Combelot in a guttural tone, 'they say a good many things. The Emperor has the warmest friendship for the President of the Council of State. Their interview was undoubtedly of the most cordial nature. Yes, indeed, most cordial.'

Then he stopped, after carefully weighing his words, as it were, so as to satisfy himself that he had not said too much.

'Then the resignation is withdrawn?' asked M. Kahn, with glistening eyes.

'I did not say that,' replied the chamberlain, uneasily. 'I know nothing about it. You understand that my position is a peculiar one——'

He did not finish what he was going to say, but contented himself with smiling, and then hurried off to take his seat. M. Kahn shrugged his shoulders, and remarked to M. La Rouquette, 'But you, surely, ought to be posted on what is going on. Doesn't your sister, Madame de Llorentz, give you any information?'

'Oh, my sister is even more reserved than Monsieur de Combelot,' replied the young deputy, with a laugh. 'Since she has become one of the ladies-in-waiting, she has put on quite a minister's gravity; though yesterday, indeed, she assured me that the resignation would be accepted. By the way, I can tell you a funny story in connection with this matter. It appears that some lady was sent to Rougon to try to influence him. Now, you would never guess what Rougon did! He turned her out of doors, although she was a delicious creature!'

'Rougon is a very steady fellow,' M. Béjuin declared solemnly.

M. La Rouquette shook with laughter, and, protesting against M. Béjuin's estimate of Rougon, asserted that he could have disproved it by evidence had he chosen. 'And so, Madame Correur, for instance,' said he.

'Pooh! you don't know the truth of that story,' replied M. Kahn.

'And the fair Clorinde?'

'Nonsense, nonsense! Rougon is much too clever a fellow to forget himself with such a wild creature as that!'

Then the three men drew closer, and talked on without any mincing of words. They repeated the stories which were told about those two Italian women—mother and daughter—who were semi-adventuresses and semi-great ladies, and were to be met everywhere, at all parties and gatherings, at the houses of state ministers, in the stage-boxes of minor theatres, on the sands at fashionable watering-places, and even in out-of-the-way hostelries. The mother, it was said, had been the mistress of a royal personage; and the daughter, with an ignorance of French customs and etiquette which had earned her the reputation of being an eccentric, badly brought-up wench, galloped about on horseback till she foundered her mounts, made a display of her dirty stockings and damaged boots on rainy days, and looked around her for a husband with the boldest of smiles. M. La Rouquette told how she had come one night to a ball at the Sardinian Minister's, in the character of the huntress Diana, with so scanty a costume that she had been all but asked in marriage the next morning by old Monsieur de Nougarède, a profligate senator. During the narration of this story, the three deputies cast frequent glances at the fair Clorinde, who, in spite of the regulations, was examining the members of the Chamber one after another through a large pair of opera-glasses.

'No, no!' M. Kahn repeated, 'Rougon would never be such a fool! He says, though, that she is very intelligent, and he has nicknamed her "Mademoiselle Machiavelli." She amuses him, but that's all.'

'At the same time Rougon is wrong in not marrying,' said M. Béjuin. 'It settles a man.'

Then they all three set to work to discuss the sort of woman that it was desirable Rougon should marry. She ought to be a woman of some age, thirty-five at the least, they said, rich, and competent to maintain her house on a footing of high decorum.

Hubbub still prevailed in the Chamber, and the three deputies became so absorbed in the stories they were telling, that they ceased to notice what was taking place around them. Away in the distance, the voices of ushers could be faintly heard calling out, 'To the sitting, gentlemen, to the sitting.'

Fresh deputies were entering from all sides by way of the folding doors of massive mahogany, whose panels gleamed with golden stars. The Chamber, previously half empty, was now gradually filling. The little scattered groups of members talking to each other from one row of seats to another, with an expression of weariness on their faces, or dozing, or trying to conceal their yawns, were now disappearing amid the increasing crowd and general shaking of hands. As the members took their seats, they exchanged smiles; there was a general, almost family likeness about them. By the expression of their faces one and all seemed impressed by the duties they had to fulfil. A stout man, on the last row to the left, had fallen asleep, but was awakened by his neighbour; and, when the latter whispered a few words in his ear, he hastily rubbed his eyes, and assumed a more decorous attitude. The sitting, after dragging on wearily through a series of petty tedious details, was at last about to become supremely interesting.

M. Kahn and his two colleagues were being gradually driven towards their seats by the increasing crowd, almost without being aware of it. They went on with their conversation, every now and then suppressing a laugh. M. La Rouquette began a fresh story about the fair Clorinde. She had taken a strange whim into her head one day, he said; it was to have her room hung with black, spangled with silver tears, and to hold a reception of her friends there; she herself lying in bed, covered up with black drapery which allowed scarcely anything more than her nose to appear.

As M. Kahn at last took his seat, his memory suddenly returned to him. 'La Rouquette is a foolish chatterbox,' he muttered; 'he has made me miss Rougon.' Then he turned towards his neighbour and exclaimed angrily. 'You really might have reminded me, Béjuin!'

Rougon, who had just been introduced with the customary ceremonial, had already taken his seat between two members of the Council of State on the Government bench, a sort of huge mahogany box, situated beneath the President's desk and occupying the place of the suppressed tribune. His broad shoulders tightly distended his uniform of green cloth, ornamented with gold braid at the neck and sleeve-cuffs. His face, with thick grizzly hair clustering over his square brow, was turned towards the Chamber, but his eyes were hidden by their heavy drooping lids. The commonplace plainness of his big nose, fleshy lips, and long cheeks, which his six-and-forty years had not yet furrowed with a single wrinkle, was every now and then irradiated with something like beauty by an expression of great strength. He sat perfectly quiet, leaning back with his chin resting on his coat collar, noticing nobody, and seeming quite indifferent and a little weary.

'He looks just as he does every day,' M. Béjuin remarked.

The deputies were all leaning over to observe Rougon. Whispered remarks on his appearance buzzed from ear to ear. In the galleries especially his entrance had caused lively excitement. The Charbonnels, in their desire to let their presence be known, craned their enraptured faces forward at the risk of falling over; Madame Correur coughed slightly and drew out a handkerchief which she gently waved, while pretending to carry it to her lips; Colonel Jobelin straightened himself; and pretty Madame Bouchard, after tying her bonnet-strings afresh, again hurried down to the front row of the State Council gallery, while M. d'Escorailles remained behind quite still and seemingly much annoyed. As for the fair Clorinde, she did not beat about the bush. Seeing that Rougon did not raise his eyes, she began to tap her opera-glass against the marble column beside which she was leaning, and as these tactics did not succeed in attracting his attention, she said to her mother, in such a clear ringing voice that every one in the Chamber heard her: 'He's in the sulks, the fat sly fellow!'

Several deputies looked round and smiled, and Rougon himself glanced up at the fair Clorinde. As he nodded his head almost imperceptibly towards her, she triumphantly clapped her hands, and leant back, laughing and talking quite loudly to her mother, quite careless of the men down below who were staring at her.

Before Rougon dropped his eyes again he glanced slowly round the gallery, where his comprehensive gaze at once took in Madame Bouchard, Colonel Jobelin, Madame Correur, and the Charbonnels. However, his face remained expressionless. He again let his chin drop and half-closed his eyes as he stifled a slight yawn.

'I'll go and have a word with him now,' M. Kahn whispered into M. Béjuin's ear.

But as he was rising from his seat, the President, who during the last few moments had been looking round to see if all the deputies were in their places, rang his bell authoritatively. Then all at once there was profound silence. A fair-haired member in the first row of seats now stood up, holding a large sheet of paper upon which he kept his eyes fixed as he spoke.

'I have the honour,' he said in a sing-song voice, 'to present a report upon the bill by which it is proposed to include among the estimates of the Ministry of State for 1856 a sum of 400,000 francs, to defray the expenses of the ceremonies and rejoicings connected with the baptism of the Prince Imperial.'

Then he slowly stepped forward as though about to lay the paper on the table of the Chamber, but the deputies cried out unanimously: 'Read it! Read it!'

The deputy who had prepared the report waited till the President gave his sanction. Then he commenced in a voice that seemed affected by emotion: 'Gentlemen, the bill which has been brought before us is one of those which make the customary formalities of voting seem dilatory, since they check the enthusiastic impulses of the Corps Législatif.'

'Hear! hear!' cried several members.

'In the humblest families,' continued the speaker in carefully modulated tones, 'the birth of a son and heir, with all the ideas of transmission which are attached to that title, is a source of such sweet joy that the trials of the past are forgotten, and hope alone hovers over the cradle of the new-born child. What, then, shall we say of such a happy event when it not only prompts the rejoicing of a family but that of a great nation, and is an event of European interest?'

This piece of rhetoric thrilled the Chamber with emotion. Rougon, who appeared to be asleep, could see none but beaming faces in front of him. Some deputies accentuated their attention, holding their hands to their ears so that they might lose nothing of this carefully prepared report. Its author, after a slight pause, raised his voice as he continued, 'To-day, gentlemen, it is indeed the great family of France that invites all its members to give expression to their joy; and what pomp and circumstance would be magnificent enough if it were possible by display to express the grandeur of our legitimate hopes?' Here the reporter paused again.

'Hear! hear!' cried the deputies.

'That's very nicely put,' M. Kahn remarked; 'isn't it, Béjuin?'

M. Béjuin was wagging his head with his eyes fixed on the cut-glass chandelier which hung from the window-ceiling in front of the President's seat. He was in a state of blissful rapture.

Meanwhile in the gallery the fair Clorinde kept her opera-glass to her eyes and lost not a single expression of the reporter's face. The Charbonnels' eyes were moist, and Madame Correur had assumed a decorously attentive attitude, while the colonel expressed his approbation by nodding his head, and pretty Madame Bouchard ventured to lean against M. d'Escorailles' knees. The President and the clerk and the ushers listened solemnly, without making the slightest gesture.

'The cradle of the Prince Imperial,' resumed the reporter, 'is henceforth our security for the future; for, by perpetuating the dynasty which we have all acclaimed, it assures the prosperity of our country, its repose and stability, and, through ours, that of the rest of Europe.'

Cries of 'Hush! hush!' were necessary to subdue the burst of enthusiastic applause which broke out at this touching reference to the cradle.

'Once before a scion of this illustrious race seemed equally intended for a great destiny, but his time and our own have no similarity. Peace is the result of the wise and skilful rule of which we are now reaping the fruits, even as the genius of war dictated that epic poem which forms the story of the first Empire.

'Hailed at his birth by the guns which from north to south proclaimed the successes of our arms, the King of Rome was not even permitted to serve his country; so, indeed, Providence then decreed——'

'What's that he's saying? He's putting his foot in it,' said sceptical M. La Rouquette. 'That's very clumsy; he'll spoil his speech.'

The deputies certainly seemed uneasy. Why was this historical reference dragged in to damp their enthusiasm? Several of them blew their noses. The author of the report, however, only smiled when he saw the chilling effect of his last sentences. He raised his voice and pursued his antithesis, carefully modulating his tones, evidently quite confident that he would make his point.

'But, coming to us at one of those momentous times when the birth of a single life may be regarded as the salvation of all, the Child of France to-day gives to us and to all future generations the right and the privilege of living and dying at our ancestral firesides. Such is the promise vouchsafed to us by the divine kindness.'

This seemed exquisite. Everybody understood, and a murmur of pleasure travelled through the Chamber. The assurance of an everlasting peace was very charming. The tranquillised members once more resumed the pleased expressions of men revelling in rhetoric. There was nothing to disturb them. Europe belonged to their master.

'The Emperor,' continued the speaker with fresh vigour, 'having become the arbiter of Europe, was about to sign that noble peace which, bringing together the productive forces of the different nations, is as much an alliance of peoples as of monarchs,[2] when God was pleased to crown his happiness as well as his glory. Is it not allowable to think that, at that moment, he foresaw many fair and prosperous years while gazing upon that cradle where slumbers, though now but an infant, the heir who is destined to carry on his great policy?'

This, too, was thought very pretty. Such a hope might be justifiably entertained, so the deputies said, as they nodded their heads approvingly. The report, however, was now beginning to seem a trifle long, and several members looked solemn again. Some of them even glanced at the gallery like practical matter-of-fact politicians who felt rather ashamed of being thus seen spending their time in an unbusiness-like way. Others ceased to pay attention, and reverted to their own affairs, or again tapped the mahogany of their desks with their finger-tips; while through the minds of others there flitted vague recollections of other sittings when professions of devotion had been lavished on some other cradle.

As for M. La Rouquette, he turned very frequently to look at the clock, and when the hand pointed to a quarter to three an expression of desperation passed over his face. He would miss an appointment! Meantime M. Kahn and M. Béjuin sat motionless side by side, with crossed arms and blinking eyes, which wandered from the great velvet panels to the bas-relief of white marble across which the President's frock-coat stretched like a black bar. In the diplomatists' gallery the fair Clorinde was still gazing through her opera-glass, making a lengthy examination of Rougon, who preserved the majestic mien of a sleeping bull.

However, the author of the report showed no signs of hurry, but listened to himself as he read on, indulging the while in a rhythmic beatifical motion of the shoulders.

'Let us then display full and complete confidence, and may the Corps Législatif, upon this great and solemn occasion, bear in mind that the Emperor and itself have a common origin, which almost confers upon it a family-right above that which the other State bodies may possess to share in its Sovereign's joy.

'The Corps Législatif, which, like himself, is the offspring of the willing vote of the people, becomes now the mouthpiece of the nation in offering to the august child the homage of its unchangeable respect, of its devotion which nothing can destroy, and of that boundless love which converts political faith into a religion whose duties are blessed.'

The mention of homage and religion and duties seemed to betoken that the speaker was drawing to a conclusion. The Charbonnels therefore ventured to exchange remarks in low tones, and Madame Correur stifled a slight cough in her handkerchief; while Madame Bouchard quietly returned to the rear of the Council of State gallery, and resumed her seat near M. Jules d'Escorailles.

And, indeed, the reporter suddenly changed his tone and came down from the solemn to the familiar, as he quickly gabbled out: 'We propose to you, gentlemen, the adoption of the bill, such as it has been brought forward by the Council of State.'

Then he resumed his seat amidst general applause. Shouts of 'Hear, hear!' rang out from all sides. M. de Combelot, whose smiling attention had not waned for an instant, even cried, 'Long live the Emperor!' but the exclamation was lost amid the hubbub; however, Colonel Jobelin received almost an ovation as he stood at the edge of the gallery, and clapped his withered hands, in spite of the regulations to the contrary. Everybody enthusiastically congratulated everybody else. Work was over, and from row to row kindly remarks were exchanged, while a crowd of friends thronged round the author of the report and energetically shook both his hands.

But above the confusion came a cry of 'Deliberate! deliberate!'

The President had been standing at his desk, apparently expecting this cry. He rang his bell, and as the Chamber suddenly became respectfully attentive, he said: 'Gentlemen, a large number of members desire that we should at once deliberate upon this measure.'

'Yes, yes,' cried the Chamber with one voice.

But there was no deliberation. They proceeded to vote at once. The two clauses of the measure which were successively put to the Chamber were immediately passed by the deputies rising in their places. The President had scarcely finished reading each clause before all the members rose in a mass with much stamping of feet, as though under the influence of some thrill of enthusiasm. Then the urn-shaped ballot-boxes were passed round by the ushers who, threading their way between the seats, received the votes in these zinc receptacles. The 400,000 francs were voted unanimously by the 239 members present.

'That's good work done,' said M. Béjuin naïvely, and he began to laugh as though he had said something witty.

'It's past three o'clock; I'm off,' exclaimed M. La Rouquette, passing in front of M. Kahn.

The Chamber was emptying. The deputies were all making for the doors and seemed to vanish through the walls. The next business consisted of matters of mere local interest, and there was soon no one left on the benches except a few willing deputies who had probably nothing to do elsewhere, and these resumed either their interrupted naps or their conversation at the point where it had been broken off, the sitting concluding, as it had begun, in the midst of listless indifference. Gradually, too, the general buzzing subsided as though the Corps Législatif had dropped off to sleep in some quiet corner of Paris.

'You had better try to get a word with Delestang as you go away,' said M. Kahn to M. Béjuin. 'He came with Rougon, and must know something.'

'Yes, you are right; that's Delestang yonder,' replied M. Béjuin, gazing at the councillor who was sitting on Rougon's left; 'I never know them in those confounded uniforms.'

'I shall stop here so as to have a chance of getting hold of the great man,' added M. Kahn. 'It's necessary that we should know the truth.'

The President was putting to the vote an interminable string of bills, which were passed by the members rising in their places. They all stood up and then sat down again quite mechanically, without ceasing to converse and even without ceasing to sleep. The proceedings were becoming so wearisome that most of the spectators whom curiosity had brought to the gallery took their departure. Only Rougon's friends remained. They were still hoping that he would speak.

Suddenly, a deputy, whose correctly trimmed whiskers bespoke the provincial lawyer, arose. This at once stopped the monotonous mechanism of the voting. Surprise made all the members turn and look at the one who had risen. 'Gentlemen,' said he, standing in his place, 'I ask permission to explain the reasons which, to my great regret, have compelled me to differ from the majority of the Committee.'

His voice was so shrill and comical that the fair Clorinde had to stifle a laugh with her hands. Below in the Chamber itself, the astonishment was increasing. What was the man talking about? By dint of inquiries, the others ascertained that the President had just brought before the Chamber a bill authorising the department of the Pyrénées-Orientales to borrow 250,000 francs wherewith to build a Palace of Justice at Perpignan. The speaker, who was a general councillor of the department, was opposing the bill. The matter seemed likely to be interesting, so the deputies began to listen.

The member with the correctly trimmed whiskers spoke, however, with great circumspection. He used the most guarded language, and referred with the greatest respect to all the authorities; but the expenses of the department, he said, were very heavy, and he dwelt at length upon the financial situation of the Pyrénées-Orientales. Moreover, he did not think that any necessity for a new Palace of Justice had been satisfactorily demonstrated. He continued in this strain for a quarter of an hour, and on sitting down seemed quite overcome with emotion. Then Rougon again slowly dropped his eyelids which he had temporarily raised.

However, the reporter of the Committee which had examined the bill got up. He was a little animated old man who spoke in clear, incisive tones like one who is sure of his ground. He began with a complimentary reference to his honourable colleague, with whom he regretted to find himself in disagreement. But really, he went on to say, the department of the Pyrénées-Orientales was not nearly so heavily burdened as had been alleged, and he brought forward fresh figures which showed the financial position of the department in an entirely different light. Moreover, the absolute necessity for a new Palace of Justice could not be denied. And he entered into details. The old Palace, he said, was situated in such a densely populated neighbourhood that the noise of the streets prevented the judges from hearing counsel speak. Then it was too small; and when the Assizes were being held, and there happened to be a large number of witnesses in attendance, they were obliged to remain on the landings exposed to the solicitations of interested parties who might desire to influence them. The speaker concluded by mentioning as an irresistible argument the fact that the measure had been introduced at the instigation of the Keeper of the Seals himself.

Rougon was sitting quite still, his hands clasped upon his legs and his head resting against the mahogany desk. At the outset of the discussion his shoulders had seemed to sink lower than before, but when the first speaker rose to reply, he raised his big frame without actually getting on to his feet, and said in a husky voice: 'The honourable member who reported upon this measure forgot to mention that it has also received the approval of the Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Finance.'

Then he let himself drop again and resumed the attitude of a drowsy bull. A slight murmur ran through the Chamber, and the deputy who had risen to reply sat down with a low bow. The bill was passed, and those members who had shown any interest in the debate once more assumed an expression of indifference.

Rougon had spoken. From one section of the gallery to another Colonel Jobelin exchanged glances with the Charbonnels, while Madame Correur made ready to leave her place, just as she would have quitted her box at the theatre before the fall of the curtain, if the hero of the play had delivered his last speech. M. d'Escorailles and Madame Bouchard had already taken their departure. Clorinde stood by the velvet-covered balustrade, her majestic figure showing conspicuously as she slowly wrapped her lace shawl about her, glancing round the deputies' seats as she did so. The rain was no longer beating down upon the window, but the sky remained overcast. The mahogany desks looked quite black in that sombre light, and a shadowy mist streamed over the seats, which the bald heads of some of the deputies lighted up here and there with patches of white. Against the marble-work below the vague, pale allegorical figures, the President and the clerks and ushers, all in black and ranged in a line, showed like the stiff silhouettes of a shadow-pantomime. The whole Chamber became blurred in the suddenly waning light.

'Oh, come along!' exclaimed Clorinde, pushing her mother out of the gallery; 'it is enough to kill one in here!'

She quite startled the drowsy ushers in the corridor by the strange fashion in which she had twisted her shawl round her hips.

When they got downstairs into the hall the ladies met Colonel Jobelin and Madame Correur.

'We are waiting for him here,' said the colonel. 'Perhaps he will come out this way. But in any case I have signalled to Kahn and Béjuin to come and give me some information.'

Madame Correur stepped up to the Countess Balbi. 'Ah! it would be a great misfortune,' she said in a disconsolate voice without attempting to explain her meaning.

The colonel raised his eyes to heaven. 'The country has need of men like Rougon,' he resumed after a short pause. 'The Emperor would make a great mistake.'

Then there was another pause. Clorinde tried to peep into the 'Salle des Pas Perdus,' but an usher promptly closed the door. So she came back to her mother, who was standing silent in her black veil. 'What a bore it is having to wait like this!' she muttered.

Some soldiers now made their appearance, and Colonel Jobelin thereupon announced that the sitting was over. Next the Charbonnels came into sight at the top of the staircase, and made their way down very carefully one after the other and each clinging to the balustrade. As soon as M. Charbonnel saw the colonel he called out: 'He didn't say much, but he completely shut them up.'

'He hadn't a proper chance,' the colonel whispered when the other reached him, 'otherwise you would have heard something fine. He wants warming up.'

However, the soldiers had formed a double line from the Chamber to the gallery leading to the President's mansion. Then a procession made its appearance while the drummers beat a salute. At the head walked two ushers, dressed in black with cocked hats under their arms, chains about their necks, and swords with steel hilts at their sides. Then came the President, escorted by two officers. The clerks of the Chamber and the President's secretary followed. As the President passed the fair Clorinde he smiled at her like a homme du monde, notwithstanding the pomp of his procession.

'Ah, you are there!' cried M. Kahn, running up with a distracted look.

Though the public were at that time excluded from the 'Salle des Pas Perdus,' he took them all into it and conducted them to one of the large glass doors which opened upon the garden. He seemed very much annoyed. 'I have missed him again!' he cried. 'He slipped out into the Rue de Bourgogne while I was waiting for him in the Général Foy gallery. But it really makes no difference; we shall get to know everything all the same. I have sent Béjuin after Delestang.'

They waited for another ten long minutes. The deputies were all coming away looking careless and unconcerned. Some of them lingered to light cigars and others stood in little groups, laughing and shaking hands. Madame Correur had stepped aside to inspect the 'Laocoon'; and while the Charbonnels threw back their heads to look at a sea-gull which a whimsical artist had painted on the frame of a fresco, as though it were flying out of the picture, the fair Clorinde, standing in front of the great bronze figure of Minerva, examined the arms and bosom of the gigantic goddess with an air of interest. Meantime in a corner by the glass door Colonel Jobelin and M. Kahn were carrying on an animated conversation in low tones.

'Ah, there's Béjuin!' suddenly exclaimed the latter. Then they all drew together with an expression of anxiety. M. Béjuin was breathing heavily. 'Well?' they asked him.

'Well! the resignation has been accepted, and Rougon retires.'

It was a crushing blow. An interval of deep silence followed. However, Clorinde, who, to employ her nervous fingers, was knotting a corner of her shawl, caught sight of pretty Madame Bouchard walking slowly along the garden, upon M. d'Escorailles' arm, with her head inclined over his shoulder. They had come down before the others, and, taking advantage of an open door, were now strolling like lovers under the lacework of fresh young leaves, in the quiet walks usually utilised for serious meditation. Clorinde beckoned to them.

'The great man has retired!' she said to the smiling young woman.

At this Madame Bouchard abruptly dropped her cavalier's arm, and turned very pale and grave, while M. Kahn, surrounded by Rougon's alarmed friends, despairingly raised his arms to heaven, unable to say a single word.

[II]

RESIGNATION

In the next morning's Moniteur Rougon's resignation was officially announced. It was stated that he had resigned for 'reasons of health.' After his lunch, wishing to set everything in order for his successor, he went down to the Council of State, and installed himself in the spacious room hung with crimson and gold, which was assigned to the President. And there, in front of a large rosewood writing-table, he began to empty the drawers and classify the papers, which he tied up in bundles with pieces of pink tape. All at once, however, he rang the bell, and an usher entered the room—a splendidly built man who had served in the cavalry.

'Give me a lighted candle,' said Rougon.

Then as the usher was leaving the room, after placing on the table a small candlestick taken from the mantelpiece, Rougon called him back. 'Admit nobody, Merle,' he said; 'no one at all, you understand?'

'Yes, Monsieur le Président,' replied the usher, closing the door noiselessly behind him.

A faint smile played over Rougon's face. He turned towards Delestang, who stood at the other end of the room carefully examining the contents of several pasteboard boxes. 'Our friend Merle hasn't read the Moniteur this morning,' he muttered.

Delestang merely shook his head, unable to think of any suitable reply. He had a magnificent head, very bald, indeed, but bald after that precocious fashion which is rather pleasing to women. His bare skull greatly increased the size of his brow and gave him an expression of vast intelligence. His clean-shaven, florid, and somewhat squarely cut face recalled those perfect, pensive countenances which imaginative painters are wont to confer upon great statesmen.

'Merle is extremely devoted to you,' he remarked after a pause.

Then he lowered his head over the pasteboard box which he was examining, while Rougon crumpled up a handful of papers, and after lighting them at the taper threw them into a large bronze vase which stood at the edge of his table. He watched them burn away.

'Don't touch the boxes at the bottom, Delestang,' he said; 'there are papers in them that I must examine myself.'

Then, for another quarter of an hour, they both went on with their respective occupations in silence. It was a very fine day, and the sun streamed in through three large windows which overlooked the quay. Through one of them, which was half open, puffs of fresh air from the Seine were wafted in, occasionally stirring the fringe of the silk curtains, and rustling the crumpled pieces of paper which lay about the floor.

'Just look at this,' said Delestang, handing Rougon a letter which he had found.

Rougon read it and then quietly lighted it at the taper. It was a letter on a delicate matter. The two men carried on a disjointed conversation, breaking off every few moments to bury their faces afresh in the piles of old papers. Rougon thanked Delestang for having come to help him. He was the only person whom he felt that he could trust to assist him in this task of washing the dirty linen of his five years' presidency. They had been friends together in the Legislative Assembly, where they had sat side by side on the same bench. It was there that Rougon had taken a genuine fancy to this splendid-looking man, on finding that he was so delightfully foolish and shallow and proud. He often used to say with an air of conviction that 'that precious Delestang would go a long way.' He did what he could to push him on, gratitude yielding devotion, and he made use of him as a kind of strong box in which he locked up whatever he could not carry about with him.

'How foolish of me to have kept all these papers!' Rougon murmured, as he opened a fresh drawer which was crammed quite full.

'Here is a letter from a lady!' said Delestang winking.

At this Rougon broke out into a loud laugh, and his huge chest shook. He took the letter with a protest. However, as soon as his eyes had glanced over the first lines, he exclaimed: 'It was little Escorailles who let this drop here! They are pretty things those letters. With three lines from a woman, a fellow may go a long way!' Then, as he burnt the letter, he added: 'Be on your guard against women, Delestang!'

Delestang bent his head again. He was perpetually becoming the victim of some hazardous passion. In 1851 he had all but ruined his political prospects. At that time he had been madly infatuated with the wife of a socialist deputy, and to curry favour with her husband had more frequently than not voted with the opposition against the Élysée. The coup d'état of the second of December consequently filled him with terrible alarm, and he shut himself up for a couple of days in distraction, overwhelmed, good for nothing, trembling with fear lest he should be arrested. However, Rougon had helped him out of his awkward position, advising him not to stand at the ensuing elections and taking him down to the Élysée, where he succeeded in getting him a place in the Council of State. Delestang, whose father had been a wine-merchant at Bercy, was himself a retired attorney and the owner of a model farm near Sainte-Menehould. He was worth several millions of francs and lived in a very handsome house in the Rue du Colisée.

'Yes, beware of women,' Rougon repeated, pausing after each word so as to glance at his papers. 'When a woman does not put a crown on your head she slips a halter round your neck. At our age a man's heart wants as carefully looking after as his stomach.'

At this moment a loud noise was heard in the ante-chamber, and Merle's voice could be recognised refusing admission to some visitor. However, a little man suddenly rushed into the room, exclaiming, 'I really must shake hands with my dear friend!'

'Hallo! is it you, Du Poizat?' exclaimed Rougon without rising.

Merle was making sweeping gesticulations to excuse himself, but his master bade him close the door. Then he quietly said to Du Poizat: 'I thought you were at Bressuire. So you desert your sub-prefecture as easily as an old mistress, eh?'

Du Poizat, who was a slightly built man with a mean-looking face and very white irregular teeth, shrugged his shoulders as he replied: 'I arrived in Paris this morning on business, and I did not intend to come and see you till the evening, when I should have called upon you in the Rue Marbeuf and have asked you to give me some dinner. But when I read the Moniteur——' Then he broke off, pulled an easy-chair in front of the writing-table, and seated himself face to face with Rougon. 'Well now, what's been happening, eh?' he resumed. 'I've come from the depths of the Deux-Sèvres. I had heard something down there, but I had no idea of this. Why didn't you write to me?'

Rougon, in his turn, shrugged his shoulders. It was evident that tidings of his disgrace had reached Du Poizat in the country, and that he had hastened to Paris to see if he could find a means of securing stability for his own position. So Rougon gave him a keen glance as he rejoined: 'I should have written to you this evening. Send in your resignation, my good fellow.'

'That's all that I wanted to know. Well, I will resign,' replied Du Poizat quietly.

Then he rose from his seat and began to whistle. As he slowly paced the room he caught sight of Delestang kneeling on the carpet in the midst of a litter of pasteboard boxes. He approached and silently shook hands with him. Then he took a cigar out of his pocket and lighted it at the candle.

'I may smoke here, I suppose, as you are moving?' he said, again sitting down in the easy-chair. 'It's good fun is moving!'

Rougon, however, was absorbed in a bundle of papers which he read with deep attention, sorting them very carefully, burning some and preserving others. Du Poizat, with his head lolling back, and puffing light clouds of smoke from between his lips, remained watching him. They had become acquainted with each other some months before the Revolution of February, 1848. At that time they were both boarding with Madame Correur at the Hôtel Vanneau in the Rue Vanneau. Du Poizat had found himself quite at home there, for he and Madame Correur had both been born at Coulonges, a little town in the district of Niort. His father, a process-server, had sent him to study law in Paris, where he allowed him only a hundred francs a month, although he had amassed large sums by lending money for short periods at extortionate interest. The old man's wealth seemed, indeed, so inexplicably great to his country neighbours that it was said he had discovered a large treasure in an old chest of drawers upon which he had distrained. From the outset of the Bonapartist propaganda Rougon had availed himself of the services of this scraggy youth, who, chafing and fuming, made such short work of his monthly hundred francs, and they dabbled together in the most risky undertakings. Later on, when Rougon was desirous of entering the Legislative Assembly, Du Poizat worked energetically to secure his election for Deux-Sèvres. Then, after the coup d'état, Rougon in his turn used all his influence on behalf of Du Poizat and got him appointed sub-prefect at Bressuire. The young man, then barely thirty years of age, had desired to return in triumph to his own neighbourhood, where he would be near his father, through whose avarice he had led a life of torture ever since leaving college.

'And how is your father?' asked Rougon, without raising his eyes.

'Oh, much too well,' answered Du Poizat bluntly. 'He has sent his last remaining servant away because she ate three pounds of bread a week. Now he keeps a couple of loaded guns behind his door, and when I go to see him I have to parley with him over the wall of the yard.'

While talking, Du Poizat leaned forward and poked his fingers into the bronze vase, where some fragments of paper were lying only half-consumed. Rougon sharply raised his head as he noticed this. He had always felt somewhat distrustful of his old lieutenant, whose irregular white teeth resembled those of a young wolf. In the days when they had worked together he had always made a point of never allowing any compromising document to fall into his hands; and now, as he saw him trying to decipher some words that still remained legible on the charred fragments, he threw a handful of blazing letters into the vase. Du Poizat perfectly understood why he did so; however, he merely smiled and began to joke. 'It's a thorough cleaning you're going in for,' he said.

Then he took a large pair of scissors and began to use them as tongs. He raised the letters which were not consumed to the taper in order to relight them, held up those which had been too tightly crumpled to burn in the vase, and stirred all the flaming ashes as though he were mixing a blazing bowl of punch. The red-hot sparks danced about in the vase, and a cloud of bluish smoke arose and gently curled away towards the open window. At intervals the candle flickered and then burnt brightly again with a straight, tall flame.

'That candle looks like a funeral-taper!' said Du Poizat with a grin. 'Ah! it's really a burial, my poor friend. What a lot of skeletons that require to be reduced to ashes, eh!'

Rougon was about to reply, when a fresh commotion was heard in the ante-chamber. Merle was a second time refusing admission. As the voices grew louder, Rougon at last exclaimed: 'Will you kindly see what it is, Delestang? If I show myself we shall be quite invaded.'

Delestang cautiously opened the door and closed it behind him. But he popped his head into the room almost immediately afterwards, exclaiming: 'It's Kahn!'

'Oh, well!' replied Rougon; 'let him come in; but no one else, mind!' Then he called to Merle and reiterated his orders.

'I beg your pardon, my dear friend,' he said, turning to Kahn, as soon as the usher had left the room; 'but I am so very busy. Sit down beside Du Poizat and keep quite still or I shall be obliged to turn you both out of the room.'

The deputy did not appear in the least offended by Rougon's blunt reception. He was quite accustomed to those ways. He took an easy-chair and sat down beside Du Poizat, who was lighting a second cigar. 'It is getting very warm,' he said, after drawing breath. 'I have just been to the Rue Marbeuf; I expected to find you at home.'

Rougon made no reply, and there was an interval of silence. The ex-President crumpled up some papers and threw them into a basket which he had placed by his side.

'I want to talk to you,' resumed M. Kahn.

'Talk away!' said Rougon; 'I am listening.'

Then the deputy seemed to become suddenly aware of the disorder of the room. 'What are you doing?' he asked with admirably feigned surprise. 'Are you changing your room?'

His tone seemed so sincere that Delestang actually paused in what he was doing in order to hand him the Moniteur.

'Oh dear! Oh dear!' he cried, as soon as he had glanced at the paper. 'I thought the matter was satisfactorily arranged yesterday evening. This comes upon me like a thunderbolt. My dear friend——'

He rose and pressed Rougon's hands. The latter looked at him in silence, while two deep scoffing creases appeared on his heavy face near his under lip. As Du Poizat seemed quite unmoved, he suspected that he and Kahn had already met earlier in the morning, and he was confirmed in this opinion as the deputy had shown no surprise at seeing the sub-prefect. He surmised that one of the pair had come straight to the Council of State while the other hastened to the Rue Marbeuf, so that they might be sure to find him at the one or the other place.

'Well, there is something you want to say to me,' quietly resumed Rougon. 'What is it?'

'Oh, I won't trouble you about that now, my dear friend!' exclaimed the deputy. 'You have got sufficient to worry you as it is. I should be very sorry to bother you with my own troubles at a time like this.'

'Oh, it will be no bother, I assure you. Speak away.'

'Well, then, I wanted to speak to you about that affair of mine, that confounded grant. I am very glad that Du Poizat is here, as he may be able to give us information upon certain points.'

Then he explained at great length the exact position which the matter had reached. It was a scheme for a railway from Niort to Angers, upon which he had been engaged for the last three years. The projected line would pass through Bressuire, where he possessed some blast-furnaces, the value of which it would largely increase. At the present time there were great difficulties in the way of transport, and the business was consequently languishing. M. Kahn had some hopes, too, that he would be able to get some very profitable pickings out of the affair, and so he had greatly exerted himself in order to obtain the grant. Rougon had supported him energetically, and the grant had almost been secured when M. de Marsy, the Minister of the Interior, vexed at having no share in the affair, which he guessed would afford a superb opportunity for jobbery, and being also very desirous of doing anything that might annoy Rougon, had used all his influence to oppose the scheme. With that audacity of his which made him such a terrible opponent, he had even just persuaded the Minister of Public Works to offer the grant to the Western Railway Company, besides circulating a statement that this company alone could successfully carry out the branch line, for the satisfactory working of which some substantial guarantee was required. Thus M. Kahn seemed in great danger of losing all the advantages he had hoped to gain, and Rougon's fall appeared likely to involve him in ruin.

'I heard yesterday,' said he, 'that one of the company's engineers had been instructed to make a survey for the new line. Have you heard anything of it, Du Poizat?'

'Yes, indeed,' replied the sub-prefect. 'The survey has already commenced. They are trying to avoid the detour which you were planning in order to make the line touch Bressuire, and propose to carry it straight along past Parthenay and Thouars.'

A gesture of discouragement escaped the deputy. 'It is sheer persecution!' he exclaimed. 'What harm could it do them to let the line pass my place? But I will protest and write against their plan. I will go back with you to Bressuire.'

'No, no; you had better not wait for me,' said Du Poizat with a smile. 'It seems that I have got to resign.'

M. Kahn fell back in his chair, as though overcome by a final catastrophe. He rubbed his beard with both hands and looked at Rougon with an air of entreaty. The latter had ceased to examine his papers, and was leaning on his elbows and listening.

'I suppose,' he said, somewhat roughly, 'that you want my advice? Well, then, my good friends, just remain quiet and try to keep things as they are until we get the upper hand. Du Poizat is going to resign, because, if he didn't, he would be dismissed within a fortnight. As for you, Kahn, you had better write to the Emperor and use all available means to prevent the grant being obtained by the Western Railway Company. You won't get it for yourself at present, but as long as it is not given to any one else, there is a chance of your winning it later on.' Then, as the two men nodded, he continued: 'Well, that's all I can do for you. I am down and you must give me time to pick myself up again. You don't see me going about with a woe-begone face, do you? Well, I should be much obliged if you wouldn't look as though you were attending my funeral. For my part, I am delighted at retiring into private life again. I shall at last be able to take a little rest.'

He heaved a deep sigh, crossed his arms, and rocked his huge frame backwards and forwards. M. Kahn said nothing more about his scheme, but tried to imitate Du Poizat and appear perfectly indifferent. Delestang had opened some more pasteboard boxes, and worked away so quietly behind the chairs that the slight rustling noise which he made every now and then might have been attributed to a troop of mice flitting across the papers. Meantime the sunlight was travelling over the crimson carpet and lighting up a corner of the writing-table, paling the flame of the candle which was still burning there.

A friendly conversation sprang up amongst the men. Rougon, who was tying up some more bundles of papers, declared that he was really not cut out for politics, and smiled good-naturedly as his heavy eyelids drooped, as though with weariness, over his glistening eyes. He would have liked, he said, to have a large estate to cultivate, fields which he could dig up at his pleasure, and flocks of animals, horses, cattle, sheep, and dogs, of which he would be the one absolute monarch. He told them that in former days, when only a country lawyer at Plassans, his great pleasure had consisted in setting off in a blouse on a shooting expedition of several days through the ravines of La Seille, where he shot eagles. He said that he was a peasant; his grandfather had dug the soil. Then he assumed the air of a man disgusted with the world. Power had grown wearisome to him, and he meant to spend the summer in the country. He declared that he had never felt so light-hearted as he did that morning, and he gave a mighty shrug of his strong shoulders as though he had just thrown off some heavy burden.

'How much did you get here as President?' asked M. Kahn; 'eighty thousand francs?'

Rougon nodded assent.

'And now you'll only have your thirty thousand as a senator.'

However, Rougon exclaimed that this change would not affect him at all. He could live upon next to nothing and indulged in no vices; which was perfectly true. He was neither a gambler, nor a glutton, nor a loose liver. His whole ambition, he declared, was to be his own master. Then he reverted to his idea of a farm, where he would be king of all sorts of animals. His ideal life was to wield a whip and be paramount; to be the master, chief both in intelligence and power. Gradually he grew animated and talked of animals as though they had been men, declaring that the mob liked to be driven, and that shepherds directed their flocks by pelting them with stones. His face seemed transfigured, his thick lips protruded scornfully, while his whole expression was instinct with strength and power. While he spoke he brandished a bundle of papers in his clenched fist, and it seemed every now and then as though he were going to throw it at the heads of M. Kahn and Du Poizat, who watched his sudden outburst of excitement with uneasy anxiety.

'The Emperor has behaved very badly,' at last muttered Du Poizat.

Then Rougon all at once became quite calm again. His face turned loamy and his body seemed to grow flabby and obese. He began to sound the Emperor's praises in an exaggerated fashion. Napoleon III. was a man of mighty intelligence, he declared, with a mind of astonishing depth. Du Poizat and Kahn exchanged a meaning look. But Rougon waxed still more lavish of his praises, and, speaking of his devotion to his master, declared with great humility that he had always been proud of being a mere instrument in the Emperor's hands. He talked on in this strain till he made Du Poizat, who was of a somewhat irritable nature, quite impatient, and they began to wrangle. The sub-prefect spoke with considerable bitterness of all that Rougon and he had done for the Empire between 1848 and 1851, when they were lodging with Madame Correur in a condition of semi-starvation. He referred to the terrible days, especially those of the first year, when they had gone splashing through the mud of Paris, recruiting partisans for the Emperor's cause. Later on they had risked their skins a score of times. And wasn't it Rougon who on the morning of the second of December had taken possession of the Palais Bourbon at the head of a regiment of the line? That was a game at which men staked their lives! Yet now to-day he was being sacrificed and made the victim of a court intrigue. Rougon, however, protested against this assertion. He was not being sacrificed—he was resigning for private reasons. And as Du Poizat, now fully wound up, began to call the folks of the Tuileries a set of 'pigs,' he ended by reducing him to silence by bringing his fist down upon the rosewood writing-table with a force which made it creak.

'That is all nonsense!' he said.

'You are, indeed, going rather far,' remarked M. Kahn.

Delestang was standing behind the chairs looking very pale. He opened the door gently to see if any one were listening, but there was nobody in the ante-chamber excepting Merle, whose back was turned with an appearance of great discretion. Rougon's observation had made Du Poizat blush, and quickly cooling down he chewed his cigar in silent displeasure.

'There is no doubt that the Emperor is surrounded by injudicious advisers,' Rougon resumed after a pause. 'I ventured to tell him as much, and he smiled. He even condescended to jest about it, and told me that my own entourage was no better than his own.'

Du Poizat and Kahn laughed in a constrained fashion. They thought the reply a very good one.

'But,' continued Rougon in meaning tones, 'I repeat that I am retiring of my own free will. If any one questions you, who are my friends, on the matter, you can say that yesterday evening I was quite at liberty to withdraw my resignation. You can contradict, too, the tittle-tattle which is being circulated about Rodriguez's affair, out of which people seem to be making a perfect romance. On this subject no doubt I disagreed with the majority of the Council of State, and there has certainly been a deal of friction in the matter which has hastened my retirement. But I had weightier and earlier reasons than that. For a long time past I had made up my mind to resign the high position which I owed to the Emperor's kindness.'

He punctuated this speech with the gesture of the right hand, in which he constantly indulged when addressing the Chamber. He evidently wished that what he was saying might be made public. M. Kahn and Du Poizat, who knew very well the kind of individual they had to deal with, tried all kinds of stratagems to get at the real truth. They felt quite sure that 'the great man,' as they familiarly called him between themselves, had some formidable scheme in his head. So they turned the conversation on general politics. Rougon then began to scoff at the parliamentary system, which he called 'the dunghill of mediocrity.' The Chamber, he declared, enjoyed quite an absurd amount of liberty even now, and indulged in far too much talk. France required governing, he said, by a suitably devised machine, with the Emperor at the head, and the great state-bodies, reduced to the position of mere working gear, below. He laughed, and his huge chest heaved, as he carried his theory to the point of exaggeration, displaying the while a scornful contempt for the imbeciles who demanded powerful rule.

'But,' interposed M. Kahn, 'with the Emperor at the top, and everybody else at the bottom, matters cannot be very pleasant for any one except the Emperor.'

'Those who feel bored can take themselves off,' Rougon quietly replied. He smiled, and then added: 'They can wait till things become amusing, and then they can come back.'

A long interval of silence followed. M. Kahn began to stroke his beard contentedly. He had found out what he wanted to know. He had made a correct guess at the Chamber on the previous afternoon when he had insinuated that Rougon, finding his influence at the Tuileries seriously shaken, had taken time by the forelock and resigned. Rodriguez's business had afforded him a splendid opportunity for honourable withdrawal.

'And what are people saying?' Rougon at last inquired in order to break the silence.

'Well, I've only just got here,' said Du Poizat, 'but a little while ago I heard a gentleman who wore a decoration declaring in a café that he strongly approved of your retirement.'

'Béjuin was very much affected about it yesterday,' added M. Kahn. 'Béjuin is much attached to you. He's rather slow, but he's very genuine. Little La Rouquette, too, spoke very properly, and referred to you in the kindest terms.'

Other names were mentioned as the conversation continued. Rougon asked direct questions, without showing the least embarrassment, and extracted full particulars from the deputy, who complaisantly gave him an exact account of the demeanour of the Corps Législatif towards him.

'This afternoon,' interrupted Du Poizat, who felt somewhat annoyed at having no information to impart, 'I will take a ramble through Paris, and to-morrow morning, as soon as I'm out of bed, I will come and tell you all I have heard.'

'By the way,' cried M. Kahn, with a laugh, 'I forgot to tell you about Combelot. I never saw a man in greater embarrassment.'

He stopped short on seeing Rougon glance warningly towards Delestang, who, with his back turned towards them, was at that moment standing on a chair removing an accumulation of newspapers which had been stored away atop of a bookcase. M. de Combelot had married one of Delestang's sisters. Delestang himself, since Rougon had fallen into disfavour, had felt a little down-hearted on account of his relationship with a chamberlain; and so, wishing to affect independence, he turned and said with a smile: 'Why don't you go on? Combelot is an ass. That's the long and short of it, eh?'

This ready condemnation of his brother-in-law afforded the others much amusement, and Delestang, noticing his success, continued his attack even to the extent of falling foul of Combelot's beard, that famous black beard which had such a reputation among the ladies. Then, as he threw a bundle of newspapers on to the floor, he said abruptly: 'What is a source of sorrow to some is a source of joy to others.'

This truism led to M. de Marsy's name being introduced into the conversation. Rougon bent his head and devoted himself to a searching examination of a portfolio, leaving his friends to ease their minds. They spoke of Marsy with all the rageful hostility which politicians show for an adversary. They revelled in the strongest language, bringing all kinds of abominable accusations against him, and so grossly exaggerating such stories which had a foundation of truth that they became mere lies. Du Poizat, who had known Marsy in former days, before the Empire, declared that he was kept at that time by a baroness whose diamonds he had exhausted in three months. M. Kahn asserted that there was not a single shady affair started in any part of Paris without Marsy having a hand in it. They encouraged each other in charges of this kind, and went on from worse to worse. In a mining affair Marsy had received a bribe of fifteen hundred thousand francs; during the previous month he had offered a furnished house to little Florence of the Bouffes Theatre, a trifle for which he had paid six hundred thousand francs, his share of the profits of a speculation in Morocco railway stock; finally, not a week ago, a grand scheme for constructing canals in Egypt, which had been got up by certain tools of his, had scandalously collapsed, the shareholders discovering that not a single shovelful of earth had been turned, although they had been paying out money for a couple of years or so. Then, too, they fell foul of Marsy's physical appearance, tried to depreciate his good looks, and even attacked the collection of pictures which he was getting together.

'He's a brigand in the skin of a vaudevillist,' Du Poizat ended by exclaiming.

Rougon slowly raised his head and fixed his big eyes on the two men. 'You are going it well,' he said. 'Marsy manages his affairs in his own way, as you manage yours in your way. As regards myself and him, we don't get on well together, and if ever I have a chance to crush him I shall avail myself of it without hesitation. But all that you have been saying doesn't prevent Marsy from being a very clever fellow, and, if ever the whim takes him, he will only make a mouthful of you two, I warn you of it.'

Then Rougon, tired of sitting, rose and stretched himself. He gave a great yawn, as he added: 'And he will do it all the more easily, my friends, now that I shall no longer be in a position to interfere.'

'Oh, you can lead Marsy a pretty dance if you like,' said Du Poizat, with a faint smile. 'You have some papers here which he would be glad to pay a big price for. Those yonder, I mean, the papers in the Lardenois matter, in which he played such a singular part. There's a very curious letter from him among them, which I recognise as one that I brought you myself at the time.'

Rougon went up to the grate in order to throw the papers with which he had gradually filled his basket into the fire. The bronze vase was no longer large enough. 'We must deal a stunning blow, and not give a mere scratch,' he replied, shrugging his shoulders disdainfully. 'Every one has foolish letters astray in the possession of other people.'

He then lighted the letter just spoken of at the candle, and used it to set fire to the heap of papers in the grate. He remained squatting for a moment, whilst watching the blazing pile. Some thick official documents turned black, and twisted about like sheets of lead; the letters and memoranda, scrawled over with handwriting, threw up little tongues of bluish flame, while inside the grate, amidst a swarm of sparks, half-consumed fragments still remained quite legible.

At this moment the door was thrown wide open, and a laughing voice was heard exclaiming: 'All right! I will excuse you, Merle. I belong to the house, and if you don't let me come in this way, I shall go round by the Council Chamber.'

It was M. d'Escorailles, for whom some six months previously Rougon had obtained an appointment as auditor at the Council of State. On his arm hung pretty Madame Bouchard, looking delightfully fresh in a bright spring toilette.

'Good heavens!' muttered Rougon, 'we've got women here now.'

He did not immediately leave his place by the grate, but still stooping, grasping the shovel, and pressing down the blazing papers so as to guard against an accident, he raised his big face with an air of displeasure. M. d'Escorailles, however, appeared in no way disconcerted. When he and the young woman had crossed the threshold, they ceased to smile, and assumed an expression more suited to the circumstances.

'My dear master,' said Escorailles, 'I bring a friend of yours, who insists upon coming to express her sorrow. We have seen the Moniteur this morning——'

'Oh, you have seen the Moniteur, too,' muttered Rougon, at last rising erect. Then he caught sight of some one whom he had not previously noticed. 'Ah, Monsieur Bouchard also!' he exclaimed, blinking.

It was, indeed, the husband who, silent and dignified, had just entered the room in the wake of his wife's skirts. M. Bouchard was sixty years old: his hair was quite white, his eyes were dim, and his face was worn by twenty-five years of official labour. He did not say a single word, but took Rougon's hand with an appearance of emotion, and gave it three vigorous shakes.

'It is really very kind of you all to come and see me,' said Rougon, 'only you will be terribly in my way. However, come here, will you? Du Poizat, give Madame Bouchard your chair.'

He turned as he spoke, and then saw Colonel Jobelin standing in front of him. 'What! are you here as well, colonel?' he cried.

As a matter of fact, the door had been left open, and Merle had been unable to stop the colonel, who had come up the staircase immediately behind the Bouchards. He was accompanied by his son, a tall lad of fifteen, a pupil at the Louis-le-Grand College. 'I wanted Auguste to see you,' he said. 'It is misfortune that reveals true friends. Auguste, go and give your hand——'

Rougon, however, had sprung towards the ante-room, crying: 'Shut the door, Merle! What are you thinking about? We shall have all Paris in here directly!'

With calm face the usher replied: 'It's all because they caught sight of you, Monsieur le Président.'

Even as he spoke, he was obliged to step back close to the wall, in order to allow the Charbonnels to pass. They came into the room abreast, but not arm-in-arm. They were out of breath, and looked disconsolate and amazed; and they both began to speak at once. 'We have just seen the Moniteur! What dreadful news! How distressed your poor mother will be! And what a sad position, too, it puts us in ourselves!'

More guileless than the others, the Charbonnels were about to enter upon their own little affairs at once, but Rougon stopped them. He shot a bolt, hidden beneath the door lock, and remarked that if any people wanted to come in now, they would have to break the door open. Then, observing that none of his visitors showed signs of leaving, he resigned himself, and tried to finish his task in the midst of these nine people who were crowding his room. The whole place was now in a state of chaotic confusion, there being such a litter of portfolios and papers on the floor that when the colonel and M. Bouchard wanted to reach a window-recess, they had to exercise the greatest care in order to avoid trampling upon some important document. All the chairs were covered with bundles of papers, excepting the one on which Madame Bouchard was now seated. She was smiling at the gallant speeches of Du Poizat and M. Kahn; while M. d'Escorailles, unable to find a hassock, pushed a thick blue portfolio, stuffed with letters, under her feet. The drawers of the writing-table, which had been pushed into a corner of the room, afforded the Charbonnels a temporary seat where they could recover their breath, while young Auguste, delighted at finding himself in the bustle of a removal, poked about till he disappeared behind the mountain of pasteboard boxes, amid which Delestang had previously entrenched himself. As the latter threw down the newspapers from the top of the bookcase, he raised considerable dust, which made Madame Bouchard cough slightly.

'I don't advise you to stay here amidst all this dirt,' said Rougon, who was now emptying the boxes which he had asked Delestang to leave unexamined.

The young woman, however, quite rosy from her fit of coughing, assured him that she was very comfortable, and that the dust would not harm her bonnet. Then all the visitors poured forth their condolences. The Emperor, they declared, must care very little about the real interests of the country to allow himself to be influenced by men so unworthy of his confidence. France was suffering a great loss. But it was ever thus, they said; a man of high intelligence always had every mediocrity leagued against him.

'Governments have no gratitude,' declared M. Kahn.

'So much the worse for them!' exclaimed the colonel; 'they strike themselves when they strike those who serve them.'

However, M. Kahn was desirous of having the last word on the subject, so he turned to Rougon, and said: 'When a man like you falls, it is a subject for public mourning.'

This met with the approval of all. 'Yes, yes,' they exclaimed, 'for public mourning, indeed!'

Rougon raised his head upon hearing this fulsome praise. His greyish cheeks flushed slightly, and his whole face was irradiated by a suppressed smile of satisfaction. He was as proud of his ability as a woman is of her beauty, and he liked to receive point-blank compliments. It was becoming evident, however, that his visitors were in each other's way. They repeatedly glanced at one another, resolving to sit one another out, unwilling as they were to say all they desired in the presence of their companions. Now that the great man had fallen, they were anxious to know if he had done anything for them while he yet had the power. The colonel was the first to take an active step. He led Rougon, who, with a portfolio under his arm, readily followed him, into one of the window-recesses.

'Have you given me a thought?' he asked with a pleasant smile.

'Yes, indeed. Your nomination as commander of the Legion of Honour was again promised me four days ago. But, of course, to-day it is impossible for me to say anything with certainty. I confess to you that I am afraid my friends will be made to suffer by my fall.'

The colonel's lips trembled with emotion. He stammered that they must do what they could, and then, turning suddenly round, he called out: 'Auguste!'

The lad was on his hands and knees underneath the desk, trying to decipher the inscriptions on the batches of documents. However, he hastened to his father.

'Here's this lad of mine,' resumed the colonel in an undertone. 'I shall have to find a berth for the young scamp one of these days. I am counting upon you to help me. I haven't made up my mind yet between the law and the public service. Give your good friend your hand, Auguste, so that he may recollect you.'

While this scene was going on, Madame Bouchard, who had begun to bite her gloves impatiently, had risen from her chair and made her way to the window on the left, after giving M. d'Escorailles a look which meant that he was to follow her. Her husband was already there, leaning upon the cross-bar and gazing out upon the view. The leaves of the tall chestnut trees in the Tuileries Garden were languidly waving in the warm sunshine, and the Seine could be seen rolling blue waters, flecked with golden light, between the Royal and Concorde bridges.

Madame Bouchard suddenly turned round and exclaimed: 'Oh! Monsieur Rougon, come and look here.'

Thereupon Rougon hastily quitted the colonel, while Du Poizat, who had followed the young woman, discreetly retired, again joining M. Kahn at the middle window.

'Do you see that barge full of bricks? It nearly foundered just now,' said Madame Bouchard.

Rougon looked and obligingly lingered there in the sunshine till M. d'Escorailles, upon a fresh glance from the young woman, said to him: 'Monsieur Bouchard wants to send in his resignation. We have brought him here in order that you may try to dissuade him.'

M. Bouchard then explained that he could not endure injustice. 'Yes, Monsieur Rougon,'he continued, 'I began as a copying-clerk in the office of the Minister of the Interior, and reached the position of head clerk without owing either to favour or intrigue. I have been head clerk since 1847. Well, the post of head of department has been vacant five times—four times under the Republic and once under the Empire—and yet the Minister has not once thought of me, though I had hierarchical rights to the place. Now that you will no longer be able to fulfil the promise you gave me I think I had better retire.'

Rougon tried to soothe him. The post, said he, had not yet been bestowed upon any one else, and even if he did not get it this time, it would only be a chance lost; a chance which would certainly present itself again on some future occasion. Then he grasped Madame Bouchard's hands and complimented her in a paternal fashion. Her husband's house had been the first thrown open to him on his arrival in Paris, and it was there that he had met the colonel, who was the head clerk's cousin. Later on, when M. Bouchard had inherited his father's property and had been smitten, at fifty-four years of age, with a sudden desire to get married, Rougon had acted as witness on behalf of Madame Bouchard, then Adèle Desvignes, a well brought up young lady of a respectable family at Rambouillet. The head clerk had been anxious to marry a young lady from the provinces, because he made a point of having a steady wife. However, the fair and adorable little Adèle, with her innocent blue eyes, had in less than four years proved to be a great deal worse than a mere flirt.

'There, now, don't distress yourself,' said Rougon, who was still holding her hands in his big fists. 'You know very well that I will do my best for you.'

Then he took M. d'Escorailles aside, and told him that he had written that morning to his father to tranquillise him. The young auditor must remain quietly in his place. The Escorailles family was one of the oldest in Plassans, where it was treated with the utmost respect; and Rougon, who in former days had often dragged his worn-down boots past the old Marquis's house, took a pride in protecting and assisting the young man. The family retained an enthusiastic devotion for Henri V., though it allowed its heir to serve the Empire. This was one of the inevitable consequences of the wickedness of the times.

Meanwhile, at the middle window, which they had opened to obtain greater privacy, Kahn and Du Poizat were talking together, while gazing out upon the distant roofs of the Tuileries, which looked blue in the haze of the sunlight. They were sounding each other, dropping a few words, and then lapsing into intervals of silence. Rougon, they agreed, was too impulsive. He ought not to have allowed himself to be irritated by that Rodriguez question, which might have been very easily settled. Then M. Kahn, gazing blankly into the distance, murmured as though he were speaking to himself: 'A man knows when he falls, but never knows whether he will rise again.'

Du Poizat pretended not to hear; but, after a long pause, he said: 'Oh! he's a very clever fellow.'

Then the deputy abruptly turned, and, looking the sub-prefect full in the face, spoke to him very rapidly: 'Between ourselves, I am afraid for him. He plays with fire. We are his friends, of course, and there can be no thought of our abandoning him. But I must say that he has thought very little about us in this matter. Take my own case, for instance. I have matters of enormous importance on my hands, and he has placed them in utter jeopardy by this sudden freak of his. He would have no right to complain—would he, now?—if I were to knock at somebody else's door; for, you know, it is not I alone who suffer, there are all the townsfolk as well.'

'Yes, well, go and knock at some other door,' said Du Poizat, with a smile.

At this the deputy, in a sudden outburst of anger, let the truth escape him. 'But is it possible? This confounded fellow spoils you with everybody else. When you belong to his band, every one else fights shy of you.'

Then he calmed down, sighed, and looked out towards the Arc de Triomphe, which could be seen rising in a greyish mass out of the green expanse of the Champs Élysées. 'Well, well,' he continued softly, 'I'm as faithful as a dog myself.'

For the last moment or two the colonel had been standing behind the two men. 'Fidelity is the road to honour,' said he in his military voice. Then, as Du Poizat and Kahn made room for him, he added: 'Rougon is contracting a debt to us to-day. Rougon no longer belongs to himself.'

This remark met with the warmest approval. It was certainly quite true that Rougon no longer belonged to himself. What was more, it was necessary that he should be distinctly told so in order that he might know what it behoved him to do. Then the three friends chatted in whispers, forming plans and fortifying each other with hope. At intervals they turned and cast a glance into the big room to make sure that no one was monopolising the great man for too long a time.

The great man was now gathering up the portfolios, while still talking to Madame Bouchard. The Charbonnels were wrangling in the corner where they had remained silent and ill at ease ever since their arrival. They had twice attempted to get hold of Rougon, but had been anticipated by the colonel and the young woman. Now, at last, M. Charbonnel pushed his wife towards the ex-President.

'This morning,' she stammered, 'we received a letter from your mother——'

Rougon did not allow her to finish, but took her and her husband into the window-recess on the right hand, once more abandoning his portfolios without any great sign of impatience.

'We have received a letter from your mother,' repeated Madame Charbonnel, and she was going to read the letter in question, when Rougon took it from her and glanced over it. Charbonnel was a retired oil merchant of Plassans, and he and his wife had been protected by Madame Félicité, as Rougon's mother was called in her own little town. She had given them a letter of introduction to her son on the occasion of their presenting a petition to the Council of State. A cousin of theirs, one Chevassu, a lawyer at Faverolles, the chief town of a neighbouring department, had died, leaving his fortune of five hundred thousand francs to the Sisters of the Holy Family. Originally the Charbonnels had not expected to inherit his fortune, but having suddenly become his next heirs, owing to his brother's death, they contested the will on the ground of undue influence; and the Sisterhood having petitioned the Council of State to authorise the payment of the bequest to them, they had left their old home at Plassans, hastened to Paris, and taken lodgings at the Hôtel du Périgord in the Rue Jacob in order that they might be on the spot to look after their interests. The matter had been lingering on for the past six months.

'We are feeling extremely depressed,' sighed Madame Charbonnel, while Rougon was reading the letter. 'I myself was always against bringing this action, but Monsieur Charbonnel said that with you on our side we should certainly get the money, as you had only to say a word to put the five hundred thousand francs into our pocket. Isn't that so, Monsieur Charbonnel?'

The retired oil merchant nodded his head with a hopeless air.

'And for such a sum as that,' continued Madame Charbonnel, 'it did seem worth while to make a change in our old way of life. And it has been nicely changed and disturbed, indeed. Will you believe it, Monsieur Rougon, they actually refused to change our dirty towels at the hotel yesterday? We who have five chests full of linen at home!'

She went on railing at Paris, which she detested. They had originally come thither for a week. Then, as they had always hoped to be able to return home during the following week, they had not thought it worth while to send for anything, and, their case still being unsettled, they doggedly lingered on in their furnished lodgings, eating whatever it pleased the cook to provide, short too of clean linen and almost of clothes. Madame Charbonnel was obliged to dress her hair with a broken comb. Sometimes they sat down on their little valise and wept from very weariness and indignation.

'And the hotel is frequented by such queer characters!' complained M. Charbonnel, with a shocked expression. 'A young man has the room next to ours, and the things we hear——'

But Rougon was folding up the letter. 'My mother,' said he, 'gives you excellent advice in telling you to be patient. I can only suggest to you to take fresh courage. You seem, to me, to have a good case, but now that I have resigned I dare not promise you anything.'

'Then we will leave Paris to-morrow!' cried Madame Charbonnel, in an outburst of despair.

As soon as this cry had escaped her lips, she turned very pale and her husband had to support her. For a moment they both remained speechless, looking at each other with trembling lips and feeling a great desire to burst into tears. They felt faint and dazed as though they had just seen the five hundred thousand francs dashed out of their hands.

'You have had to deal with a powerful opponent,' Rougon continued kindly. 'Monseigneur Rochart, the Bishop of Faverolles, has himself come to Paris to support the claim of the Sisters of the Holy Family. If it had not been for his intervention, you would long ago have gained your cause. Unfortunately the clergy are now very powerful. However, I am leaving friends here behind me, and I hope to bring some influence to bear in your favour, while I myself keep in the background. You have waited so long that if you go away to-morrow——'

'We will remain, we will remain!' Madame Charbonnel hastily gasped. 'Ah, Monsieur Rougon, this inheritance will have cost us very dear!'

Rougon now hastened back to his papers. He cast a glance of satisfaction round the room, delighted that there was no one else to take him off into one of the window-recesses. They had all had their say. And so for a few minutes he made great progress with his task. Then he waxed bitterly jocose and avenged himself on his visitors for the bother they had caused him by attacking them with biting satire. For a quarter of an hour he proved a perfect scourge to those friends of his to whose various stories he had just listened so obligingly. His language and manner to pretty Madame Bouchard became indeed so harsh and cutting that the young woman's eyes filled with tears, though she still continued to smile. All the others laughed, accustomed as they were to Rougon's rough ways. They knew that their prospects were never better than when he was belabouring them in this fashion.

However, all at once, there was a gentle knock at the door. 'No, no!' cried Rougon to Delestang, who was going to see who was there; 'don't open it! Am I never to be left in peace? My head is splitting already.' Then, as the knocking continued with greater energy, he growled between his teeth: 'Ah, if I were going to stay here, I would send Merle about his business!'

The knocking ceased, but suddenly a little door in a corner of the room was thrown back and gave entrance to a huge blue silk skirt, which came in backwards. This skirt, which was very bright and profusely ornamented with bows of ribbon, remained stationary for a moment, half inside the room and half outside, without anything further being visible. However, a soft female voice was heard speaking.

'Monsieur Rougon!' exclaimed the lady, at last showing her face.

It was Madame Correur, wearing a bonnet with a cluster of roses on it. Rougon, who had stepped angrily towards the door, with fists clenched, now bowed and grasped the new-comer's hand.

'I was asking Merle how he liked being here,' she said, casting a tender glance at the big lanky usher, who stood smiling in front of her. 'And you, Monsieur Rougon, are you satisfied with him?'

'Oh, yes, certainly,' replied Rougon pleasantly.

Merle's face still retained its sanctimonious smile, and he kept his eyes fixed upon Madame Correur's plump neck. The latter braced herself up to her full height and then brought her curls over her forehead.

'I am glad to hear that, my man,' she continued. 'When I get any one a place, I am anxious that all parties should be satisfied. If you ever want any advice, Merle, you can come and see me any morning, you know, between eight and nine. Mind you keep steady, now.'

Then she came inside the room, and said to Rougon: 'There are no servants so good as those old soldiers.'

And afterwards she took hold of him and made him cross the room, leading him with short steps to the window at the other end. There she scolded him for not having admitted her. If Merle had not allowed her to come in by the little door, she would still have been waiting outside. And it was absolutely necessary that she should see him, she said, for he really could not take himself off in that way without letting her know how her petitions were progressing. Forthwith she drew from her pocket a little memorandum-book, very richly ornamented and bound in rose-coloured watered silk.

'I did not see the Moniteur till after déjeuner,' she continued; 'and then I took a cab at once. Tell me, now, how is the matter of Madame Leturc, the captain's widow, who wants a tobacco shop, getting on? I promised her that she should have a definite answer next week. There's also the case of Herminie Billecoq, you remember, who used to be a pupil of Saint Denis. Her seducer, an officer, has consented to marry her if any charitable soul will give her the regulation dowry. We thought about applying to the Empress. Then there are all those ladies, Madame Chardon, Madame Testanière, and Madame Jalaguier, who have been waiting for months.'

Rougon quietly gave her the replies she sought, explained the various causes of the delays that had occurred, and entered into minute details. However, he gave her to understand that she must not reckon so much upon him in the future as she had done in the past. This threw her into great distress. It made her so happy, she said, to be able to be of service to any one. What would become of her with all those ladies? Then she spoke of her own affairs, with which Rougon was fully acquainted. She again reminded him that she was a Martineau, one of the Martineaus of Coulonges, a good family of La Vendée, in which fathers and sons had been notaries without a break over seven successive generations. She never clearly explained how she came to bear the name of Correur. When she was twenty-four years old she had eloped with a young journeyman butcher, and for six months her father had suffered the greatest distress from this disgraceful scandal, about which the neighbourhood still gossiped. Ever since then she had been living in Paris, utterly ignored by her family. She had written fully a dozen times to her brother, who was now at the head of the family practice, but had failed to get any reply from him. His silence, she said, was due to her sister-in-law, a woman who 'carried on with priests, and led that imbecile brother of hers by the nose.' One of her most cherished ambitions, as in Du Poizat's case, was to return to her own neighbourhood as a well-to-do and honoured woman.

'I wrote again a week ago,' she said; 'but I have no doubt she throws my letters into the fire. However, if my brother should die, she would be obliged to let me go to the house, for they have no child, and I should have interests to look after. My brother is fifteen years older than I am, and I hear that he suffers from gout.' Then she suddenly changed her tone, and continued: 'However, don't let us bother about that now. It's for you that we must use all our energies at present, Eugène. We will do our best, you shall see. It is necessary that you should be everything in order that we may be something. You remember '51, don't you, eh?'

Rougon smiled, and as Madame Correur pressed his hands with a maternal air, he bent down and whispered into her ear: 'If you see Gilquin, tell him to be prudent. Only the other week, when he got himself locked up, he took it into his head to give my name, so that I might bail him out.'

Madame Correur promised to speak to Gilquin, one of her tenants at the time when Rougon had lodged at the Hôtel Vanneau, and withal a very useful fellow on certain occasions, though apt to be extremely compromising. 'I have a cab below, and so now I'll be off,' she said aloud with a smile as she stepped into the middle of the room.

Nevertheless, she lingered for a few minutes longer, hoping that the others would take their departure at the same time. In her desire to effect this, she offered to take one of them with her in her cab. The colonel accepted the offer, and it was settled that young Auguste should sit beside the driver. Then general hand-shaking began. Rougon took up a position by the door, which was thrown wide open; and as his visitors passed out, each gave him a parting assurance of sympathy. M. Kahn, Du Poizat, and the colonel stretched out their necks and whispered a few words in his ear, begging him not to forget them. However, when the Charbonnels had already reached the first step of the staircase, and Madame Correur was chatting with Merle at the far end of the ante-room, Madame Bouchard, for whom her husband and M. d'Escorailles waited a few paces away, still lingered smilingly before Rougon, asking him at what time she could see him privately in the Rue Marbeuf, because she felt too stupid, said she, when he had visitors with him. At this the colonel, hearing her, suddenly darted back into the room, and then the others followed, there being a general return.

'We will all come to see you,' the colonel cried.

'You mustn't hide yourself away from every one,' added several voices. But M. Kahn waved his hand to obtain silence. And then he made that famous remark of his: 'You don't belong to yourself; you belong to your friends, and to France.'

At last they all went away, and Rougon was able to close the door. He heaved a great sigh of relief. Delestang, whom he had quite forgotten, now made his appearance from behind the heap of pasteboard boxes, in the shelter of which he had just finished classifying different papers, like a conscientious friend. He was feeling a little proud of his work. He had been acting, while the others had merely been talking; so it was with genuine satisfaction that he received the great man's thanks. It was only he, so the latter said, who could have rendered him this service; he had an orderly mind, and a methodical manner of working which would carry him far. And Rougon made other flattering observations, without it being possible for one to know whether he was really in earnest or only jesting. Then, turning round, and glancing into the different corners, he said: 'There, I think we've finished everything now, thanks to you. There's nothing more to be done, except to tell Merle to have these packets carried to my house.'

He called the usher, and pointed out his private papers. And in reply to all his instructions the usher repeated: 'Yes, Monsieur le Président.'

'Don't call me President any more, you stupid,' Rougon at last exclaimed in irritation; 'I'm one no longer.'

Merle bowed, and took a step towards the door. Then he stopped and seemed to hesitate. Finally he came back and said: 'There's a lady on horseback down below who wants to see you, sir. She laughed, and said she would come up, horse and all, if the staircase were wide enough. She declared that she only wanted to shake hands with you, sir.'

Rougon clenched his fists, thinking this to be some joke; but Delestang, who had gone to look out of the window on the landing, hastened back, exclaiming, with an expression of emotion: 'Mademoiselle Clorinde!'

Then Rougon said that he would go downstairs; and as he and Delestang took their hats, he looked at his friend, and with a frown and a suspicious air, prompted by the latter's emotion, exclaimed: 'Beware of women!'

When he reached the door, he gave a last glance round the room. The full light of day was streaming through the three open windows, illumining the open pasteboard boxes, the scattered drawers and the packets of papers, tied up and heaped together in the middle of the carpet. The apartment looked very spacious and very mournful. In the grate only a small heap of black ashes was now left of all the handfuls of burnt papers. And as Rougon closed the door behind him, the taper, which had been forgotten on the edge of the writing-table, burnt out, splitting the cut-glass socket of the candlestick to pieces amid the silence of the empty room.

[III]

MADEMOISELLE CLORINDE

Rougon occasionally went to Countess Balbi's for a few minutes towards four in the afternoon. He walked there in a neighbourly way, for she lived in a small house overlooking the avenue of the Champs Élysées, only a few yards from the Rue Marbeuf. She was seldom at home, and when by chance she did happen to be there she was in bed, and had to send excuses for not making her appearance. This, however, did not prevent the staircase of the little house from being crowded with noisy visitors, or the drawing-room doors from being perpetually on the swing. Her daughter Clorinde was wont to receive her friends in a gallery, something like an artist's studio, with large windows overlooking the avenue.

For nearly three months Rougon, with his blunt distaste for female wiles, had responded very coldly to the advances of these ladies, who had managed to get introduced to him at a ball given by the Minister for Foreign Affairs. He met them everywhere, both of them smiling with the same winning smile—the mother always silent, while the daughter always chattered and looked him straight in the face. However, he still went on avoiding them, lowering his eyes so as not to see them, and refusing the invitations which they sent him. Then as they continued to press him hard and pursued him even to his own house, past which Clorinde used to ride ostentatiously, he made inquiries before at last venturing to call on them.

At the Sardinian Legation the ladies were spoken of in very favourable terms. There had been a real Count Balbi, it appeared; the Countess still kept up relations with persons of high position at Turin, and the daughter, during the preceding year, had been on the point of marrying a petty German prince. But at the Duchess of Sanquirino's, where Rougon made his next inquiries, he heard a different story. There he was told that Clorinde had been born two years after the Count's death, and a very complicated history of the Balbis was retailed to him. The husband and wife had led most adventurous and dissolute lives; they had been divorced in France, but had afterwards become reconciled to each other in Italy, their subsequent cohabitation being an illicit one, in consequence of their previous divorce.

A young attaché, who was thoroughly acquainted with what went on at the court of King Victor Emmanuel, was still more explicit. According to him, whatever influence the Countess still retained in Italy was due to an old connection with a very highly placed personage there, and he hinted that she would not have left Turin had it not been for a terrible scandal into the details of which he would not enter. Rougon, whose interest in the matter was increasing with the extent of his inquiries, now went to the police authorities, but they could give him no precise information. Their entries relating to the two foreigners simply described them as women who kept up a great show without any proof that they were really in possession of a substantial fortune. They asserted that they had property in Piedmont; but, as a matter of fact, there were sudden breaks in their life of luxury, during which they abruptly disappeared, only to reappear shortly afterwards in fresh splendour. Briefly, all that the police could say was that they really knew nothing about them and would prefer to know nothing. At the same time, it was certain that the women associated with the best society, and that their house was looked upon as neutral ground, where Clorinde's eccentricities were tolerated and excused on account of her being a foreigner. And so Rougon at last made up his mind to see the ladies.

By the time he had paid his third visit, the great man's curiosity with respect to them had still further increased. He was of a cold dispassionate nature which was not easily stirred into life. What first attracted him in Clorinde was the mystery surrounding her, the story of a past-away life and the yearning for a new existence which he could read in the depths of her big goddess-like eyes. He had heard disgraceful scandal about her—an early love-affair with a coachman, and a subsequent connection with a banker who had presented her with the little house in the Champs Élysées. However, every now and then she seemed to him so child-like that he doubted the truth of what he had been told, and again and again essayed to find out the secret of this strange girl, who became to him a living enigma, the solution of which interested him as much as some intricate political problem. Until then he had felt a scornful disdain for women, and the first one who excited his interest was certainly as singular and complicated a being as could be imagined.

Upon the morrow of the day when Clorinde had gone on her hired horse to give Rougon a sympathetic shake of the hand at the door of the Council of State, Rougon himself went to pay her a visit. She had made him give a solemn promise to do so. She wanted, she said, to show him something which would brighten his gloomy moods. He laughingly called her his 'pet vice'; forgot his worries when he was with her, and felt cheerful and amused. The more so as she kept his mind on the alert, for he was still seeking the key to her history, and was as yet no nearer a solution than on the first day. As he turned the corner of the Rue Marbeuf, he glanced at the house in the Rue du Colisée tenanted by Delestang, whom he fancied he had several times seen peering through the half open shutters of his study at Clorinde's window across the avenue; but to-day the shutters were closed. Delestang had probably gone off to his model-farm at La Chamade.

The door of the Balbis' house was always wide open. At the foot of the staircase Rougon met a little dark-complexioned woman, with untidy hair and a tattered yellow dress. She was biting at an orange as though it were an apple.

'Is your mistress at home, Antonia?' he asked her.

Her mouth was too full to allow her to reply, so she nodded her head energetically and smiled. Her lips were streaming with orange juice, and her little eyes, as she screwed them up, looked like drops of ink upon her dark skin.

Rougon was already accustomed to the irregular ways of the Balbis' servants, so without more ado he went up the stairs. On his way he met a big lanky man-servant, with a face like a brigand's and a long black beard, who coolly stared at him without giving him the balustrade-side. When he reached the first floor, he found himself confronted by three open doors, but saw no one about. The door on his left hand was that of Clorinde's bedroom. Curiosity prompted him to peep inside. Although it was four o'clock in the afternoon, the bed had not been made or the room tidied. Upon a screen standing in front of the bed and half concealing the tumbled coverlets, some splashed petticoats which the girl had worn on the previous day had been hung to dry, while a wash-basin, full of soapy water, stood on the floor in front of the window, and the cat of the house, a grey one, slept, comfortably curled, in the midst of a heap of garments.

It was, however, upon the second floor that Clorinde was generally to be found, in the gallery which she had successively turned into a studio, a smoking-room, a hot-house, and a summer drawing-room. As Rougon ascended upwards he heard a growing uproar of voices, shrill laughter and a noise as of furniture being overturned; and when he reached the door he could distinguish the notes of a consumptive piano and sounds of singing. He knocked at the door twice without receiving any answer, and then determined to enter.

'Ah! bravo, bravo, here he is!' cried Clorinde, clapping her hands.

Rougon, whom it was generally so difficult to put out of countenance, for a moment remained timidly on the threshold. Chevalier Rusconi, the Sardinian Minister, a handsome dark-complexioned man, who, under other circumstances, was a grave diplomatist, sat in front of the piano, the keys of which he was striking furiously so as to extract a fuller sound from the instrument. In the middle of the room deputy La Rouquette was waltzing with a chair, the back of which he amorously encircled with his arms, and he was so absorbed in his amusement that he had littered the carpet with other chairs which he had overturned. Then, in the bright light of one of the window-recesses, Clorinde stood upon the centre of a table, posing, with perfect unconcern, as the huntress Diana, in front of a young man who was sketching her with charcoal upon white canvas. Finally, on a couch, three serious-looking men with their legs crossed were silently smoking big cigars and looking at Clorinde.

'Wait a moment! don't move!' cried Chevalier Rusconi to Clorinde, who was about to jump off the table. 'I am going to make the presentations.'

Then, followed by Rougon, he said playfully, as he went past M. La Rouquette, who had dropped breathless into an easy chair: 'Monsieur La Rouquette whom you know; a future minister.' And going up to the artist, he continued: 'Signor Luigi Pozzo, my secretary; diplomatist, painter, musician, and lover.'

He had overlooked the three men on the couch, but catching sight of them as he turned round, he dropped his playful tones, bowed towards them and said in a ceremonious voice: 'Signor Brambilla, Signor Staderino, Signor Viscardi, all three political refugees.'

The three Venetians bowed without removing their cigars from their lips. Chevalier Rusconi was returning to the piano when Clorinde briskly called him back and reproached him with being a very careless master of the ceremonies. Then, motioning towards Rougon, she just said, though in a very significant and flattering tone: 'Monsieur Eugène Rougon.'

Every one bowed again; and Rougon, who for a moment had been rather afraid of some compromising pleasantry, felt surprised at the unexpected tact and dignity shown by this girl, so scantily clad in gauze. He took a seat and inquired after the Contessa Balbi, as was his custom. He even pretended every time he came that his visit was intended for the mother, as this seemed more consonant with strict propriety.

'I should have been very glad to have paid my respects to her,' he said, using the formula which he always employed under the circumstances.

'But mother is there!' exclaimed Clorinde, pointing to a corner of the room with her bow of gilded wood.

The Countess was indeed there, reclining in a deep easy chair behind a variety of other furniture. This discovery came quite as a surprise. The three political refugees had evidently been unaware of her presence, for they at once rose from their couch and bowed. Rougon went up and shook hands with her, standing while she, still lying back in her chair, answered him in monosyllables with that perpetual smile of hers which never left her, even when she was ill. Then she relapsed into listless silence, glancing every now and then into the avenue along which a stream of carriages was passing. She had probably taken up her position there in order to watch the people. And so Rougon soon left her.

Chevalier Rusconi, having again taken his seat at the piano, was trying to recall a tune, gently striking the keys and humming some Italian words in a low voice. La Rouquette, meantime, was fanning himself with his handkerchief; Clorinde was again seriously impersonating Diana, and Rougon, in the sudden calm which had come upon the room, took short steps up and down while looking at the walls. The gallery was crowded with an extraordinary collection of articles; a secrétaire, a chest, and several chairs and tables, all pushed into the middle of the apartment and forming a labyrinth of narrow passages. At one end of the room some hot-house plants, crowded together and neglected, were drooping and dying, their long, pendent leaves already turning yellow; and at the other end there was a great heap of dried sculptor's clay, in which one could still recognise the crumbling arms and legs of a statue which Clorinde had roughly moulded one day when seized with the whim of becoming an artist. Although the gallery was very large, there was only one unencumbered spot in it, a patch in front of one of the windows, a small square, which had been turned into a kind of little drawing-room, furnished with a couch and three odd easy chairs.

'You are at liberty to smoke,' said Clorinde to Rougon. He thanked her, but told her that he never smoked. Then, without turning round, the girl cried out: 'Chevalier, make me a cigarette. The tobacco is in front of you, on the piano.'

While the Chevalier was making the cigarette there was another interval of silence. Rougon, vexed at finding all these people present, felt inclined to take up his hat; however, he turned round and walked up to Clorinde; then raising his head, he said with a smile: 'Didn't you ask me to call because you had something to show me?'

She did not immediately reply, but maintained her serious pose; so he continued: 'What is it that you want to show me?'

'Myself,' she answered.

She spoke this word in a majestic tone, not moving a limb as she stood there on the table in her goddess-like posture. Rougon, in his turn becoming grave, took a step backward and scrutinised her. She was truly a superb creature, with her pure perfect profile, her slender neck, and admirable classic figure. She rested one hand upon her bow, and preserved all the antique huntress's expression of serene strength, regardless of the scantiness of her attire, contemptuous of the love of man, at once cold, haughty, and immortal.

'Charming, charming!' exclaimed Rougon, not knowing what else to say.

As a matter of fact he found her statuesque immobility rather disturbing. She looked so triumphant, so convinced of her classical beauty, that, if he had dared to express his thoughts, he would have criticised her like some marble statue, certain details of which displeased his unæsthetic eyes.

'Have you looked enough?' asked Clorinde, still serious and earnest. 'Wait a moment and you shall see something else.'

Then, of a sudden, she was no longer Diana. She dropped her bow and assumed another, and more syren-like posture. Her hands were thrown behind her head and clasped together in her hair; her bust bent slightly backwards, and, as she half-opened her lips and smiled, a stream of sunshine lighted up her face. And standing thus she looked like the very goddess of love.

Signor Brambilla, Signor Staderino, and Signor Viscardi broke into applause in all seriousness, never casting off their gloomy conspirator-like mien.

'Brava! brava! brava!'

On his side M. La Rouquette was quite frantic with enthusiasm, and Chevalier Rusconi, who had stepped up to the table to hand the girl the cigarette which he had made for her, remained transfixed there, gazing at her with ecstatic eyes and slightly jogging his head as though beating time to his admiration.

Rougon said nothing, but clasped his hands so tightly together that their joints cracked. A subtle tremor had just sped through him. He no longer thought of going away, but dropped into a chair. Clorinde had already resumed her easy, natural pose, and was laughing and smoking her cigarette with a proud twist of her lips. It would have delighted her, said she, to be an actress. She could personate anger, tenderness, modesty, fright, and with a turn of her features or an attitude hit off all sorts of different people.

'Monsieur Rougon,' she asked abruptly, 'would you like to see me imitate you when you are addressing the Chamber?' And thereupon she drew herself up to her full height, puffed herself out and thrust her fists in front of her with such droll, yet truthful, mimicry, that they all nearly killed themselves with laughing. Rougon roared like a boy. He found Clorinde adorable, indeed exquisite, but also very disturbing.

'Clorinde, Clorinde!' cried Luigi, gently tapping his easel.

She was moving about so restlessly that he was obliged to desist from his work. He had now laid his charcoal aside and was putting colour on the canvas with an earnest air. He himself remained quite serious amidst all the laughter, raising his glistening eyes to the young girl and then glancing fiercely at the men with whom she was joking. It was his own idea to paint her in the character of Diana, in a costume which had been the talk of all Paris ever since the ball at the embassy. He claimed to be her cousin, as they had both been born in the same street in Florence.

'Clorinde!' he repeated almost angrily.

'Luigi is right,' she then exclaimed, 'you are not behaving properly, gentlemen. What a noise you are making! Come, let us get on with our work.'

Then she once more assumed her Olympian attitude, again presenting the semblance of a beautiful marble image. The men remained where they were, keeping perfectly still, as though rooted to the floor. La Rouquette alone ventured to beat a gentle tattoo with his finger-tips on the arms of his chair. Rougon, for his part, sat back and gazed at Clorinde, and gradually fell into a dreamy state in which the girl seemed to him to expand into gigantic proportions. A woman was certainly a wonderful piece of mechanism, he reflected. It was a matter that he had never before thought of studying; but now he began to have vague mental glimpses of extraordinary intricacies. For a moment he was filled with a distinct consciousness of the power of those bare shoulders, which seemed strong enough to shake a world. All swam before him, and Clorinde's figure seemed to grow larger and larger till it appeared gigantic, and entirely hid the window from his sight. But he blinked his eyes sharply, and then he again saw her clearly, standing upon the table and much smaller than himself. At this his face broke into a smile, and he felt surprised that he could have entertained a moment's fear of her.

At the other end of the gallery some talk was now going on in low tones. Rougon listened from force of habit, but could only distinguish a rapid murmur of Italian syllables. Chevalier Rusconi, who had just glided behind his chair, had laid one hand on the back of the Countess's seat, and, bending over her respectfully, seemed to be telling her some long story. The Countess said nothing, but nodded every now and again. Once, however, she made an energetic gesture of negation, whereupon the Chevalier bent still closer and tranquillised her with his melodious voice, the murmur of which was like the warbling of a song-bird. At last Rougon, through his knowledge of the dialect of Provence, caught a few words which made him grave.

'Mother,' Clorinde cried abruptly, 'have you shown the Chevalier the telegram you received last night?'

'A telegram!' exclaimed the Chevalier in a loud tone.

The Countess drew a bundle of letters from her pocket and began to search amongst them. Then she handed the Chevalier a much crumpled strip of blue paper.

As soon as he had glanced over it he made a gesture of anger and astonishment. 'What!' he cried in French, forgetting the presence of the others, 'you knew this yesterday! And I only learnt it this morning!'

Clorinde indulged in a fresh burst of laughter, which increased his irritation.

'And Madame la Comtesse allows me to tell her the whole story, as though she knew nothing about it!' he continued. 'Well, as the head-quarters of the legation seem to be here, I shall call every day to see the correspondence.'

The Countess smiled. She again searched in her bundle of letters and took out a second paper which she gave the Chevalier to read. This time he seemed much pleased. Then they renewed their conversation in whispers, the Chevalier's face once more wearing a respectful smile. Before he left the Countess, he kissed her hand.

'There! we've done with business,' he said in a low voice as he took his seat at the piano again.

Then he rattled off a vulgar air which was very popular in Paris that year. But having ascertained what time it was, he suddenly sprang up to get his hat.

'Are you going?' asked Clorinde. Then she beckoned him to her, and leaning on his shoulder whispered something into his ear. He nodded and smiled; and finally said: 'Capital, capital. I will write and mention it.'

At last he bowed to the company and retired. Luigi tapped Clorinde, who was squatting on the table, with his maul-stick, in order to make her stand up again. The Countess appeared to have grown tired of watching the stream of carriages in the avenue, for she pulled the bell-rope that hung behind her as soon as she lost sight of the Chevalier's brougham, which quickly disappeared among the crowd of landaus coming back from the Bois. It was the big lanky man-servant with the brigand's face who answered her summons, leaving the door wide open behind him. Leaning heavily on his arm, she slowly crossed the room, the men standing up and bowing as she passed. She acknowledged their salutations with a smiling nod. When she reached the door, she turned and said to Clorinde: 'I have got my headache again; I'm going to lie down a little.'

'Flaminio,' called the young girl to the servant who was assisting her mother, 'put a hot iron at her feet.'

The three political refugees did not sit down again. For a few moments they remained standing in a row, finishing their cigars, the stumps of which they then threw, each with the same precise gesture, behind the heap of dry clay. And afterwards they filed past Clorinde, going off in procession.

M. La Rouquette had just commenced a serious conversation with Rougon. 'Yes, indeed,' he remarked, 'I know very well that this question of sugars is one of the greatest importance. It affects a whole branch of French commerce. But unfortunately nobody in the Chamber seems to have thoroughly studied the subject.'

Rougon, whom he bored, only answered with a nod. However, the young deputy drew closer to him, an expression of sudden gravity coming over his girlish face as he continued: 'I myself have an uncle in the sugar trade. He has one of the largest refining-houses at Marseilles. I went to stay with him for three months, and I took notes, very copious notes. I talked to the workmen and made myself conversant with the whole subject. I intended, you understand, to make a speech in the Chamber on the matter.'

In this wise he tried to show off before Rougon, giving himself a deal of trouble in order to talk to him on the only subjects which he thought would interest him; and, at the same time, being anxious to pass for a sound politician.

'And didn't you make a speech?' interposed Clorinde, who seemed to be growing impatient of M. La Rouquette's presence.

'No, I didn't,' he replied; 'I thought I'd better not. At the last moment I felt afraid that my figures might not be quite correct.'

Rougon eyed him keenly and then gravely asked him: 'Do you know how many pieces of sugar are consumed every day at the Café Anglais?'

For a moment La Rouquette seemed quite confused and stared at the other with a blank expression. Then he broke into a peal of laughter. 'Ah! very good! very good!' he cried. 'I understand now. You are chaffing me. But that's a question of sugar. What I was speaking about was a question of sugars. Very good that, eh? You'll let me repeat the joke, won't you?'

He wriggled on his chair with much self-satisfaction. The rosy hue came back to his cheeks and he seemed quite at his ease again, once more talking in his natural light manner. Clorinde attacked him on the subject of women. She had seen him, she said, two nights previously at the Variétés with a little fair person who was very plain and had hair like a poodle's. At first the young man denied the accusation; but, irritated by Clorinde's cruel remarks about the 'little poodle,' he at last forgot himself and began to defend her, saying that she was a highly respectable lady and not nearly so bad looking as Clorinde tried to make out. The girl, however, grew quite scathing, and finally M. La Rouquette cried out: 'She's expecting me now, and I must be off.'

As soon as he had closed the door behind him, Clorinde clapped her hands triumphantly, and exclaimed: 'There, he's gone at last. Good riddance to him.'

Then she jumped lightly from the table, ran up to Rougon, and gave him both her hands. Assuming her most winning look, she expressed her regret that he had not found her alone. What a lot of trouble she had had to get all those people to go! Some people couldn't understand anything! What a goose La Rouquette was with his sugars! Now, however, there was no one to disturb them, and they could talk. She had led Rougon to a couch as she was speaking, and he had sat down without releasing her hands, when Luigi began to tap his easel with his maul-stick, exclaiming in a tone of irritation: 'Clorinde! Clorinde!'

'Oh yes, of course, the portrait,' she cried, with a laugh.

Then she made her escape from Rougon, and bent down behind the artist with a soft caressing expression. How pretty his work looked, she cried. It was very good indeed; but, really, she felt rather tired and would much like a quarter of an hour's rest. He could go on with the dress in the meantime. There was no occasion for her to pose for the dress. Luigi, however, cast fiery glances at Rougon, and muttered disagreeable words. Thereupon Clorinde hastily said something to him in Italian, knitting her brows the while, though still continuing to smile. This reduced Luigi to silence, and he began to pass his brush over the canvas again.

'It's quite true what I say,' declared the girl as she came back and sat down beside Rougon; 'my left leg is quite numb.'

Then she slapped herself to make the blood circulate, she explained; and she was bending towards Rougon, her bare shoulder touching his coat, when she suddenly looked at herself and blushed deeply. And forthwith she sprang up and fetched a piece of black lace which she wrapped around her.

'I feel chilly,' she said, when she had wheeled an easy chair in front of Rougon and sat down in it.

Nothing but her bare wrists now peeped out from beneath her lace wrapper, which she had knotted round her neck. Her bust was completely concealed in its folds, and her face had turned pale and grave.

'Well, what is it that has happened to you?' she exclaimed. 'Tell me all about it.'

Then she questioned him about his fall from office with daughterly curiosity. She was a foreigner, she told him, and she made him again and again repeat certain details which she said she did not understand. She also kept on interrupting him with Italian ejaculations, and he could read in her dark eyes the interest she took in what he was telling her. Why had he quarrelled with the Emperor? How could he have brought himself to give up such a lofty position? Who were his enemies, that he should have allowed himself to be worsted in that way? And as he hesitated, unwilling to make the confessions which she tried to extort from him, she looked at him with an expression of such affectionate candour, that at last he threw off all reserve and told her the whole story from beginning to end. She soon seemed to have learnt all that she wanted to know, and then began to ask him questions quite unconnected with the matter which had first engaged her attention, questions so singular that Rougon was altogether surprised. But at last she clasped her hands and lapsed into silence. Closing her eyes she seemed buried in deep thought.

'Well?' said Rougon, with a smile.

'Oh, nothing,' she murmured, 'but this has made me quite sad.'

Rougon was touched, and tried to take hold of her hands again, but she hid them away in her lace wrapper, and they both sat there in silence for a minute or two, when she opened her eyes again and said: 'You have formed some plans, I suppose?'

Rougon looked at her keenly, with a touch of suspicion. But she seemed so adorable as she languidly reclined in that easy chair, as though the troubles of her 'dear friend' had broken her down, that he dismissed the chilling thought. Moreover, she plied him with flattery. She was sure, said she, that he would not long be allowed to remain aloof, but would be master again some day. She was confident that he had high ambitions and trusted hopefully in his star, for she could plainly read as much on his brow. Why wouldn't he take her for his confidante? She was very discreet, and it would make her so happy to share his hopes for the future. Rougon, quite infatuated by all this, and still trying to grasp the little hands hidden away beneath the lace, thereupon kept nothing back, but confessed everything to the girl, his hopes as well as his certainties. He required no further urging from her, and she had only to let him talk on, refraining even from a gesture for fear of checking him. She kept her eyes upon him, examining him searchingly limb by limb, fathoming his skull, weighing his shoulders and measuring his chest. He was certainly a solid, well-built man, who, with a turn of his wrist, could have tossed her, strong as she was, on to his back and have carried her without the least difficulty to whatever height she might have desired.

'Ah! my dear friend,' she exclaimed abruptly, 'it is not I who have ever felt any doubts.'

Then she sprang from her seat, and, spreading out her arms, let the lace wrapper slip off. A momentary all-alluring vision, a sort of promise and reward, appeared to Rougon. 'Ah!' she cried, 'my lace has fallen,' and quickly picking it up again, she knotted it round her more tightly than before.

'Oh!' she next exclaimed, 'there's Luigi growling.'

Then she hastened back to the artist, bent over him a second time and rapidly whispered to him. Rougon, now that she was no longer by his side, roughly rubbed his hands together, feeling almost angry. That girl had exercised a most extraordinary influence over him and he resented it. If he had been a lad of twenty he could not have acted more foolishly. She had wheedled him into a confession as though he had been a mere child; whereas he, for the last two months, had been doing his best to make her speak, but had only succeeded in extracting peals of laughter from her. She, however, had merely had to deny him her little hands for a moment, and he had foolishly forgotten all his prudence and told her everything in order to gain possession of them.

Nevertheless, Rougon smiled a smile of conscious strength. He could break her, he told himself, whenever he liked. Wasn't it she herself who was challenging him? He certainly could not go on playing the part of an imbecile with this girl who so freely showed him her shoulders. He was by no means sure that the lace wrapper had slipped off without her assistance.

'Would you say that my eyes were grey?' Clorinde now asked him, stepping towards him again.

He rose and looked at her quite closely, but she bore his inspection without even her eyelids quivering. However, when he stretched forth his hands, she gave him a tap. There was no occasion to touch her. She had become very cold, now. She wrapped herself yet more closely in her strip of lace, and her modesty seemed to take alarm at the least hole in it. In vain did Rougon joke and jest. She only covered herself the more, and even refused to sit down again.

'I prefer walking about a little,' she said; 'it stretches my legs.'

Then Rougon followed her and they paced the room together. He tried, in his turn, to extract a confession from her. As a rule, she could not be got to answer questions. Her conversation usually consisted of sudden starts and jumps, interspersed with ejaculations and snatches of stories which she never finished. When Rougon adroitly questioned her concerning the fortnight of the previous month which she and her mother had spent away from Paris, she started on an interminable string of anecdotes about her journeyings. She had been everywhere, to England, Spain, and Germany; and she had seen everything. Then she vented a series of trifling remarks upon food, and the fashions and the weather. Now and then she began some story, in which she herself figured with sundry well-known persons, whom she named; and, thereupon, Rougon listened attentively, hoping that she was at last going to make some real revelation; but she either turned the story off into some childish nonsense or stopped short and left it unfinished altogether. That day, as previously, he learnt absolutely nothing. Her face retained its impenetrable smile, and she remained full of secretive reserve amidst all her boisterous freedom. Rougon, quite confused by the different extraordinary stories he had heard of her, each of which gave the lie to the other, was utterly unable to determine whether he had before him a mere girl whose innocence extended even to foolishness, or a keen-witted woman who cunningly affected simplicity.

She was telling him of an adventure that had happened to her in a little town in Spain, and of the gallantry of a traveller who had given up his room to her, when she suddenly broke off and exclaimed: 'You mustn't go back to the Tuileries. Make yourself missed.'

'Thank you, Mademoiselle Machiavelli,' he replied, with a laugh.

She laughed louder than he did, but none the less she went on giving him excellent advice. However, as he still sportively tried to pinch her arms, she seemed to grow vexed and declared that it was impossible to talk to him seriously for a couple of minutes together. Ah! if she were a man, she said, she would know how to mount high. But men were so light-headed. 'Come now and tell me about your friends,' she continued, seating herself on the edge of the table, while Rougon remained standing in front of her.

Just then, however, Luigi, who had kept his eyes on them, violently closed his paint-box and exclaimed: 'I'm going!'

At this Clorinde ran up to him, and brought him back, after promising to resume her pose. Probably, however, her only motive in asking him to remain was that she felt afraid of being left alone with Rougon, for when Luigi had assented to her request, she began to make further excuses for the purpose of gaining time. 'Just let me get something to eat,' she said; 'I am dreadfully hungry. Just a couple of mouthfuls.' And then opening the door, she called out: 'Antonia! Antonia!'

She gave an order in Italian, and had just seated herself again on the edge of the table when Antonia came into the room, holding on each of her outspread hands, a slice of bread and butter. She held her hands out to Clorinde as though they had been plates, breaking into a giggle as she did so, a laugh which made her mouth look like a red gash across her dusky face. Then she went off, wiping her hands on her skirt. Clorinde, however, called her back and told her to get a glass of water.

'Will you have some?' she said to Rougon, 'I'm very fond of bread and butter. Sometimes I put sugar on it; but it doesn't always do to be so extravagant.'

She was certainly not given to extravagance, and Rougon remembered that he had found her one morning breakfasting off a fragment of cold omelet which had been left over from the previous day. He rather suspected her of avarice, which is an Italian vice.

'Three minutes, eh, Luigi?' she said, as she began her first slice of bread and butter. Then turning once more to Rougon, who was still standing in front of her, she exclaimed: 'Now there's Monsieur Kahn, for instance: tell me about him. How did he get to be a deputy?'

Rougon yielded to this fresh request, hoping that he would somehow be able to worm some information out of the girl. He knew that she was very curious about everyone, ever on the alert to gather information concerning the intrigues in the midst of which her life was passed. She always seemed particularly anxious to know the origin of any great fortune.

'Oh!' he replied, with a laugh, 'Kahn was born a deputy. He cut his teeth on the benches of the Chamber. As early as Louis Philippe's time he sat in the Right centre and supported the constitutional monarchy with youthful enthusiasm. After 1848 he went over to the Left centre, still keeping very enthusiastic. He made a confession of republican principles in magnificent style. Now, however, he has gone back to the Right centre and is a passionate supporter of the Empire. As for the rest, he's the son of a Jewish banker at Bordeaux. He has some blast furnaces at Bressuire, has made a specialty of financial and industrial questions, lives in a quiet way until he comes into the large fortune which he will one day secure, and was promoted to the rank of officer in the Legion of Honour on the fifteenth of last August——'

Rougon hesitated for a moment and seemed to be thinking. 'No,' he resumed, 'I don't think I have omitted anything. He has no children.'

'What! is he married?' exclaimed Clorinde, indicating by a gesture that she took no further interest in M. Kahn. He was an impostor: he had never let them know that he had a wife. Rougon thereupon explained to her that Madame Kahn led a very retired life in Paris; and without waiting to be questioned further, he continued: 'Would you like to hear Béjuin's biography?'

'No, no,' replied the girl.

All the same, however, he went on with it. 'He comes from the Polytechnical School. He has written pamphlets which nobody has read. He is head of the Saint-Florent cut-glass works, about seven or eight miles from Bourges. It was the prefect of the Cher who discovered him——'

'Oh, give over!' cried Clorinde.

'He is a very worthy fellow, votes straight, never speaks, is very patient and waits contentedly till you think of him, but he is always on the spot to take care that you sha'n't forget him. I got him named chevalier——'

Thereupon Clorinde impatiently placed her hand over Rougon's mouth, and exclaimed: 'Oh, he is married too! He isn't a bit interesting. I saw his wife at your house. She's a perfect bundle! She invited me to visit the works at Bourges.'

She now swallowed the last mouthful of her first slice of bread and butter, and then gulped down some water. 'And Monsieur Du Poizat?' she asked, after a pause.

'Du Poizat has been a sub-prefect,' was all that Rougon replied.

She glanced at him, surprised by the brevity of this account. 'I know that,' she said. 'What else?'

'Well, by-and-bye he will be a prefect, and then he will be decorated.'

She saw that he did not want to say anything further about Du Poizat; whose name, moreover, she herself had merely mentioned at random. However, she now began to mention other men, counting their names on her fingers. Touching her thumb, she began: 'Monsieur d'Escorailles; he's flippant and in love with every woman—Monsieur La Rouquette; he's no good, I know him only too well—Monsieur de Combelot; he's another married man——'

Then, as she stopped short at the ring-finger, unable to think of another name, Rougon, keeping his eyes on her, remarked: 'You are forgetting Delestang.'

'So I am!' she exclaimed. 'Tell me about him!'

'He's a handsome fellow,' said Rougon, still watching her attentively. 'He is very rich, and I have always prophesied a great future for him.'

He went on in this strain, exaggerating his praises and doubling his figures. The model-farm of La Chamade, said he, was worth a couple of million francs. Delestang would certainly be a minister some day. Clorinde, however, curled her lips disdainfully. 'He is a big booby,' she said at last.

'What?' cried Rougon with a subtle smile. He seemed quite charmed by her remark.

But with one of those sudden transitions which were habitual with her, she asked him a fresh question, keenly scrutinising him in her turn: 'You must know Monsieur de Marsy very well?'

'Oh yes, we know each other,' he replied unconcernedly, amused that the girl should have asked him such a question. Then he became serious, and showed himself very dignified and impartial. 'Marsy is a man of extraordinary intelligence,' he continued. 'I am honoured by having such a man for my enemy. He has filled every position. At twenty-eight years of age, he was a colonel. Later on, he was at the head of a great business. And since then, he has successively occupied himself with agriculture, finance and commerce. I hear, too, that he paints portraits and writes novels.'

Clorinde had grown thoughtful, and was forgetting her bread and butter. 'I was talking to him the other day,' she said in a low tone. 'He's perfect—a genuine queen's son.'

'In my estimation,' continued Rougon, 'it is his wit that spoils him. My idea of ability is quite different. I have heard him making puns under the gravest circumstances. Well, anyhow, he has been very successful, and is as much the sovereign as the Emperor himself. All these natural children[3] are lucky fellows. However, his greatest characteristic is his grip of iron; he has firm and resolute hands, though they are light and slender.'

Clorinde unconsciously let her eyes wander to Rougon's hands, so large and powerful. He noticed it, and with a smile continued: 'Ah, mine are mere paws, aren't they? That's why Marsy and I have never been able to get on well together. He gallantly sabres his foes without soiling his white gloves, while I knock mine down.'

Thereupon he clenched his heavy hairy fists and shook them, seemingly proud of their enormous size. Clorinde took up her second slice of bread and butter and dug her teeth into it, still absorbed in thought. At length she raised her eyes to Rougon's face. 'And now about yourself?' she asked.

'Ah, you want to hear my history, do you?' said he. 'Well, it's very easily told. My grandfather sold vegetables. I myself, till I was thirty-eight years of age, kicked up my heels as a country lawyer in the depths of the provinces. Yesterday I was unknown, for I haven't, like our friend Kahn, helped to back up every Government in turn, and I haven't come, like Béjuin, from the Polytechnical School. I can't boast of little Escorailles' fine name or poor Combelot's handsome face. I haven't even as good family connections as La Rouquette, who is indebted for his seat in the Chamber to his sister, the widow of General de Llorentz and now a lady-in-waiting. My father did not leave me five million francs gained in the wine trade, as Delestang's left him. I wasn't born on the steps of a throne, like Count de Marsy was, nor have I grown up tied to the apron-strings of a clever woman, under the favour of Talleyrand. No, I'm a self-made man; I've only my own hands——'

Then he clapped his hands together, laughing loudly, and turning what he had said into a joke. Finally he braced himself to his full height and looked as though he were crushing stones with his clenched fists. Clorinde gazed at him admiringly.

'I was nothing; I shall now be whatever I like,' he continued, as though he were speaking to himself and had forgotten the presence of others. 'I am a power. Those other fellows make me shrug my shoulders when they prate of their devotion to the Empire! Do they really care for it? Do they appreciate it? Wouldn't they conform to all kinds of governments? For my own part, I have grown up with the Empire! I have made it, and it has made me! I was named a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour after the tenth of December, an officer in January 1851, a commander on the fifteenth of August 1854, and a grand officer three months ago. Under the Presidency, I was entrusted for a short time with the portfolio of Public Works; later on the Emperor gave me a mission to England, and since then I have entered the Council of State and the Senate——'

'And, to-morrow, what will you enter?' Clorinde interrupted with a laugh, by which she tried to conceal her ardent curiosity.

He stopped short and looked at her. 'You are very inquisitive, Mademoiselle Machiavelli,' he said.

Then Clorinde began to swing her legs more briskly, and there was an interval of silence. Rougon, seeing her absorbed in a fresh reverie, thought that a favourable moment had come for extorting a confession from her. 'Women——' he began.

But in a low tone she interrupted him, smiling at her own thoughts, with a vague expression in her eyes: 'Oh, women are quite different!'

This was all the confession she made. She finished her bread and butter and drained her glass of water. Then she leapt to her feet on the table, with a spring that testified to her adroitness as a horsewoman. 'Now, Luigi!' she cried.

For the last few minutes the artist, who had left his seat, had been impatiently gnawing his moustache while irritably walking up and down in front of Rougon and Clorinde. With a sigh, he now sat down again and took up his palette. The three minutes' grace which Clorinde had asked for had expanded into a quarter of an hour. Now, however, she was again standing on the table, still enveloped in her black lace. When she had set herself in the proper attitude, she uncovered herself with a light movement of the hand, and became a marble statue once more.

Fewer carriages were now rolling along the Champs Élysées, over which the declining sun cast a stream of hazy light, enveloping the trees in a ruddy haze that might almost have been taken for a coating of dust stirred up by the passing vehicles. Clorinde's shoulders gleamed as with sheeny gold in the light that fell through the lofty windows. The sky gradually became greyer.

'Is Monsieur de Marsy's intended marriage with the Wallachian princess settled yet?' asked the girl.

'Yes, I think so,' Rougon replied. 'She is very rich, and Marsy is always short of money. And they say, too, that he is madly in love with her.'

A spell of silence followed. Rougon stayed on, perfectly at his ease, without any further thought of going away. He was absorbed in meditation, and began to pace the room again. That Clorinde, he said to himself, was certainly a remarkably fascinating creature. He thought of her as though he had left her some time ago; and, as he walked up and down, with his eyes turned to the floor, his mind dwelt on dimly formulated, but very alluring thoughts, from which he derived a tender pleasure. He seemed, moreover, to be breathing some strangely perfumed atmosphere, and would have liked to throw himself upon one of the couches and drop off to sleep amidst that odorous air.

A sound of words suddenly recalled him to himself. A tall old man, whose entrance he had not observed, was kissing Clorinde on the brow, while the girl smilingly stooped over the edge of the table.

'Good-morning, my dear,' said the old gentleman. 'How pretty you look! You are exhibiting your charms, I see.' Then he gave a little snigger, and as Clorinde in confusion picked up her lace wrapper, he quickly added: 'No, no! You are very nice as you are! You needn't be afraid of us.'

Then he turned towards Rougon, whom he addressed as 'dear colleague,' as he shook his hand. 'I dandled her many a time on my knees, when she was a little thing,' he added. 'Ah! what a dazzling creature she is now!'

The new-comer was M. de Plouguern. He was seventy years of age. A representative of Finistère in the Chamber during the reign of Louis Philippe, he had been one of those Legitimist deputies who made the pilgrimage to Belgrave Square,[4] and he had resigned in consequence of the vote of censure then passed upon himself and his companions. Later on, after the Revolution of February 1848, he had manifested a sudden affection for the Republic, which he vigorously applauded from the benches of the Constituent Assembly. Now that the Emperor had granted him the well-earned refuge of the Senate, he was a Bonapartist. But he knew how to be a Bonapartist and a man of high birth and breeding at the same time. With all his great humility he occasionally indulged in a spice of opposition. Ingratitude amused him, and, though he was a sceptic to the backbone, he defended religion and family-life. He thought that he owed that much to his name, one of the most illustrious in Brittany. Accordingly every now and then he found the Empire immoral, and said so openly. He himself had lived a life of dissolute intrigue and elaborate pleasure-seeking, and stories were told even of his old age which set young men dreaming. It was during a journey in Italy that he had first met Countess Balbi, whose lover he had remained for nearly thirty years. After separations, which lasted sometimes for years, they would come together for a short time in some town where they happened to meet. According to some, Clorinde was his daughter; however, since the girl had grown up and had become a plump and pretty young woman, he asserted, while gazing at her with his still glistening eyes, that he had known her father well in former days. At the same time he treated her with considerable freedom as being an old friend. This tall, withered, scraggy old Plouguern bore some resemblance to Voltaire; and the likeness was the source of much secret pleasure to him.

'You don't look at my portrait, godfather,' Clorinde said to him all at once.

She called him godfather by reason of their intimacy. The old man stepped behind Luigi, and screwed up his eyes with the air of a connoisseur. 'Splendid!' he exclaimed.

Rougon also came up, and Clorinde herself jumped off the table to get a better view. All three of them were delighted. The picture was excellent, they said. The artist had already covered the entire canvas with a thin coating of pink and white and yellow, as pale as though it were a mere water-colour wash. The face was wreathed into a pretty dollish smile, the lips were curved into a bow, and the eyebrows symmetrically arched, while the cheeks glowed with soft vermilion. It was a Diana, fit for the lid of some box of sweetmeats.

'Oh, just look at that little freckle close to the eye!' cried Clorinde, clapping her hands in admiration: 'Luigi forgets nothing!'

Rougon, whom pictures generally wearied, was charmed. Just then he appreciated art, and in a tone of earnest conviction he pronounced this judgment: 'It is admirably drawn.'

'And the colouring is excellent,' added M. de Plouguern. 'Those shoulders look like real flesh. And what arms! But the dear child has really got the most wonderful arms! I admire that full roundness below the bend of the arm immensely; it is perfect.' Then, turning to the artist, he added: 'Pray accept my compliments, Monsieur Pozzo. I have already seen a picture of a woman bathing by you. But this portrait will certainly excel it. Why don't you exhibit? I knew a diplomatist who played marvellously well upon the violin, and yet it didn't prevent him from attaining great success in his profession.'

Luigi bowed, feeling highly flattered. The daylight was now fast waning, and so, saying that he wished to finish an ear, he begged Clorinde to resume her position for another ten minutes. Meantime, M. de Plouguern and Rougon went on discussing art. The latter confessed that his special studies had prevented him from following the artistic movement of recent years, but he expressed great admiration for fine productions. He went on to say that he was not much affected by colour, but preferred good drawing—drawing which was capable of elevating the soul and inspiring it with great thoughts. M. de Plouguern, on his side, only cared about the old masters. He had visited all the galleries in Europe, and could not understand, said he, how the moderns had the hardihood to go on painting. All the same, he confessed that only the previous month he had had a little room of his decorated by an artist who was quite unknown, but who certainly possessed great genius.

'He has painted me some little cupids and flowers and foliage with extraordinary skill. You might positively think you could pluck the flowers. And there are some insects on them, butterflies, cockchafers, and flies, which you could almost swear were alive. It is very amusing. I like amusing pictures.'

'Art should not weary one,' retorted Rougon.

Just at this moment, as they were slowly pacing the room side by side, one of M. de Plouguern's boot-heels crushed something which gave out a sharp sound.

'Hallo! What's that?' he cried.

Then he picked up a chaplet, which had slipped off an arm-chair into which Clorinde had doubtless emptied her pockets. One of the glass beads near the cross had been shivered to atoms, and an arm of the cross itself, a very small silver one, was bent and flattened. The old man dangled the chaplet in his hand, and said with a slight snigger: 'My dear, why do you leave these playthings of yours lying about?'

Clorinde, however, had turned quite crimson. She sprang off the table, with swollen lips, and tears of anger welling into her eyes, and, as she rapidly covered up her shoulders, she stammered: 'Oh, the wretch! the wretch! he has broken my chaplet!'

She snatched it from him, and then burst into sobs like a child.

'There! there!' said M. de Plouguern, still laughing. 'Just look at my little devotee! The other day she nearly tore my eyes out because I noticed a branch of palm over her bed and asked her what she used that little besom for. There now, don't cry, you great goose! I haven't broken your Divinity.'

'Yes, yes,' she cried, 'you have injured it.' With trembling hands she removed the fragments of the bead, and then, with a fresh outburst of sobs, she tried to put the cross right again. She wiped it with her finger tips, as though she saw drops of blood oozing through the metal.

'It was the Pope who gave me this,' she sobbed, 'the first time I went with mother to see him. He knows me very well, and he calls me his "fair apostle," because I told him one day that I should be glad to die for him. It was a chaplet that brought me good luck. But now it has lost its virtue, and it will attract the devil——'

'Here, give it to me!' interrupted M. de Plouguern, 'you will only break your nails by trying to straighten it. Silver is hard, my dear.'

He took the chaplet from her and tried to straighten the arm of the cross, using great care so as not to break it. Clorinde had ceased crying, and watched him attentively. Rougon, too, smilingly craned his head forward. He was deplorably irreligious; so much so, indeed, that the girl had twice all but broken with him on account of his ill-considered pleasantries.

'The deuce!' muttered M. de Plouguern, 'this divinity of yours isn't very tender! I'm afraid of snapping it in two, and then you would have to get another one.'

He made a fresh attempt and this time the arm of the cross broke off. 'Oh! so much the worse!' he cried; 'it is broken this time.'

At this Rougon began to laugh again. But Clorinde, with angry eyes and convulsed face, sprang back glaring at them, and then fell upon them furiously with her fists, as though she wished to drive them out of the room. She railed at them in Italian, quite beside herself.

'She's giving it us! she's giving it us!' cried M. de Plouguern gaily.

'Such are the fruits of superstition,' muttered Rougon between his teeth.

The old man ceased his jesting and suddenly assumed a grave expression; and then as Rougon continued to declaim in conventional phraseology against the detestable influence of the priesthood, the shocking training of Catholic women, and the degradation of priest-ridden Italy, the other drily exclaimed: 'Religion makes the greatness of states.'

'When it doesn't eat them away like an ulcer,' replied Rougon. 'It's matter of history. If the Emperor doesn't keep the Bishops in check, he will soon have them all on his back.'

Thereupon M. de Plouguern in his turn grew angry. He defended Rome, and talked of what had been the convictions of his whole life. Without religion, he protested, men would return to the condition of brutes. Then he went on to plead the great cause of family ties. The times were becoming full of abomination. Never before had vice been so impudently paraded; never before had impiety worked such woe in men's consciences.

'Don't talk to me of your Empire!' he ended by crying; 'it is the bastard son of the Revolution. Oh! we are quite aware that your Empire dreams of humiliating the Church. But we are wide awake, and we shall not allow ourselves to be slaughtered like mere sheep. Just try to ventilate those doctrines of yours in the Senate, my dear Monsieur Rougon.'

'Oh, don't talk to him any more,' retorted Clorinde. 'If you push him too far, he will spit on the crucifix. He is doomed.'

Rougon bowed, quite overcome by this onset. Then there was a fresh pause, while the girl searched on the floor for the arm that had fallen from the cross. When she had found it, she carefully wrapt it with the chaplet in a piece of newspaper. She was growing calmer.

'Ah now, my dear!' M. de Plouguern suddenly exclaimed, 'I haven't told you why I came to see you. I have got a box at the Palais Royal for this evening, and I'm going to take you and your mother with me.'

'Oh, you dear godfather!' cried Clorinde, turning quite rosy again with pleasure. 'I'll send to have mother awakened.'

Then she gave the old man a kiss, by way of reward, she said; and afterwards turning to Rougon with a smile, and offering her hand, she said with the sweetest little pout: 'You don't bear me a grudge, do you? Please don't make me angry again with your pagan talk. I lose my head when anyone makes fun of religion: I should quarrel with my best friends over it.'

Luigi had by this time pushed his easel into a corner, having lost all hope of getting the ear finished that day. He took up his hat, and tapped the girl on the shoulder to apprize her of his departure. She accompanied him on to the landing, closing the door behind her as she left the room. However, they took leave of one another very noisily, for a slight scream of Clorinde's rang out, drowned in a burst of smothered laughter. When she returned to the room, she said: 'I'll go to dress now, unless my godfather would like to take me to the Palais Royal as I am.'

They all laughed at the notion. It was now dusk. When Rougon took his leave, Clorinde went downstairs with him, leaving M. de Plouguern by himself while she went to dress. It was already dark on the staircase as Clorinde descended it in front of Rougon without speaking a word, and so slowly that he felt the rustle of her gauze costume. When she reached the door of her bedroom she took a step or two forward before turning round. Rougon had followed her to the threshold. 'You won't bear me a grudge, will you?' she repeated in a low tone, again offering him her hands.

He assured her that he would not; but as he once more took hold of her hands his grip was so rough, so threatening almost, that Clorinde made all haste to escape from him, and while he stood panting there he heard her calling through an inner door which had been left open: 'Antonia, bring a light and get me my grey dress.'

When Rougon reached the avenue of the Champs Élysées he felt dazed, and stood still for a moment to inhale the fresh breeze which was blowing down from the Arc de Triomphe. The gas-lamps of the avenue, where now not a vehicle remained, were being lighted one by one, spangling the darkness with a trail of vivid sparks. Rougon felt as if he had just had an apoplectic fit, and rubbed his face with his hands.

'Ah, no!' he suddenly exclaimed aloud, 'no, no—it would be too foolish!'

[IV]

AN IMPERIAL CHRISTENING

The baptismal procession was to start from the Pavillon de l'Horloge—the central pavilion of the Tuileries palace—at five o'clock. It was to wend its way along the main avenue of the Tuileries gardens, the Place de la Concorde, the Rue de Rivoli, the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, the Arcole bridge, the Rue d'Arcole and the Place du Parvis.

By four o'clock there was an immense crowd assembled near the Arcole bridge. There, in the breach which the river made in the midst of the city, a whole people could find accommodation. The view expanded, with the Ile Saint Louis in the distance barred by the black line of the Louis-Philippe bridge. The narrow arm of the Seine on the left vanished amid a mass of low buildings; while the broader one on the right afforded a far-reaching prospect bathed in purplish vapour, through which the trees of the Port aux Vins showed in a green patch. On both sides of the river, from the Quai Saint Paul to the Quai de la Mégisserie, from the Quai Napoléon to the Quai de l'Horloge, were long foot-pavements and roadways; while, in front of the bridge, the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville afforded a large, open, level space. And over all the wide expanse, the sky, a bright, warm June sky, spread a vault of blue.

When the half hour struck, there were people everywhere. All along the footways endless lines of eager spectators were pressed against the quay parapets. A sea of human heads, which was continually surging, filled the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville. Opposite, in the dark gaps of the open windows of the old houses on the Quai Napoléon, faces were thickly crowding, and even in the gloomy alleys leading to the river, the Rue Colombe, the Rue Saint Landry and the Rue Glatigny, women's caps, with ribbons streaming in the breeze, could be seen leaning forward. The bridge of Notre Dame displayed a serried row of sight-seers, whose elbows rested on the stone parapet, as on the balustrade of some colossal balcony. Further down, the Louis Philippe bridge swarmed with little black figures; and even the most distant windows streaking the grey and yellow house-fronts were every now and then brightened by some gay dress. There were men on the roofs among the chimney stacks. People, who could not be distinguished, were looking through telescopes from their terraces on the Quai de la Tournelle. And the sunlight spreading over all seemed like the very quiver of the crowd; it bore afar the laughter of those surging heads, while gay, mirror-like parasols reflected the glow, showing as planets amidst all the medley of skirts and coats.

But there was one thing that was visible from every side, from the quays and bridges and windows, and that was a fresco painting of a colossal grey overcoat on the blank wall of a six-storeyed house on the isle of St. Louis. The sleeve of this coat was bent at the elbow as though the garment still retained the shape and attitude of a body that had disappeared from within it. In the bright sunshine, above all the swarming sight-seers, this gigantic advertisement presented a most conspicuous appearance.[5]

A double line of troops kept the roadway clear for the procession. National Guards were drawn up on the right hand, and infantrymen of the Line on the left. At one end, this military cordon extended to the Rue d'Arcole, which was gaudy with banners, while from the windows hung costly draperies which flapped languidly against the dingy house-fronts. The bridge, to which the crowd had not been admitted, was the only clear spot amidst the general invasion, and it presented a strange appearance, thus deserted. But, lower down, on the river banks, the crowding began again. Shopkeepers in Sunday clothes had spread out their pocket-handkerchiefs and seated themselves beside their wives to rest after a whole afternoon of lounging idleness. On the other side of the bridge, where the river expanded, showing a deep blue shot with green just where its arms united, there were some boatmen in red jackets who were working their oars to keep their boat on a level with the Port aux Fruits. By the Quai de Gèvres, too, there was a floating laundry, with wooden walls green with moisture, in which washerwomen could be heard laughing and beating their clothes. And all the teeming sight-seers, numbering from three to four hundred thousand people, now and again raised their heads to glance at the towers of Notre Dame which rose up square and massive above the houses of the Quai Napoléon. Gilded by the declining sun, so that they looked ruddy against the clear sky, the towers resounded with the clanging peals of their bells, which sent a quiver through the atmosphere.

Three or four false alarms had already caused a great deal of jostling in the crowd.

'I tell you that they won't pass before half-past five,' said a tall fellow who was sitting in front of a café on the Quai de Gèvres with M. and Madame Charbonnel.

It was Gilquin, Théodore Gilquin, Madame Mélanie Correur's old lodger, and Rougon's redoubtable friend. He was dressed that day in a complete suit of yellow duck, a cheap ready-made line, stained and creased, and here and there unsewn at the seams. His boots, too, were split, and his straw hat lacked a ribbon. However, he wore tan coloured gloves, and for that reason considered that he was in full dress. He had been acting since noon as a guide to the Charbonnels, whose acquaintance he had made one evening in the kitchen at Rougon's house.

'You shall see everything, my children,' he said to them, as he brushed aside the long black moustaches which swept across his tipsy-looking face. 'You have put yourselves in my hands, haven't you? Very well, then let me manage our little holiday.'

Gilquin had already drunk three nips of brandy and five glasses of beer. For the last two hours he had been keeping the Charbonnels prisoners at the café, whither he had brought them, on the pretext that it was absolutely necessary to be in good time. It was a little café with which he was well acquainted, and where they would be very comfortable, he assured them, and he seemed to be on most familiar terms with the waiter. The Charbonnels had resigned themselves to their fate, and listened to his talk, feeling much surprised at its abundance and variety. Madame Charbonnel had declined to take anything beyond a glass of eau sucrée, and M. Charbonnel had ordered for himself a glass of anisette, such as he occasionally indulged in at the Commercial Club at Plassans. Meanwhile Gilquin discoursed to them about the Baptism as explicitly as though he had spent the morning at the Tuileries for the purpose of acquiring information.

'The Empress is in very high spirits,' he said. 'She got over her delivery splendidly. She's a fine woman! You will see by-and-bye what a figure she has. The Emperor got back from Nantes on the day before yesterday. He went there on account of the floods. What a dreadful calamity those floods are!'

Madame Charbonnel pushed her chair back. She was beginning to feel rather afraid of the crowd which was streaming past her in increasing numbers. 'What a lot of people!' she muttered.

'Yes, indeed,' cried Gilquin, 'I should think so. There are more than three hundred thousand visitors in Paris. Excursion trains have been bringing them here for the last week from all parts of the country. See, over yonder there are some people from Normandy, and there are some from Gascony, and some from Franche-Comté. I can spot them at once; I've knocked about a good deal in my time.'

He next told them that the courts and the Bourse were closed, and that all the clerks in the government offices had got a holiday. The whole capital was holding festival in honour of the Baptism. Then he began to quote figures, and calculate what the ceremony and rejoicings would cost. The Corps Législatif had voted 400,000 francs,[6] but that was a mere nothing, for a groom at the Tuileries had informed him that the procession alone would cost nearly 200,000. If the Emperor got off with a million from the civil list, he might think himself lucky. The layette alone had cost 100,000 francs.

'What, 100,000 francs!' cried Madame Charbonnel in amazement. 'Why, how can they have possibly spent all that? What can it have gone in?'

Gilquin laughed as he told her that some laces cost an enormous sum. He himself had travelled in the lace business in former days. Then he went on with his calculations: 50,000 francs had gone to the parents of children who had been born on the same day as the little prince, and of whom the Emperor and Empress had expressed their intention to be godfather and godmother respectively. Then 85,000 francs were to be spent in purchasing medals for the authors of the cantatas which were sung at the theatres. Finally, there were 120,000 commemorative medals distributed among the collegians, the pupils of the primary schools and asylums and the non-commissioned officers and privates of the army of Paris. He had got one of those medals himself, and showed it to them. It was about the size of a half-franc piece, and bore on one side the profiles of the Emperor and Empress, and on the other that of the Prince Imperial, with the date of the latter's baptism, namely, June 14, 1856.

'Would you mind selling it me?' M. Charbonnel inquired of Gilquin.

The other expressed his willingness to do so, but as Charbonnel, embarrassed as to what he should offer for it, handed him a twenty-sous-piece, he declined it, saying that the medal was not worth more than ten sous. Madame Charbonnel, meanwhile, was gazing at the profiles of the imperial couple, and seemed quite affected by emotion: 'How good they look!' she said. 'There they are, side by side, like an affectionate pair. See, Monsieur Charbonnel, you would say two heads lying on the same pillow when you look at them this way.'

Then Gilquin returned to the subject of the Empress, of whose charitable disposition he spoke in the most laudatory terms. But a short time before her delivery she had devoted whole afternoons to furthering the establishment of an educational institute for poor girls in the Faubourg Saint Antoine. Moreover, she had just refused to accept an offering of 80,000 francs which had been collected in sums of five sous amongst the poorer classes for the purpose of buying a present for the young prince; and by her express desire the money was to be devoted to the apprenticing of a hundred poor orphans. Gilquin, who was already somewhat tipsy, twisted his eyes about in the most dreadful manner as he sought for tender phrases and expressions which should combine the respect of the subject with the passionate admiration of the man. He declared that he would gladly offer up his life in sacrifice at the feet of that noble woman. And nobody protested against this. The murmur of the crowd seemed indeed like a distant echo of his praises. It was now growing into a continuous clamour, while over the house-tops from the bells of Notre Dame rolled peal on peal of clanging, tumultuous joy.

'Don't you think it time for us to go and take our places?' timidly suggested M. Charbonnel, who felt tired of sitting still.

At this Madame Charbonnel rose up and fastened her yellow shawl about her neck. 'Yes, I'm sure it is,' she said. 'You wanted to be there in good time, and we're sitting here and letting everyone go past us.'

Gilquin, however, became indignant; and, with an oath, brought his fist down on the little zinc table. Didn't he know all about Paris? he asked; and then, as Madame Charbonnel timidly dropped upon her chair again, he cried to the waiter: 'Jules, a glass of absinthe and some cigars!'

But as soon as he had dipped his big moustaches in the absinthe, he angrily called the waiter back again. 'Are you having a game with me? Just take this filth away, and give me some out of the other bottle; the same as I had on Friday. I have travelled in the liquor-trade, my fine fellow. You can't bamboozle me.'

He calmed down, however, when the waiter, who seemed afraid of him, had brought the other bottle, and then he tapped the Charbonnels on the shoulders, and called them 'old fellow' and 'old lady.' 'Ah! so you're itching to be on the move, are you, old lady?' said he. 'You'll have plenty of use for your feet between now and to-night, so you needn't be in a hurry. We're very comfortable at this café; don't you think so, old fellow? We can take our ease and watch the people go by. We've plenty of time, I assure you, so you'd better order something else.'

'Thank you, we've had all that we want,' said M. Charbonnel.

Gilquin had just lighted a cigar. He leaned back in his chair, inserted his thumbs in the arm-holes of his waistcoat, thrust out his chest, and began to rock himself backwards and forwards. His eyes glowed with an expression of perfect content. Suddenly an idea seemed to strike him. 'I'll tell you what,' he cried; 'I'll call for you at seven o'clock to-morrow morning, and take you off with me and show you all the festivities. We'll have a splendid day of it.'

The Charbonnels looked at each other very uneasily. But Gilquin proceeded to explain his programme after the manner of a strolling showman. In the morning they would lunch at the Palais Royal, and walk about the city. In the afternoon they would go to the Esplanade of the Invalides, where there would be military performances, greasy poles, three hundred balloons laden with packets of sweets, and one large balloon raining down sugared almonds. In the evening they would dine at a wineshop which he knew of, on the Quai de Billy; then they would see the fireworks, the principal set-piece of which would represent a baptistery, and afterwards they could stroll among the illuminations. And he also told them of a fiery cross which was to be fixed on the Hôtel de la Légion d'Honneur; of a fairy palace on the Place de la Concorde, in the building of which 950,000 pieces of coloured glass had been used; and of the image atop of the tower of Saint Jacques, which would look like a blazing torch in mid-air.

As the Charbonnels still hesitated, however, he leaned towards them and added in lower tones: 'And then, as we come back, we might look in at a creamery in the Rue de Seine where they give you such stunning onion soup with cheese.'

At this the Charbonnels no longer dared to refuse. Childish curiosity and alarm mingled in the expression of their dilated eyes. They felt that they could not escape from that terrible man, and must do whatever he told them. Madame Charbonnel simply murmured: 'Oh! this Paris! this Paris! Well, well, since we are here, I suppose we must see all that there is to be seen. But if you only knew, Monsieur Gilquin, how quiet we were at Plassans! I have a store-room full of preserves and brandied cherries and pickles which are all mouldering away!'

'Don't alarm yourself, old lady,' replied Gilquin, who was growing more and more familiar; 'when you gain your case, you can ask me to come and stay with you, and then we'll all have a go at the jam-pots!'

So saying, he poured himself out another glass of absinthe. He was now perfectly tipsy. For a moment he looked at the Charbonnels with loving affection; but, all at once, he sprang to his feet and waved his long arms while calling; 'Eh! eh! Hallo! you there!'

Madame Mélanie Correur, arrayed in a dress of dove-coloured silk, was just then passing on the opposite footwalk. She turned her head and seemed extremely annoyed at seeing Gilquin. However, she crossed over with the majestic gait of a princess, but on reaching the table required a deal of pressing before she would accept any refreshment.

'Come now,' cried Gilquin, 'have a little glass of blackcurrant brandy. I know you like it. You haven't forgotten the Rue Vanneau, eh? We used to have fine times then, didn't we? Ah! that big old stupid of a Correur!'

Just as Madame Correur was at last sitting down, a loud shouting was heard among the crowd. The promenaders scuttled off like sheep, as though swept along by a gust of wind. The Charbonnels had instinctively risen with the idea of following the others, but Gilquin's heavy hand brought them to their chairs again. His face was quite purple.

'Just keep still and wait for orders, will you?' said he. 'Those folks are making fools of themselves. It is only five o'clock, isn't it? Well, then, it's the Cardinal-Legate who's coming; and we don't want to see the Cardinal-Legate, do we? For my part, I think it's very neglectful of the Pope not to have come himself. When a man is a godfather he ought to behave as such, it seems to me. However, I tell you that the youngster won't be here for another half-hour.'

His intoxication was rapidly depriving him of all sense of decorum. He had cocked his chair back and begun to smoke in people's faces, winking the while at the women and glaring defiantly at the men. A few yards away, near the bridge of Notre Dame, there was now a block in the road traffic. Horses were pawing the ground with impatience, and the uniforms of high functionaries and officers, embroidered with gold and glittering with decorations, appeared at the windows of the passing carriages.

'There's a nice show of tinsel and pewter!' sneered Gilquin, with the smile of a man who cares nothing for gew-gaws.

However, as a brougham came along from the Quai de la Mégisserie, he almost upset the table as he sprang up and cried: 'Hallo, Rougon!'

He saluted the great man with his gloved hand, and then, fearing that he had not been recognised, snatched off his straw hat and began to wave it. At this, Rougon, whose senatorial uniform was attracting a deal of notice, quickly withdrew to a corner of his brougham. And thereupon Gilquin began to call him, raising his hand to his mouth and using it as a speaking-trumpet. The people on the footway stopped and turned to see what was the matter with this strange-looking fellow dressed in yellow duck. At last, however, the coachman was able to urge his horse forward, and the brougham turned on to the bridge of Notre Dame.

'Do be quiet!' said Madame Correur in a low voice, while catching hold of Gilquin's arms.

But he would not at once sit down again. He remained on tip-toes, watching the brougham as it mingled with the other carriages, and at last he hurled a parting shout after the fleeing wheels: 'Ah! the turn-tail! just because he wears gold lace on his coat now! All the same, my fat fellow, you were deucedly hard up once upon a time!'

Some middle-class citizens and their wives who were sitting at the seven or eight tables of the little café heard this and opened their eyes in astonishment. At one table there was a family, consisting of the father and mother and three children, who seemed profoundly interested in Gilquin's proceedings. The latter puffed himself out, quite delighted to find that he had an audience. He let his eyes travel round the customers of the café, and said in a loud voice as he dropped into his seat again: 'Rougon! why it was I who made him what he is!'

Then turning to Madame Correur, who was trying to quiet him, he appealed to her for corroboration. She knew that he was speaking the truth, he proclaimed. It had all happened at the Hôtel Vanneau in the Rue Vanneau. She surely wouldn't deny that he had lent Rougon his boots a score of times to enable him to go to the houses of highly-placed people and mix in a lot of mysterious goings-on. Why, in those days Rougon only possessed an old pair of split shoes, which a rag-picker wouldn't have taken as a gift. Then with a triumphant air Gilquin bent towards the family at the next table, and exclaimed: 'Oh, she won't confess it, but it was she who paid for his first pair of new boots in Paris.'

Madame Correur, however, turned her chair round, so that she might no longer seem to be one of Gilquin's party. The Charbonnels had become quite pale at hearing the man who was to put half a million francs in their pockets spoken of in such a fashion. Gilquin, however, was wound up, and rattled off innumerable stories of Rougon's early days. He, Gilquin, claimed to be a philosopher, and he began to laugh, and accosted the parties at the different tables one after another, smoking, spitting, and drinking, while telling them that he was quite accustomed to the ingratitude of mankind, and was satisfied with preserving his own self-respect. And he repeated that he himself had been the making of Rougon. At that time, he said, he had been a traveller in the perfumery line, but the Republic was bad for trade. Both he and Rougon had been living on the same floor in a state of starvation. Then he was struck with the idea of getting Rougon to send for some olive-oil from a producer at Plassans, and they had both wandered about Paris in different directions till ten o'clock at night with samples of olive-oil in their pockets. Rougon was not clever at the business, but he occasionally succeeded in getting some good orders from the fine folks to whose houses he went in the evenings.

Ah! that rascal Rougon, he was a bigger booby than a goose in most things, yet all the same he was very cunning. A little later, how he had made him, Gilquin, run about to further his politics! Here Gilquin lowered his voice a little and winked, and let them know that he himself had belonged to the Bonapartist band. He had haunted the low dancing-rooms crying out 'Long live the Republic'; for it was necessary to profess Republicanism to get influence over the people. The Empire certainly owed him a big debt for what he had done; but it hadn't even thanked him. No, while Rougon and his clique shared all the prizes, he was turned out of doors like a mangy dog. Well, on the whole, he preferred that it should be so, he would rather remain independent. He had only one regret now, and that was that he had not stuck to the Republicans and made an end of all this scum with his musket.

'It's just the same, too, with little Du Poizat,' he said in conclusion. 'He pretends not to know me now; a skinny little beggar to whom I've often given a pipe of tobacco! And yet he's a sub-prefect now! Why I've often seen him with big Amélie, who used to box his ears and kick him outside the door when he didn't behave properly.'

After this he became silent for a moment as if overcome by tender recollections amidst his maudlin fit. Then, glancing round at his audience, he began again.

'Well, you've just seen Rougon. I'm as tall a man as he is, and I'm the same age, and I flatter myself that I've got a better looking head on my shoulders. Well, now, don't you think that it would be much better for everyone if I were in that carriage instead of that great fat pig, with his body covered all over with gold lace?'

However, just at this moment such a shouting arose on the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, that the people at the café became much too excited to reply. The crowd made another rush; men's legs flew along, while women caught up their petticoats to enable themselves to run the faster. As the shouting came nearer and grew more distinct, Gilquin cried out:

'Ah! here comes the youngster! Hurry up and pay the score, old man, and then follow me all of you!'

Madame Correur grasped his yellow duck coat so as not to lose him, and Madame Charbonnel panted along close behind, while her husband was almost lost in the crowd. Gilquin, by much resolute pushing, managed to open a passage through the dense throng, making such a show of authority that people drew back even at the most crowded parts. When he at last reached the quay, he lifted the ladies with an effort, and seated them on the parapet, with their legs dangling over, on the water side, and this in spite of their little shrieks of alarm. He himself and M. Charbonnel remained standing behind.

'Well, my little dears, you're in the front boxes now,' he said, to reassure the women; 'don't be frightened, we'll take hold of your waists.'

Thereupon he slipped both arms round Madame Correur's plump figure. She smiled at him. It was impossible to get angry with such a jovial fellow. As yet, however, they could see nothing. The Place de l'Hôtel de Ville was full of surging heads, and echoed with continuous cheering. Hats were waving in the distance, held aloft by hands which were indistinguishable, and forming a huge black billow which slowly rolled nearer and nearer. Then the occupants of the houses on the Quai Napoléon, which fronted the Place, began to show signs of excitement. They leant out of the windows, crowding against each other, with beaming faces, and arms outstretched to call attention to something in the direction of the Rue de Rivoli. For three minutes, which seemed very long, however, the bridge still remained empty. The bells of Notre Dame were ringing louder than ever, as though in some wild fit of joyful excitement.

Suddenly the anxious multitude beheld a company of trumpeters upon the empty bridge. There was a great sigh of expectation. Behind the trumpeters and the mounted band which followed them, came a general, escorted by his staff. Then, behind squadrons of carabineers, dragoons and hussars, followed the state-carriages. There were eight of them, each drawn by six horses. In those that came first sat the ladies-in-waiting, the chamberlains, the officers of the household of the Emperor and Empress, and the ladies in attendance upon the Grand Duchess of Baden, who had been deputed to represent the young prince's godmother. Gilquin, without letting go his hold of Madame Correur, told her from behind that the godmother, the Queen of Sweden, had not put herself out any more than the godfather had done. Then, as the seventh and eighth carriages went past, he told her the names of those who occupied them, with a glibness which bespoke great familiarity with court matters. Those two ladies, he said, were the Princess Mathilde and the Princess Marie. Those three gentlemen were King Jérôme, Prince Napoleon and the Crown Prince of Sweden. The lady with them was the Grand Duchess of Baden. Meanwhile, the procession swept on slowly. The equerries and aides-de-camp and gentlemen-in-waiting all rode with short reins to keep their horses at a walk.

'But where is the baby?' asked Madame Charbonnel impatiently.

'Oh! don't be frightened,' said Gilquin, with a laugh; 'they haven't put him under a seat. Wait a little and you'll see him.'

So saying, he tightened his grasp round Madame Correur, who allowed him to do so, she explained, because she was afraid of slipping into the water. Then, growing enthusiastic over the display, he continued, while his eyes glistened brightly: 'Isn't it really splendid? See how they take their ease, the rascals, in their satin-quilted coaches! And to think that I worked for all this!'

Then he began to puff himself out as though the procession, the crowd and everything that was to be seen owed their origin to him. However, after the temporary lull, caused by the appearance of the first carriages, there came a tremendous uproar. It was upon the quay itself now that hats were waving over the surging heads of the crowd. Six imperial outriders, wearing green liveries and round caps, from which dangled large gold tassels, had made their appearance on the bridge. Then at last the Empress's carriage came in sight. It was drawn by eight horses; and at each of its four corners there was a magnificent lamp. Large and rounded, panelled almost entirely with glass, this coach resembled a huge crystal casket with gold settings, mounted upon golden wheels. Inside it, amidst a cloud of snowy lace, one could clearly distinguish the rosy face of the Prince Imperial, carried upon the knees of the Governess of the Children of France, by whose side sat the wet nurse, a young, handsome, and buxom Burgundian. Then a short distance behind, following a group of mounted equerries and grooms on foot, came the Emperor's carriage, which also was drawn by eight horses, and was as magnificent as the previous one. In it sat the Emperor and Empress, who bowed to the people as they passed. Beside these two last carriages rode several marshals of France, who, without sign of impatience, let all the dust from the wheels settle on their richly broidered uniforms.

'Just fancy if the bridge were to break down!' exclaimed Gilquin with a grin. He was fond of indulging in the most awful suppositions.

Madame Correur, frightened at the thought of such a thing, tried to stop him, but he would dwell on the subject, remarking that iron bridges were never safe. He even asserted that he could see the platform oscillating when the two carriages were but half-way across. What a splash, he continued; if papa and mamma and baby went down they would get such a drink as would keep them from ever wanting another! The carriages, however, rolled softly and silently over the bridge, and the frame-work of the gently-curving arch was so light that they looked almost as though suspended in space over the river, in whose blue depths they were reflected like strange gold-fishes, carried up by the flow of the tide. The Emperor and Empress, feeling a little tired, leaned back against the buttoned satin, glad to escape the crowd for a moment and the necessity of bowing to it. The Governess, too, took advantage of the stretch of empty space to raise the little prince, who was slipping from her knees, while the nurse, leaning forward, amused him with a smile. The whole procession was steeped in bright sunshine. The uniforms, the gay gowns, and the horse-trappings shone out brilliantly, while the sparkling planet-like coaches cast tremulous beams of reflected sunlight along the fronts of the dingy houses on the Quai Napoléon. In the distance, above the bridge, the colossal advertisement of the giant grey overcoat, painted on the wall of a six-storeyed house, and now illumined with radiant splendour by the sun, formed a sort of background to the magnificent picture.

Gilquin noticed the overcoat just as it towered above the two carriages. 'Look!' he cried, 'there's the uncle[7] over yonder!'

A laugh ran through the surrounding crowd. M. Charbonnel, who did not catch the point, wanted to have it explained to him, but his request was drowned by the deafening cheering and clapping of hands that arose from the three hundred thousand people there pressed together. A mighty thrill of enthusiasm had sped through the mass of sight-seers as the little prince, followed by the Emperor and Empress, came into sight on the middle of the bridge, of which they had a full, unbroken view. Men rose on tip-toe, and set their dazed youngsters astride their necks, while women wept or stammered out expressions of love for 'the little darling,' showing a heartfelt sympathy with the happiness of the imperial parents. A storm of shouts still rolled on from the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville; and upon the quays, both up and down the river, there was a forest of waving, outstretched arms. Handkerchiefs fluttered from the windows, and men and women craned forward with glistening eyes and gaping mouths. Away in the distance the windows of the Ile Saint Louis, which looked like narrow streaks of charcoal, were lighted up with white gleams and evidences of life too far away to be clearly distinguished. However, the boatmen in red jackets stood up in the middle of the river, where the current swept them along, and shouted their loudest, while the washerwomen, leaning out of the windows of the floating laundry, waved their bare arms excitedly, and, in their desire to be heard, dealt blow after blow with their beetles till they nearly broke them.

'There, it's all over!' exclaimed Gilquin; 'let us be off.'

The Charbonnels, however, wanted to see the end of everything. The tail of the procession—squadrons of Cent Gardes, cuirassiers and carabineers—was plunging into the Rue d'Arcole. Then there came a scene of dreadful confusion. In several places people broke through the double line of National Guards and regulars, and women began to scream.

'Come along! come along!' repeated Gilquin. 'We shall be crushed to death!'

When he had deposited the ladies on the footway, he made them cross the road in spite of the crowd. Madame Correur and the Charbonnels had wanted to keep near the parapet, so as to make their way to the bridge of Notre Dame and see what was happening on the Place du Parvis. But Gilquin would not hear of it, and dragged them after him. When they once more reached the little café, he gave them a push and made them sit down again at the table which they had recently left.

'What perverse creatures you are!' he cried. 'Do you suppose that I want to have my feet crushed by all those louts? We'll have something to drink, we will! We are much better off here than in that crush. We've had enough sight-seeing. It was beginning to get wearisome. Come, old lady, what will you drink?'

The Charbonnels, upon whom he kept his perturbing eyes, began to make timid objections. They would have liked to see the procession leave the church. But Gilquin assured them that it would be best to give the crowd time to disperse, and that he would take them to the church in a quarter of an hour, if the crush was not too thick. However, while he was telling Jules to bring a supply of cigars and beer, Madame Correur prudently made her escape. 'Well, stay and rest yourselves a little,' she said to the Charbonnels. 'You will find me over yonder by-and-bye.'

She made her way to the bridge of Notre Dame and then into the Rue de la Cité. But the crush there was still so great that it took her a good quarter of an hour to reach the Rue de Constantine. At last she made a cut through the Rue de la Licorne and the Rue des Trois Canettes, and in this way emerged upon the Place du Parvis, after losing at the ventilator of a suspicious house one of the flounces of her dove-coloured dress. Round the square, strewn with sand and flowers, stood tall masts, from which hung banners bearing the imperial arms. In front of the church a vast tent-shaped porch draped the stone-work with curtains of crimson velvet, having fringes and tassels of gold.

Here Madame Correur was checked by a body of troops who kept back the crowd. In the middle of the space from which the public had been excluded, footmen were pacing up and down beside the carriages, which were drawn up in five rows, their coachmen still occupying their seats and holding their reins. As Madame Correur craned her head forward in the hope of finding some gap through which she might pass, she caught sight of Du Poizat quietly smoking a cigar in a corner of the square among some of the footmen.

'Don't you think you could get me in?' she asked him, when she had attracted his attention by waving her handkerchief.

Du Poizat went and spoke to an officer, and then led Madame Correur in front of the church.

'If you'll take my advice,' he said to her, 'you'll stay here with me. It's perfectly packed inside. I was nearly suffocated myself, and so I came out. See, there are Colonel Jobelin and Monsieur Bouchard, who have given up all hope of finding room.'

She looked and saw the two men on her left, near the Rue du Cloître Notre Dame. M. Bouchard was saying that he had just left his wife in charge of M. d'Escorailles, who had an excellent seat for a lady at his disposal, while the colonel's chief regret seemed to be that he was not able to explain the ceremony to his son Auguste.

'I much wished to show him the famous vase,' he said. 'It is, as you know, the genuine vase of Saint Louis—a vase of copper, damascened and ornamented with niello work in the most perfect Persian manner. It is a relic of the times of the Crusades, and has been used at the christenings of all our kings ever since.'

'Did you see all the insignia?' M. Bouchard asked Du Poizat.

'Yes,' replied the latter. 'Madame de Llorentz was carrying the chrisom.'

Then he entered into details. The chrisom was the christening cloth, a fact of which neither of the men had been aware. But Du Poizat went on to enumerate, not only the insignia of the Prince Imperial, the chrisom, the candle and the salt-cellar, but the insignia of the godfather and godmother, the basin, the ewer and the towel, all of which were carried by ladies-in-waiting. Then there was also the little prince's mantle, a most magnificent and wonderful mantle, which was hung over an arm-chair near the font.

'Isn't there really the smallest corner where I could squeeze myself?' cried Madame Correur, in whom all these details had roused a fever of curiosity.

Then they told her of all the great state bodies and high officials and innumerable deputations that they had seen pass. It was an almost endless procession, they said; the Diplomatic body, the Senate, the Corps Législatif, the Council of State, the Supreme Court, the Exchequer Court, the Appeal Court, the Tribunals of Commerce and of First Instance; to say nothing of the ministers, the prefects, the mayors and their deputies, the academicians, the general officers, and a host of others, including even delegates from the Jewish and Protestant consistories.

'Oh! what a splendid sight it must be!' Madame Correur exclaimed with a sigh.

Du Poizat shrugged his shoulders. He was in a very bad humour. All those people bored him, he said, and he seemed irritated by the length of the ceremony. How much longer would they be? They had sung the Veni Creator and had censed themselves and walked about and saluted one another. Surely the child must be christened by this time!

Meanwhile M. Bouchard and the colonel manifested greater patience and examined the decorated windows of the square; then, as a sudden peal of the bells shook the towers, they turned their heads and quivered uneasily at their close proximity to the huge church, whose summit they could not even discern in the sky. However, Auguste had slipped towards the porch, whither Madame Correur followed him. But when she reached the great door, which was wide open, the magnificent sight she beheld kept her rooted to the ground.

Between the two great curtains of the porch the church appeared like a vision of some superhuman temple. The vaulted arches, of a soft blue, were spangled with stars. Around this wondrous firmament the stained-glass windows gleamed like mystic planets, sparkling with burning jewels. From the lofty pillars on all sides hung drapery of crimson velvet, which still further shut the daylight out of the usually dim nave; and in the centre of this roseate twilight there blazed a multitude of tapers—thousands of tapers—so closely crowded that they seemed like a great sun flaming out amidst a rain of stars. This blaze was that of the altar, set on a platform in the centre of the transept. Thrones were placed on the right and left of it. Over the higher of the two thrones a spreading canopy of velvet lined with ermine showed like a huge bird with snowy breast and purple wings. The church was filled with a glittering crowd, bright with gold and jewels. Near the altar a group of clergy, bishops with mitres and croziers, formed, as it were, a glory, one of those dazzling splendours which suggest heaven itself. Around the altar princes, princesses and great dignitaries were ranged in sovereign pomp and circumstance. Then tiers of seats had been set up in the arms of the transept, for the Diplomatic body and the Senate, on the right, and for the Corps Législatif and the Council of State on the left; while representative bodies of every kind crowded the rest of the nave, and ladies displayed their bright, variegated gowns in the galleries above. A sanguineous haze floated over everything. The heads which showed in tiers on all sides had the roseate hue of painted porcelain. The dresses, the satin and silk and velvet, glowed with a dull splendour as though they would soon burst into a blaze. Rows of people suddenly seemed to flare. The whole deep church was like some wondrous furnace.

Then Madame Correur saw an assistant master of the ceremonies advance to the centre of the choir, where he thrice shouted energetically: 'Long live the Prince Imperial! Long live the Prince Imperial! Long live the Prince Imperial!'

And as the lofty arches shook with a mighty acclamation, Madame Correur saw the Emperor standing on the altar steps overlooking the throng. He stood out black and distinct against the background of blazing gold which the bishops formed behind him. He was presenting the Prince Imperial to the people, holding the infant, who seemed a mere bundle of white lace, aloft in his upstretched arms.

But a beadle suddenly motioned to Madame Correur to retire. She took a couple of steps backwards, and the next moment saw nothing but one of the curtains of the porch. The vision had disappeared. The bright daylight made her blink, and for an instant she remained confused, half fancying that she had been gazing upon some old picture like those in the Louvre, some picture baked by age, purpled and gilded, and depicting people of a past-away time, such as one no longer met in the streets.

'Don't stop there,' Du Poizat said to her, as he led her back to the colonel and M. Bouchard.

The latter were now discussing the floods, which had caused terrible destruction in the valleys of the Rhone and the Loire. Thousands of families had been rendered homeless. The subscriptions which had been opened on all sides were insufficient for the relief of such great distress. However, they asserted that the Emperor had exhibited most admirable courage and generosity. At Lyons he had been seen fording the low parts of the inundated city, and at Tours he had spent three hours rowing in a boat through the submerged streets; and everywhere he had lavishly distributed alms.

'Ah, listen!' interrupted the colonel.

The organ was now pealing through the church, and a sonorous chant rolled through the porch, whose curtains swayed as the great gust of sound swept out.

'It is the Te Deum!' exclaimed M. Bouchard.

Du Poizat heaved a sigh of relief. They were getting to an end at last! M. Bouchard, however, informed him that the registers had yet to be signed, and, afterwards, the Cardinal-Legate would have to give the pontifical benediction. Some of the congregation were, however, already leaving. Rougon was one of the first to appear, giving his arm to a lady of slight build, who had a sallow complexion, and was very plainly dressed. They were accompanied by a personage who wore the dress of a president of an Appeal Court.

'Who are those?' asked Madame Correur.

Du Poizat told her their names. M. Beulin-d'Orchère, the president, had become acquainted with Rougon some time before the Coup d'État, and had manifested much esteem for him since that period, without, however, attempting to establish any close intimacy. Mademoiselle Véronique, his sister, lived with him in a house in the Rue Garancière, which she seldom left except to attend low mass at Saint Sulpice.

'Ah!' said the colonel, lowering his voice, 'that is the wife for Rougon!'

'Exactly,' assented M. Bouchard. 'She has got a suitable fortune; her family is good, and she is a steady-going woman of experience. He will never find a wife more fitted for him.'

Du Poizat, however, protested. The lady, he said, was as over-ripe as a forgotten medlar. She was at least thirty-six years of age, and looked forty. A nice broom-handle in all truth! A devotee with hair brushed smooth and smug! As faded and as washed-out as though she had been soaking her head in holy water for the last six months!

'You are young,' rejoined the head-clerk, gravely. 'Rougon ought to make a sensible marriage. I myself married for love, but that does not succeed with everyone.'

'Oh! I don't apprehend any danger from the lady herself,' continued Du Poizat; 'it's Beulin-d'Orchère's look that alarms me. He's got a regular dog's jaw. Just look at him with his heavy muzzle and forest of woolly hair, without a single silver thread in it, in spite of his fifty years. What's he thinking about, I wonder? Why does he still drive his sister into Rougon's arms now that our friend is out of favour?'

M. Bouchard and the colonel kept silent, and exchanged uneasy glances. Was 'the dog,' as the ex-sub-prefect called him, going to make Rougon his own prey?

However, Madame Correur slowly opined: 'It is a good thing to have the judicial bench on one's side.'

Meantime, Rougon was conducting Mademoiselle Véronique to her carriage, and, before she got into it, he bowed to her. Just at that moment the fair Clorinde came out of the church, leaning upon Delestang's arm. She became quite grave, and cast a fiery glance at that tall sallow creature, the door of whose carriage Rougon was gallantly closing, notwithstanding his senatorial uniform. And as soon as the carriage had gone off, Clorinde dropped Delestang's arm, and stepped straight up to the great man, breaking out into her old gay laugh. All the others followed.

'I have lost my mother!' merrily said the girl to Rougon. 'She has been carried off somewhere in the crowd. Will you give me a little corner in your brougham?'

At this Delestang, who had hoped to take her home, seemed very much annoyed. She was wearing a dress of orange silk, brocaded with such showy flowers that the very footmen stared at her. Rougon had immediately granted her request, but they had to wait for the brougham for another ten minutes. And they all remained standing where they were, even Delestang, though his carriage was in the first row, only a yard or two away. In the meanwhile the congregation continued to leave the church. M. Kahn and M. Béjuin, who were passing, came up and joined the group. And as the great man shook hands in a listless way, and looked somewhat out of sorts, M. Kahn asked with anxious concern: 'Aren't you feeling well?'

'Oh, yes,' he answered, 'but those lights inside there rather dazed me.' He remained silent for a moment, and then continued in a low voice: 'It was a splendid sight. I never saw such an expression of happiness upon a man's face before.'

He was referring to the Emperor, and, as he spoke, he slowly spread out his arms with a sweeping majestic gesture, as though he were recalling the scene in the church. But he added not a word, and the others likewise kept silence. They formed quite a little group in a corner of the square. In front of them the stream of people leaving the church grew larger; there were judges in their robes, officers and functionaries in full uniform, a crowd of belaced and bedizened and decorated personages who trod over the flowers strewing the square, amidst the calls of footmen and sudden rolling of carriage-wheels. The soaring glory of the Empire blazed, as it were, in the crimson of the setting sun; and the towers of Notre Dame, all roseate and musical, seemed to attest the lofty peace and greatness to which the future reign of the child, baptized beneath their shadow, would some day attain. But in Rougon's group, the splendour of the ceremony, the pealing bells, the streaming banners, and the enthusiasm of the city only aroused feelings of envy and desire. For the first time Rougon himself felt the chilly weight of the disfavour into which he had fallen. His face was very pale, and, as he stood there deep in thought, he envied the Emperor.

'Well, good afternoon; I'm off! I can't stand it any longer!' exclaimed Du Poizat, shaking hands with the others.

'What's the matter with you to-day?' asked the colonel, 'you seem very fractious.'

But the sub-prefect quietly replied, as he went away: 'Well, you can scarcely expect me to be in very high spirits. I saw in the Moniteur this morning that that ass of a Campenon has been appointed to the prefecture which was promised to me.'

The others exchanged glances. Du Poizat was quite right. They had no share in the fête. They were all left out in the cold. Ever since the birth of the prince, Rougon had promised them a shower of presents for the day of the christening. M. Kahn was to have had his railway grant; the colonel was to have had a commander's cross, and Madame Correur was to have had the five or six tobacco-shops for which she had asked. And now they were all huddled there in a corner of the square, empty-handed. At this thought they cast such a distressful and reproachful look at Rougon, that the latter shrugged his shoulders furiously. And as his brougham at last drew up, he hastily pushed Clorinde inside, got in himself, and closed the door with a bang, never saying a word.

'There's Marsy under the porch,' muttered M. Kahn, dragging M. Béjuin on one side. 'How arrogant the rascal looks! Don't show him your face; it would only give him the opportunity of cutting us.'

Delestang had hastily got into his carriage in order to follow Rougon's brougham. M. Bouchard, however, waited for his wife, and when the church was empty he was surprised at not seeing her appear; however, he went off with the colonel, who had grown equally tired of waiting for his son Auguste. As for Madame Correur, she accepted the escort of a lieutenant of dragoons, who came from her own part of France, and who was to some extent indebted to her for his epaulets.

Meanwhile, inside the brougham, Clorinde was prattling enthusiastically about the ceremony that had just taken place; while Rougon leaned back with sleepy eyes and listened to her. She had seen the Easter solemnities at Rome, she told him, but they were not finer than what she had just beheld. And she added that, for her, religion lay in a vision of heaven with God the Father seated on His throne like a glittering sun amidst the glory of His encircling angels, a host of lovely youths and maidens. But all at once she broke off to inquire: 'Are you going to the banquet which the city is giving to their majesties to-night? It will be magnificent.'

She had got an invitation herself, and meant to wear a pink dress, brocaded with forget-me-nots. M. de Plouguern was going to take her, as her mother would not go out at night on account of the headaches to which she was so subject. However, she suddenly changed her subject again, asking abruptly: 'Who was that judge you were with just now?'

Rougon raised his head, and said all in a breath: 'Monsieur Beulin-d'Orchère, fifty years of age, of a legal family, began as public prosecutor's assessor at Montbrison, was afterwards public prosecutor at Orleans, advocate-general at Rouen, a member of a mixed commission in 1852, and then came to Paris as councillor at the Appeal Court, of which he is now the president. Oh! I was forgetting; he approved of the decree of the twenty-second of January, 1852, confiscating the property of the Orleans family. There, are you satisfied?'

Clorinde began to laugh. He was making fun of her, she said, just because she asked for information; but there was nothing foolish—was there?—in asking about people whom one was liable to meet. She did not say a word about Mademoiselle Beulin-d'Orchère; but again began to talk of the banquet at the Hôtel de Ville. The grand gallery would be decorated with unheard-of magnificence, and a band would play the whole time the guests were dining. Ah! France was truly a great country! Nowhere, neither in England, nor in Germany, nor in Spain, nor in Italy, had she seen such wonderful balls, such prodigious galas. She had quite made up her mind now, she said, her face beaming with admiration; she meant to be a Frenchwoman.

'Oh, look!' she cried; 'there are some soldiers there!'

The brougham, after rolling along the Rue de la Cité, had now been stopped at the end of the Pont Notre Dame by a regiment which was marching back to its quarters. It was one of the line. The soldiers, all of them little fellows, were hastening on like sheep, their march being somewhat irregular by reason of the trees planted along the roadside. They had been keeping the line for the procession; their faces were scorched by the hot afternoon sun; their feet were white with dust; and their backs bent beneath the weight of their knapsacks and rifles. And they had felt so bored amid the jostling of the crowd that they still looked dazed and stupid.

'I adore the French army,' said Clorinde enthusiastically, as she leant forward to get a better view.

Rougon roused himself, and in his turn looked out of the window. It was the power of the Empire that was passing through the dust. A great many carriages had now gathered together on the bridge, but the coachmen respectfully waited for the soldiers to pass, and distinguished personages in gala costumes smiled sympathisingly at the little fellows who were so stupefied by their long day's work.

'Do you see those in the rear?' exclaimed Clorinde. 'There's a whole row of them without a hair on their faces. How nice they look!'

Then, in her enthusiasm, she began to kiss her hands to the little soldiers from the depths of the brougham. She lay back a little so that she might not be seen. Rougon smiled in a paternal manner. He, too, had just felt a thrill of pleasure, the first he had known during the whole day.

'What's going on here?' he exclaimed, when the brougham was at last able to turn the corner of the quay.

A considerable crowd had formed on the footway and in the road, and the brougham had to stop again. A voice in the throng was heard saying: 'It's a drunken man who has insulted the soldiers. The police have just taken him into custody.'

Then, as the crowd parted, Rougon caught sight of Gilquin, dead-drunk, and held by a couple of policemen. His yellow duck clothes were torn, and his naked flesh showed through the rents. But he still retained his garrulous joviality and scarlet face. He addressed the policemen in the most familiar fashion, calling them his little lambs. He told them that he had been quietly spending the afternoon in a neighbouring café with some very rich people, and referred them for inquiries to the Palais Royal theatre, where M. and Madame Charbonnel, who had gone to see Les Dragées du Baptême, would readily confirm his statement.

'Come, let me go, you jokers!' he cried, suddenly stiffening himself. 'Confound it all, the café's close at hand; come with me there, if you don't believe me. The soldiers insulted me. There was a little scamp who laughed at me, and I shut him up. But for me to insult the French army! Never! Just you mention the name of Théodore to the Emperor and hear what he says. Ah! you're a nice set, you are!'

The crowd roared with amusement, while the imperturbable policemen slowly dragged Gilquin towards the Rue Saint Martin, where the red lamp of a police-station could be seen. Rougon had hastily thrown himself back in his brougham, but Gilquin, raising his head, caught sight of him. Then, drunk though he was, he again became good-natured and prudent, and casting a glance at Rougon, exclaimed, so that the latter might hear him: 'Well, well, my friends: I might get up a scandal if I liked, but I've too much self-respect. Ah, you wouldn't lay your hands on Théodore in this way if he drove about with princesses as a citizen of my acquaintance does. All the same, however, I've worked with great people, and cleverly, too, though I don't want to boast about it, and never asked for a big reward. But I know my own worth, and that consoles me for other people's meanness. Ah, confound it, are friends no longer friends, then?'

He spoke with growing emotion, his speech impeded by hiccoughs, while Rougon quietly beckoned to a man wearing a closely buttoned coat, whom he saw standing near his brougham, and, after whispering a few words to him, gave him Gilquin's address, 17 Rue Virginie, Grenelle. And thereupon the man—a detective—stepped up to the officers as though he were about to help them with the drunkard who had begun to struggle. However, the crowd was greatly surprised to see the policemen turn to the left and bundle Gilquin into a cab, whose driver, after receiving an order, drove away along the Quai de la Mégisserie. Gilquin, however, thrust his huge unkempt head from the window, and, with a burst of triumphant laughter, shouted: 'Long live the Republic!'

When the crowd had dispersed, the quays resumed their wonted tranquillity. Paris, weary of enthusiasm, had gone off to dinner. The three hundred thousand sight-seers, who had struggled and crowded there, were now invading the restaurants by the water-side and those of the district of the Temple. None but country cousins paced the deserted pavements, quite knocked up and at a loss where to dine. Down below, in the floating laundry the washerwomen were finishing their work with vigorous blows. A last ray of sunlight still gilded the towers of Notre Dame, which now rose quite silent above the houses already dark with shadow. And through the slight mist ascending from the Seine, nothing could be distinguished among the grey mass of buildings, on the Ile Saint Louis, save the giant great-coat, that colossal advertisement hanging seemingly from some nail on the horizon, and looking like the garment of a Titan, whose body had been pulverised by the thunderbolts of Jove.

[V]

PASSION AND MATRIMONY

One morning towards eleven o'clock, Clorinde called at Rougon's house in the Rue Marbeuf. She was on her way back from the Bois, and a groom held her horse at the door. She went straight into the garden, turned to the left, and halted in front of the open window of the study in which the great man sat at work.

'Ah! I've taken you by surprise!' she exclaimed.

Rougon quickly raised his head. The girl stood laughing in the warm June sunshine. Her riding-habit of heavy blue cloth made her seem taller. She was carrying its long train over her left arm, and its tight-fitting corsage clung to her shoulders and breast and hips like skin. She wore linen wristbands and collar, and a narrow necktie of blue silk, while atop of her rolled-up hair a tall silk hat was jauntily perched with a veil of bluish gauze powdered with the golden dust of the sunlight.

'What, is it you?' cried Rougon, hastening to her. 'Pray come in!'

'No, no,' she answered; 'don't disturb yourself, I have only a word to say to you. My mother will be expecting me back to lunch.'

This was the third time that she had come in this way to Rougon's house in defiance of all propriety. She made a point, however, of remaining in the garden; and upon the previous occasions, as upon this one, she had come in her riding-habit, a costume which seemed to confer masculine privileges upon her.

'I've come to beg,' she said. 'I want you to buy some lottery tickets. We are getting up a lottery for the benefit of some poor girls.'

'Oh, indeed; well, come in,' repeated Rougon, 'you can tell me all about it.'

She had kept her whip in her hand, a slight delicate whip with a little silver handle. And on hearing him she again began to laugh while gently tapping her skirt with her whip.

'Oh, I've told you all there is to tell,' said she. 'You must take some tickets. That's all I came for. I've been looking for you for the last three days without finding you, and the drawing takes place to-morrow.' Then, as she took a little case out of her pocket, she inquired: 'How many tickets would you like?'

'Not one, if you won't come in!' cried Rougon. And he continued, playfully: 'We can't transact business at the window, you know, and I'm not going to hand you money out as though you were some beggar-woman.'

'Oh, I don't object, as long as I get it.'

But Rougon remained firm. She looked at him for a moment in silence, and then resumed: 'If I come in, will you promise to take ten tickets? They are ten francs each.'

However, she did not make up her mind without some further hesitation, and she even cast a hasty glance round the garden. There was a gardener on his knees planting a bed of geraniums. Then she smiled slightly and stepped towards the little flight of steps upon which the folding-window of the study opened. Rougon held out his hand and drew her into the middle of the room.

'Are you afraid that I shall eat you?' he asked her. 'You know very well that I am the most submissive of your slaves. What are you frightened of?'

'I! I'm not afraid of anything,' she replied again, tapping her skirts with her whip, which she then laid upon a couch in order to fumble in her little case once more. 'You'll take ten, won't you?' she asked.

'I will take twenty, if you wish it,' he replied; 'but do, please, sit down and let us have a little chat. You surely don't want to be off at once.'

'Well, then, it shall be a ticket a minute. If I stay a quarter of an hour, you will have to take fifteen tickets, and if I stay twenty minutes, you will have to take twenty tickets, and so on as long as I stay. Is that agreed?'

They laughed merrily over this arrangement, and Clorinde thereupon seated herself in an easy chair in the very embrasure of the window which remained open. Rougon, on his side, resumed his seat at his table in order to put her at her ease. Then they began to talk, taking the house for their first subject. Clorinde glanced out of the window and remarked that the garden was rather small, but very charming, with its central lawn and clumps of evergreens. Then Rougon began to describe the house to her. On the ground-floor, said he, were his study, a large drawing-room, a small one, and a very handsome dining-room. On the first-floor there were seven bedrooms, and as many on the second. Although to some people the house might seem a very small one, it was much too big for him, he declared. At the time when the Emperor had made him a present of it he had been engaged to marry a widow, chosen by his Majesty himself; but the lady had died, and now he intended to remain a bachelor.

'Why?' asked Clorinde, looking him straight in the face.

'Oh! I've other things to do than to get married. When a man reaches my age, he no longer thinks about a wife.'

'Don't be so affected,' replied Clorinde, with a shrug of her shoulders.

They had become intimate enough to talk very freely together. Clorinde declared that she believed Rougon to be amorously inclined, but he defended himself, and told her of his early times, of the years he had spent in bare rooms, which never a woman entered. Still, she went on questioning him about his lady-loves with childish curiosity, and he again and again replied with a shrug of the shoulders.

'No! no wife for me!' he cried at last, though his eyes were glistening at the sight of Clorinde's careless attitude.

A peculiar smile played on the girl's lips as she lay back in her chair. There was an expression of soft languor on her face, and her bosom gently heaved. When she replied, it was with an exaggerated Italian accent, and in a sort of singing voice. 'Nonsense, my friend; you adore us, I know. Will you bet me that you aren't married by this time next year?'

She was really provoking, so certain did she seem to be of conquering him. For some time past she had been calmly offering herself to Rougon. She no longer attempted to disguise her snares and the clever way in which she had worked upon him before laying siege to his desires. She considered that he was now sufficiently overcome for her to bring the matter to an issue. It was a real duel that was going on between them, and although the conditions of the combat were not mentioned in actual words, there were unmistakable confessions in their glances. When they looked at each other they could not refrain from smiling. Clorinde had set her eyes upon her goal and went straight towards it, with a haughty boldness; while Rougon, infatuated though he was, resolved to play a wily game in order to prove his superiority. Their pride was engaged in the struggle quite as much as their passions were.

'With us in Italy,' resumed Clorinde in a low tone, 'love is the great business of life. Young girls of twelve already have their lovers. For myself, I have travelled about so much, that I've almost become a man. But if you could only have seen mamma when she was young! She was so lovely that people came from long distances to see her, but she seldom if ever left her house. There was a count who stayed at Milan expressly for six months without catching sight of her hair even. The fact is, that Italian women are very different from French women, who are always chattering and gadding about. An Italian woman remains with the man she has chosen. But I have travelled so much, that I really don't know whether I haven't lost that instinct or not; still I think that I could love very strongly; ah, yes, with all my heart and soul.'

She had let her eyelids fall, and her face glowed as with a voluptuous ecstasy. While she was speaking, Rougon had left his table as though attracted by some force which he could not withstand, and his hands were trembling. But when he got near to Clorinde, the girl opened her eyes again and gave him a quiet glance. Then, as she looked at the clock, she said with a smile: 'This makes ten tickets.'

'Ten tickets! what do you mean?' asked Rougon, quite confused.

When he had recovered his self-possession, she burst into a laugh. It delighted her to bewitch him and intoxicate him in this way, and when he opened his arms to clasp her, to elude him with a laugh. She seemed in high glee. At this Rougon turned very pale, and cast a furious glance at her, which only served to increase her merriment. 'Well, I think I'd better be off now,' she said. 'You're not polite enough for ladies' society. No, really, my mother will be expecting me.'

Rougon, however, had resumed his paternal manner, and told her that she must spare him another five minutes. He had got tired of the work he was doing when she came in, he said; it was a report to be presented to the Senate on certain petitions. Then he began to talk to her about the Empress, for whom she professed enthusiastic devotion. The Empress, said he, had been at Biarritz for the last week. At this the girl again leant back in her arm-chair and began to chatter. She knew Biarritz very well; she had once spent a season there, before it had become such a fashionable watering-place; and she very much regretted that she was unable to revisit it while the Court was there. Then she went on to describe a meeting of the Academy to which M. de Plouguern had taken her on the previous day. An author had been admitted as a member, and she made many jokes at the expense of his baldness. She had a horror of books, she declared. Whenever she tried to read, she had to go off to bed, suffering from terrible nervous attacks. She could not understand what she read. Then, on Rougon telling her that the author received at the Academy on the previous day was an enemy of the Emperor's, and that his discourse had swarmed with abominable allusions, she seemed quite astounded.

'Why, he looked such a nice man!' she exclaimed.

But Rougon also had begun to inveigh against books. A novel had just been published, he said, which had aroused his utmost indignation. It was a work of the most depraved kind, which, while claiming to portray the exact truth, dragged the reader through all the wild fancies of an hysterical woman.[8] The word hysterical seemed to please him, for he repeated it three times; but when Clorinde asked him to explain what he meant by it, he refused to answer, suddenly becoming very prudish.

'Everything may be said,' he continued, 'only there is a fitting way of saying it. In administrative matters, for instance, we are frequently obliged to tackle very delicate subjects. I have read, for example, reports upon certain matters which have been very precise, very detailed; but they have been written in a clear, simple, straightforward style, so that there was nothing unchaste or impure about the document. But our present-day novelists have adopted a style which is full of suggestiveness, a manner of describing things which makes it appear as if they were actually going on before you. They call that art. To me it seems to be simply indecency and bad taste.'

Then he went on to speak of authors, whom he had never read, but whom, like many other people, he accused of the grossest immorality. And yet while he was thus prating of virtue and denouncing vice, he was cleverly manœuvring to get behind Clorinde's chair without her being aware of it. The girl was gazing at the ceiling with an expression of absent-mindedness. 'Oh, as for novels,' she murmured, 'I have never even opened one. They are all a pack of falsehoods. You don't know Leonora, the Gipsy, do you? It is a pretty book. I read it in Italian when I was quite little. It is about a young girl who ends by marrying a lord. She is captured by brigands to begin with——'

However, a slight grating sound behind her made her start and turn her head: 'What are you doing?' she asked.

'I am pulling the blind down,' replied Rougon; 'I was afraid the sun was inconveniencing you.'

The girl was, indeed, sitting in a flood of sunlight, whose dancing dust gilded her corsage as with luminous down. 'Please leave the blind alone,' she cried, 'I love the sun. I feel as though I were in a warm bath.'

Then she raised herself in her chair and glanced into the garden. But when she saw the gardener still kneeling there, with the back of his blue blouse turned towards them, she reverted to her reclining attitude again, smiling, and easy once more. Rougon, who had followed her glance, left the blind as it was, and the girl began to banter him. He was just like an owl, she said, to be so fond of darkness. However, he showed no resentment, but began to pace the room, swaying about like a bear contemplating some wily act of treachery.

'Oh, come and look here,' he said at last, pointing to a large photograph; 'you haven't seen my last portrait, have you?'

But she merely smiled, and replied: 'Oh! I can see it very well from here; and, besides, you've shown it to me before.'

Rougon was not yet discouraged. He drew down the blind of the other window, and invented several reasons to induce the girl to go into the shady corner which he had made by doing so. She would be much more comfortable there, he told her. But Clorinde, despising this obvious snare, merely shook her head. Then Rougon came and stood in front of her; and, dropping all attempts at stratagem, said straightforwardly: 'Oh, by the way, I want to show you my new horse, Monarque. You know that I have been making an exchange. You are fond of horses, and you shall tell me what you think of him.'

But the girl still refused to move. Then Rougon began to press her. The stable was only a few yards away. It wouldn't take her more than five minutes at the most. She continued to refuse, however, and thereupon Rougon murmured with a touch of scorn in his voice: 'What! are you afraid?'

At this she started up, as though lashed with a whip. She looked very grave and somewhat pale.

'Let us go and look at Monarque,' she said quietly.

As she gathered up the train of her riding-habit she fixed her eyes upon Rougon's, and for a moment they remained gazing at each other as if to read each other's thoughts. It was a challenge given and accepted, without any pretence of concealment. Then she led the way down the steps while Rougon, by force of habit, buttoned the house-coat which he was wearing. But the girl had only taken a step or two along the garden-walk when she stopped short. 'Wait a moment,' she said.

She went back into the room, and when she returned, she was toying with her riding-whip, which she had left behind the cushion of the couch. Rougon glanced at the whip, and then slowly raised his eyes to Clorinde. She was smiling again, and once more she walked on in front of him.

The stable was at the end of the garden, on the right. When they passed the gardener, the man was gathering up his tools and preparing to go away. Rougon, bareheaded in the blazing sun, followed Clorinde, who went quietly onward, tapping the shrubs with her riding-whip as she passed them. Neither spoke a word. Clorinde did not even turn her head. On reaching the stable, she waited while Rougon opened the door, and then went inside, in front of him. The door, which Rougon swung back, closed noisily, and Clorinde still smiled, her face wearing an open expression, in which pride and confidence were clearly to be read.

The stable was a small and commonplace one, with four oak stalls. Although the slabs had been washed that morning, and the racks and mangers and other wood-work were kept scrupulously clean, there was a strong scent about the place, and the atmosphere was warm and damp, like that of a Turkish bath. From each of the two round dormer-windows there fell but a pale glimmer of light, and the corners remained wrapt in gloom. Clorinde, having just left the bright sunshine of the garden, could at first distinguish nothing; but she kept still, and did not open the door again for fear lest Rougon should think she was alarmed. Only two of the stalls were occupied. The horses snorted and turned their heads.

'This is the one, isn't it?' asked Clorinde, when her eyes had grown accustomed to the gloom. 'He looks a very nice animal.'

She patted the horse gently, and then slipped inside the stall, stroking the animal as she went without showing the least sign of fear. She wanted to see his head, she said; and when she had made her way to the far end of the stall, Rougon could hear her kissing the horse's nose. The sound of those kisses exasperated him.

'Come back, I beg you!' he cried. 'If he were to step on one side, you might be crushed to death!'

But the girl only laughed, kissed the horse more affectionately than before, and spoke to him caressingly, while he, at this unexpected fondling, fairly quivered with pleasure. At last she came out of the stall again. She was very fond of horses, she said, they always knew her, and never tried to hurt her, even when she teased them. She knew how to manage them. Some were very skittish, but this one seemed very steady. Then she stooped down behind the horse, and lifted one of its hoofs with both hands as if to examine it. The animal remained quite still.

Rougon gazed at her while she thus stooped before him; but all at once she felt a slight touch under her arm-pits. She did not even start, however; she went on examining the horse's hoof, till the touch became more pronounced, and then letting the hoof drop, she stood up and inquired: 'What is the matter with you? What has come over you?'

Then, as Rougon suddenly tried to clasp her round the waist, she rapped his knuckles smartly, and, stationing herself against the wall in front of the stalls, raised the train of her riding-habit, which was thrown over her left arm, as a shield, while in her right hand she held her whip uplifted. Rougon's lips were trembling, but he did not say a word; Clorinde, however, seeming quite at ease, went on talking freely: 'You can't touch me, you'll see,' she said. 'When I was younger, I used to take fencing-lessons. I'm sorry I did not go on with them. Come, look out for your fingers! There! what did I tell you?'

She seemed to be only in fun. She did not strike Rougon severely, but just playfully lashed at him whenever his hands came too near. She was so quick in her defence that he could not even touch her dress. A perfect hail came clattering down upon him on every side. Before long he was tingling all over, and stepped back panting, with his face very red, and drops of perspiration trickling down his brow. Then, however, his manner changed, and still without a word he advanced menacingly; but Clorinde, though smiling and talking as before, at once struck him several smart blows of increasing severity. She looked very beautiful as she stood there with her skirts drawn tightly, and her corsage yielding to every movement of her lissom figure. She was like a sinuous, bluish-black serpent, and whenever she raised her arm to strike, at the same time slightly throwing her head back, her throat and bosom formed a charming curve.

'Well, now,' she exclaimed, with a laugh, 'have you had enough? You'll be the first to tire, I think, my friend.'

But in her turn she suddenly stopped talking. Rougon's eyes were glaring fiercely now, and his face was quite crimson. Then a bright light also appeared in Clorinde's eyes, and she seemed to revel in the whipping she was administering to him. Again and again did she wheel and slash about her. And at last, as he, goaded to fury, made a yet more desperate onslaught, she put forth all her strength and cut him clean across the face from ear to ear.

'Hussy!' he cried, and broke into a torrent of coarse language, abominable charges, swearing and sputtering, half-choked by his excitement.

She did not deign to reply. For a moment she stood there motionless and haughtily calm like a statue, with her face very pale.

But he burst into a strain of passionate pleading; and thereupon she looked at him and answered: 'Well, then, marry me!'

At this, however, Rougon, as if recovering his self-possession, forced a laugh, a sneering, insulting laugh, and shook his head.

Her retort, the only one that womanly pride could dictate, came swift and forcible. Then neither spoke again.

The horses in the stalls had turned their heads and were snorting, disturbed by the contest which they had heard. The sun had just risen high enough to shine through the dormer-windows, and two golden beams sent sparkles dancing through the gloom of the stable. Clorinde, now perfectly calm again, slipped up to Monarque's head, with her whip under her arm. She gave the horse two kisses on the muzzle and exclaimed: 'Good-bye, old fellow. You, at any rate, know how to behave yourself.'

Rougon, quite crushed and ashamed, was also now perfectly calm. With his hands still quivering he straightened his cravat, and felt his coat to ascertain if it was properly buttoned. Then they walked quietly back through the garden. Rougon's left cheek was stinging him, and he dabbed it with his handkerchief. When they reached his study, Clorinde's first glance was for the timepiece. 'That makes thirty-two tickets,' she said with a smile.

As Rougon looked at her in surprise, she once more broke into a laugh, and continued: 'You had better send me off at once. The hand is moving forward. The thirty-third minute has begun. See, I'm putting the tickets on your desk.'

Rougon gave her three hundred and twenty francs without a moment's hesitation. Scarcely did his fingers tremble as he counted out the gold. It was a fine which he had inflicted upon himself. Then Clorinde, carried away by the manner in which he put down such a sum of money, stepped up to him with an adorable expression, offering him her cheek. And when he had kissed it in a fatherly fashion, she went off, looking quite delighted, and saying: 'Thank you for the poor girls. I have only seven tickets left now. My godfather will take those.'

As soon as Rougon was alone again, he sat down at his desk by sheer force of habit. He resumed his work, and for some minutes wrote and consulted the papers that were lying in front of him. Then he held up his pen, and a grave expression came over his face as he gazed blankly through the open window into the garden. He again saw Clorinde's lithe form swaying before him like some bluish serpent. She glided on and entered the room, and sprang up on the living tail which her habit seemed to form. He saw her quivering as her arms uncoiled towards him; and gradually the room seemed full of her presence. Silently, passionately, it pervaded everything: the carpet, the chairs, the curtains, diffusing over all a penetrating perfume.

Then Rougon violently threw his pen down and rose in anger. Was that girl now going to prevent him from working? Was he going mad that he should see things which had no existence? he whose brain was so strong! He recalled to his mind a woman, nigh whom he had many a time written the whole night long, when he was a student, without even noticing her gentle breathing. Then he drew up the blind, and to establish a draught opened the other window and a door on the opposite side of the room, as though he were stifling. And with angry gestures similar to those with which he would have driven away some dangerous wasp, he tried to drive away the scent of Clorinde by flapping his handkerchief in the air. When he no longer noticed it, he drew a deep breath and again dabbed his face with his handkerchief to assuage the burning heat which Clorinde had brought there.

He could not, however, go on with the work he had commenced, but still slowly paced the room, from one end to the other. As he caught sight of himself in a mirror, he noticed a red mark on his left cheek. Clorinde's whip had only left a slight scratch behind it, and he could easily ascribe that to some trifling accident. However, although his skin revealed but a slight red line, his flesh still smarted with the slashing, galling cut. So he hastened to a little lavatory, curtained off from the rest of the room, and plunged his head into a basin of water. That afforded him considerable relief. He dreaded lest the whipping he had received from Clorinde should only sharpen his passion. He felt afraid to think about her till the scratch on his cheek should be quite healed; the smarting which he felt seemed to descend and thrill his whole body.

'No! never! I won't!' he said aloud, as he came back into his room. 'It would be madness!'

He threw himself on the couch and clenched his fists. Then a servant came in and told him that his déjeuner was getting cold, but he still sat there, struggling with himself. His stern, set face distended with the contest that was raging within him; his bull-like neck grew swollen and his muscles strained, as though silently, within his vitals, he were striving to suffocate some animal bent on devouring him. The battle went on for ten long minutes. He could not remember having ever exerted himself like this before; and, when he got up, he was quite pallid and his neck was moist with perspiration.

On the next two days Rougon admitted no one to see him. He shut himself up with a pile of work. He sat up one whole night. Three times again, when his servant came into the room, he found him lying on the couch, exhausted and with an alarming look on his face. On the evening of the second day, however, he dressed to go to Delestang's, where he was engaged to dine. But, instead of at once crossing the Champs Élysées, he turned up the avenue and entered the Balbis' house. It was only six o'clock.

'Mademoiselle isn't at home,' said the little servant Antonia, laughing like a black goat, as she stopped him on the staircase.

Rougon raised his voice on the chance of making himself heard, and was hesitating whether he should go down again, when Clorinde appeared up above, leaning over the balusters. 'Come up!' she called. 'What an idiot that girl is! She never understands anything that is told her.'

When Rougon reached the first floor, Clorinde took him into a small room adjoining her bedchamber. It was a dressing-room, with light blue wall-paper of a flowery pattern, but she had furnished it with a big dingy mahogany desk, an arm-chair upholstered in leather, and a nest of pasteboard boxes. Papers were lying about, thickly covered with dust. The place looked like the office of some disreputable process server. To accommodate Rougon the girl was obliged to fetch a chair from her bedroom. 'I was expecting you,' she called out as she went there.

When she came back with the chair, she explained to him that she was busy with her correspondence. She showed him on her desk some big sheets of yellowish paper, covered with large round handwriting. Then, as he sat down, she noticed that he was in evening dress.

'Have you come to ask for my hand?' she said in a playful way.

'Exactly,' he replied. Then he added with a smile: 'Not for myself, but for one of my friends.'

Clorinde gazed at him doubtfully, unable to tell whether he was joking or not. She was dirty and untidy, and was wearing an ill-fitting dressing-gown; but, nevertheless she looked very beautiful, like some antique statue which is soiled by the dust of a broker's shop, but whose beauty is beyond the power of dirt to conceal. And while she sucked one of her fingers which she had just smeared with ink, her eyes fell upon the slight scar which was still visible on Rougon's left cheek. Presently she said, in a low voice and with an air of absent-mindedness: 'I was sure you would come, but I expected you sooner.' Then, seeming to wake up, she continued in a louder tone: 'So it is for one of your friends; your dearest friend, no doubt.'

She laughed sonorously. She now felt sure that Rougon had meant himself. She had a strong desire to touch his scar in order to satisfy herself that she had really put her mark upon him and that henceforth he belonged to her. But he took hold of her wrists and made her sit down in the leather-covered arm-chair.

'Let us have a little talk,' he said. 'We are good friends, aren't we? I have been thinking a good deal since the day before yesterday. You have been in my mind the whole time. I fancied that we had got married, and that we had been living together for three months. You'll never guess in what occupation I saw us engaged.'

Clorinde said nothing; she felt a little embarrassed, in spite of all her self-assurance.

'Well, I saw us standing by the fire-place,' he continued. 'You had taken up the shovel and I had seized the tongs, and we were belabouring each other.'

This idea struck Clorinde as so comical that she threw herself back in her chair and burst into ringing laughter.

'No, don't laugh,' said Rougon; 'I'm quite serious. It isn't worth while uniting our lives just to beat each other. I swear to you that is what would happen. First there would be blows, and then a separation. Be quite sure of this, that it is useless trying to assimilate two strong wills like ours.'

'And so?' she asked, becoming very grave.

'And so I think that the most sensible thing we can do is to shake hands and make up our minds to be nothing but good friends in the future.'

Clorinde made no reply, but fixed her eyes searchingly and blackly upon Rougon's. A terrible frown like that of an offended goddess appeared on her Olympian brow. And her lips quivered slightly with a silent expression of scorn.

'Will you excuse me?' she said. Then, drawing her chair to her desk, she began to fold her letters. She used large yellow envelopes, such as are employed in French government offices, and fastened them with sealing-wax. She had lighted a taper and was watching the wax blaze. Rougon quietly waited till she had finished.

'And you came here to tell me that?' she resumed at last, without desisting from her work.

Rougon in his turn made no immediate reply. He wanted to get a glimpse of the girl's face. When she at last turned her chair round again, he smiled at her and tried to catch her eye. Then he kissed her hand, as though anxious to soften her; but she still remained cold and haughty.

'I told you,' he said, 'that I have come to ask you in marriage on behalf of one of my friends.'

Then he spoke at length. He loved her, he told her, much more than she imagined. He loved her particularly because she was intelligent and able. It cost him a great deal to give her up, but he was sacrificing his passion for their mutual advantage. He would like to see her ruling her own house. He pictured her married to a wealthy man whom she would mould to her own will. She would rule instead of having to surrender herself. That would be much better—would it not?—than for them to paralyse one another. He and she could speak out openly to each other. He ended by calling her his child. She was his perverse daughter, he said; her diplomatic bent of mind delighted him, and it would distress him very much to see her career end unsatisfactorily.

'Is that all?' she said, when he finished. She had listened to him with the greatest attention. And, raising her eyes to his face, she continued: 'If you want to get me married in the expectation of anything, I warn you that you are mistaken. Never! I told you.'

'What an idea!' he exclaimed, slightly blushing. Then he coughed, and took a paper-knife off the desk and began to examine its handle in order to conceal the trouble he was feeling. But the girl was deep in thought again, paying no attention to him.

'And who is the husband?' she eventually asked.

'Can't you guess?'

Then a faint smile came to her face once more, and she shrugged her shoulders, and began to drum on the desk with her finger tips. She knew very well who it was. 'He is so stupid,' she said, in a low voice.

But Rougon began to defend Delestang. He was a very well-bred man, and she would be able to do what she liked with him. And he gave her particulars as to his health and fortune and habits. Moreover, he promised that he would use all his influence in their favour should he ever return to power. Delestang was, perhaps, scarcely a man of lofty intelligence, but he would not be out of place in any position.

'Oh, yes, he'd scrape on well enough; I'm willing to allow that,' she said, with a frank laugh. And she continued, after a pause: 'Well, I don't say no; perhaps you are right. Monsieur Delestang is not distasteful to me.'

She looked at Rougon as she spoke those last words. She fancied she had noticed upon several occasions that he was jealous of Delestang. But so far as she could see not a muscle of his face now moved. He had found strength enough to destroy his passion in two days. And he seemed quite delighted with the success of his scheme, and again began to expatiate upon the advantages of such a marriage, as though he were some shrewd attorney negotiating an affair from which she would derive especial profit. He took her hands in his own and patted them affectionately, as he went on: 'It was last night that the idea struck me, and I said to myself, "It's the very thing!" I shouldn't like you to remain unmarried. You are the only woman who seems to me to be really deserving of a husband. Delestang settles everything. With him one has elbow-room.' Then he added gaily: 'I feel convinced that you will reward me by letting me see some very wonderful things.'

'Is Monsieur Delestang aware of your plans?' Clorinde now inquired.

Rougon looked at her in surprise for a moment, as though she had said something which he had not expected from her. Then he calmly replied: 'No; it was no use saying anything to him. I will tell him all about it later on.'

The girl had just resumed the sealing of her letters. After pressing a large blank seal upon the wax she turned the envelopes over and slowly addressed them in big handwriting. And as she tossed the letters to her right, Rougon tried to read the addresses. The names were mostly those of well-known Italian politicians. She must have noticed what he was doing, however, for, as she rose and collected her letters to send them to the post, she remarked: 'When my mother has one of her headaches, I have to do the letter-writing.'

When Rougon was left to himself, he began to walk about the little room. The pasteboard boxes in the stand were all labelled 'Receipts,' 'Letters,' and so on, like those of some man of business. He smiled, however, when among the litter of papers on the desk, he caught sight of a pair of old split stays. There was a piece of soap, too, in the inkstand, and some scraps of blue satin on the floor, clippings which had fallen during the mending of a skirt, and had not been swept away. The door leading to Clorinde's bedroom was ajar, and Rougon had the curiosity to peep inside; but the shutters were closed and the room was so dark that he could only see the shadowy folds of the bed-curtains. Just then, too, Clorinde came back.

'I must be off,' Rougon said to her. 'I am going to dine with your man this evening. Do you give me full permission to act?'

The girl made no reply. She had turned quite gloomy again, as though she had been reconsidering the matter on the staircase. Rougon had already got his hand upon the balusters, but she brought him back into the room and closed the door. Her dream was being dispelled, the hope of which she had felt so sure that only an hour previously she had regarded it as a certainty. The burning flush that comes from a deadly insult rose to her cheeks. She felt as though she had received a blow.

'Then you mean it seriously?' she said, turning her back to the light, so that Rougon might not see how flushed her face was.

When he had repeated his arguments for the third time, she remained silent. She was afraid that if she began to speak on the subject she would be carried away by an impulse of wild anger, which she could feel surging within her, and she feared she might strike Rougon in revenge for this crumbling away of the future which she had planned for herself. But it was only a momentary impulse. She was soon calm again, and then slowly asked, 'You wish this marriage to take place?'

Rougon did not hesitate, but answered in a full clear tone 'Yes.'

'Very well; let it be then.'

With slow steps, they returned to the door and went out on to the landing, both looking extremely calm. The only signs of Rougon's last victory over himself were a few drops of perspiration on his brow. Clorinde held herself erect, certain of her power. They stood looking at each other in silence for a moment, having nothing further to say, and yet unable to part. At last, as Rougon took the girl's hand to say good-bye, she detained him for an instant, and said without trace of anger: 'You think yourself much cleverer than I am, but you are mistaken. You will perhaps be sorry some day.'

Her threats went no further. She leant over the balusters and watched him go down the stairs. When he got to the bottom, he raised his head and they smiled at one another. She had no thought of taking any puerile vengeance upon him; she was already dreaming of punishing him by some splendid future triumph of her own. And as she went back to the dressing-room, she caught herself murmuring, 'Ah, well! all roads lead to Rome.'

That very evening Rougon began to lay siege to Delestang's heart. He told him of some very flattering imaginary remarks which Mademoiselle Balbi had made of him at the banquet at the Hôtel de Ville; and afterwards he never wearied of discoursing to him about the young girl's extraordinary beauty. He, who had formerly warned him so strongly to be on his guard against women, now did his best to deliver him over to Clorinde bound hand and foot. One day he would dwell upon the rare beauty of her hands; on another, he would glorify her figure, describing it in the most alluring language. Delestang, whose inflammable heart was already full of Clorinde's image, was soon stirred by hot passion. When Rougon told him that he himself had never thought about her, he confessed that he had been in love with her for the last six months, but had kept silent on the subject from fear of being too late. He now began to go to the Rue Marbeuf every evening to talk about her. There seemed to be a general conspiracy against him. He never spoke to anyone without hearing enthusiastic praises of the girl he loved. Even the Charbonnels stopped him one morning on the Place de la Concorde to express their admiration of the 'beautiful young lady whom they saw about with him everywhere.'

Clorinde, on her side, wore a smiling face. She had planned out her life afresh, and in a few days had grown accustomed to the new part she was to play. She did not attempt to win Delestang by the same bold tactics with which she had tried to subjugate Rougon. She quite changed her manner, affected soft languor, guileless innocence, and such a nervous disposition, that too tender a squeeze of the hand would upset her. When Delestang told Rougon that she had fainted in his arms just because he had kissed her wrist, the latter pretended to consider this as a convincing proof of her purity of mind. So at last Delestang began to think seriously about marrying her, and went to consult Rougon on the subject. But when the latter found his plans so near realisation he, just for a moment, felt so hurt and angry that he almost told Delestang then and there of all that had passed between himself and Clorinde. However, he refrained, and proceeded very cleverly to work upon the other's feelings. He did not actually advise him to marry Clorinde, but led him on to this determination by remarks that seemed almost irrelevant to the subject. He had been much surprised, he said, to hear the unpleasant stories which had been circulated about Mademoiselle Balbi, but he did not believe them, for he had made searching inquiries without discovering anything to her disadvantage. Moreover, a man ought not to doubt the woman he loved. Those were his last words.

Six weeks later, as Rougon came out of the Madeleine, where the marriage had just been celebrated with great magnificence, he said to a deputy who was expressing his astonishment at Delestang's choice: 'Well, what could you expect of him? I warned him a hundred times. But he was sure to be taken in by a woman some day.'

Towards the end of the winter, when Delestang and his wife returned from travelling in Italy, they learnt that Rougon was on the point of marrying Mademoiselle Beulin-d'Orchère. When they went to see him, Clorinde congratulated him very gracefully. He pretended that he was really taking the step to please his friends. For the last three months, he said, they had let him have no peace, but had constantly repeated that a man in his position ought to be married. He added with a laugh that when his friends came to see him in the evenings, there wasn't even a woman in the house to pour out the tea.

'Oh! so it's a sudden decision of yours; you never thought of it before, I suppose,' remarked Clorinde with a smile. 'You ought to have got married at the same time as we did, so that we could all have gone to Italy together.'

Then she began to question him playfully. No doubt it was his friend, Du Poizat, who had suggested this pretty idea. But this was denied by Rougon, who asserted that Du Poizat was strongly opposed to the marriage, as he personally abominated M. Beulin-d'Orchère. All the rest, however, M. Kahn, M. Béjuin, Madame Correur, and even the Charbonnels, had never wearied of singing the praises of Mademoiselle Véronique. According to them, she would bring every imaginable virtue, prosperity and charm into his home. Then he concluded jocosely: 'She seems to have been made on purpose for me, and so I really couldn't refuse to take her.' And he added with a subtle smile: 'Besides, if we are going to have war in the autumn, it is necessary to think about making alliances.'

Clorinde expressed her perfect approval; and she, too, began to sing Mademoiselle Beulin-d'Orchère's praises, though she had only seen her once. Delestang, who had hitherto confined himself to nodding, without ever taking his eyes off his wife, now commenced an enthusiastic disquisition upon the advantages of marriage. And he was starting on a detailed account of his own happiness, when his wife rose and said they had another visit to make. As Rougon escorted them to the door, she held him back for a moment, letting her husband go on in front.

'Didn't I tell you that you would be married within the twelvemonth?' she whispered softly in his ear.

[VI]

IN RETIREMENT

Summer came round. Rougon was leading a life of perfect quietude. In three months' time Madame Rougon had replaced the somewhat equivocal tone of the house in the Rue Marbeuf by one of solemn respectability. An atmosphere of propriety pervaded the rather chilly rooms, where all was spick and span. The furniture, always in place, the closely drawn curtains, allowing but little light to enter, and the thick carpets muffling every sound, imparted an air of almost conventual austerity to the house. Moreover, everything seemed to have acquired an appearance of age; it was as if one had entered some ancient musty patriarchal abode. That tall plain woman exercised an ever-watchful surveillance over everything, gliding through the subdued stillness of the house with noiseless steps; and she managed matters in such a discreet ready way that it seemed as if she had spent twenty years in the place instead of a few months.

Rougon smiled when people congratulated him. He still asserted that he had got married on the advice of his friends, and that his bride was their choice. She made him very happy. He had long desired to have a quiet decorous home, which might stand forth as a material proof of his respectability. It freed him from all his doubtful past and placed him amongst honest men. There was still a deal of provincialism in his nature, and certain substantially furnished drawing-rooms that he remembered at Plassans, where the chairs and couches were kept swathed in white coverings the whole year round, still formed his ideals. When he called at Delestang's, where Clorinde made an extravagant display of luxury, he showed his contempt by shrugging his shoulders. Nothing seemed to him so ridiculous as throwing money, as it were, out of the window; not that he was miserly, but he said that he could find enjoyments far preferable to those that were to be purchased with money. He had committed to his wife the care of their fortune. Previously he had lived without calculating his expenses, but now Madame Rougon attended to money matters with the same zealous care as she showed in managing the house.

For the first few months after his marriage, Rougon lived a life of seclusion, preparing for the contest which he dreamt of. He loved power for its own sake, without any hankering for riches and honours. Very ignorant, and of little skill in things which were not connected with the management of men, it was only his keen craving for power that elevated him to a position of superiority. The ambition of raising himself above the crowd, which seemed to him to be compounded of fools and knaves, and of leading and driving men by sheer force, developed most energetic skill and cunning in his heavy nature. He believed only in himself, took his convictions for reasons, and held everything subordinate to the increase of his personal influence. Addicted to no vice, he yet revelled as at some secret orgy in the idea of wielding supreme power. Though he had inherited his father's massive shoulders and heavy face, he had derived from his mother, the redoubtable Félicité who governed Plassans, a strong fiery will and passion for force which made him disdainful of petty means and commonplace gratifications. He was certainly the greatest of the Rougons.

When he found himself solitary and unoccupied after years of active life, his first feeling was one of delightful drowsiness. It was as though he had had no sleep since the exciting days of 1851, and he accepted his dismissal as a well-deserved holiday earned by long service. He proposed to hold himself aloof for six months, which would give him time to choose a better battle-ground, and then at his own discretion he could join in the great fight again. But in a few weeks' time he was already weary of resting. He had never before been so clearly conscious of his own strength; and his head and limbs became a source of embarrassment to him now that he was no longer actively employing them. He spent whole days in pacing his little garden and yawning wearily, like one of those caged lions whom one sees restlessly stretching their stiffened limbs. And now he began to know a most distasteful existence, the overwhelming weariness of which he carefully strove to conceal. To his friends he professed himself perfectly happy, and declared that he was well pleased to be 'out of the muddle,' but his heavy eyelids would rise occasionally in order that he might watch the course of events, and then again drop over his glistening eyes as soon as he saw anyone looking at him. What helped more than anything else to keep him erect was the unpopularity which he realised he had incurred. His fall seemed to have caused much satisfaction. Not a day passed without some newspaper attacking him; he was spoken of as the personification of the coup d'état, the proscriptions, and of all the other violent measures to which people referred in veiled language; and some writers even went so far as to congratulate the Emperor upon having severed his connection with a servant who had done his best to compromise him.

At the Tuileries the feeling of hostility against Rougon was even more marked. Marsy, now triumphant, assailed him with witticisms which ladies retailed through the drawing-rooms of Paris. This bitterness, however, actually comforted Rougon and confirmed him in his contempt for the human flock of sheep. They had not forgotten him; they detested him; and that seemed very sweet. Himself against the world! It was a thought which had a peculiar charm for him; and he saw himself standing alone, whip in hand, and forcing the yelping pack to keep their distance. He revelled in the insults which were offered to him, and held his head higher than ever in his haughty seclusion.

His brawny body, however, was suffering terribly from his enforced inactivity. If he had dared, he would have seized a spade and dug up his garden. However, he preferred to commence a long piece of writing in which he would carefully compare the English constitution with the Imperial constitution of 1852, with the idea of proving—all allowance made for the history and political customs of the two nations—that the French had as much liberty as the English. However, when he had consulted all the necessary authorities and collected sufficient notes, he had to force himself into taking up the pen. He could easily have made a long speech on the subject before the Chamber, but to write a treatise in which each sentence must be carefully thought out appeared to him a task of immense difficulty; and one, too, of no immediate usefulness. To express himself in good literary style had always embarrassed him, and it was for this reason that he pretended to hold style in contempt. He only got ten pages of his treatise written, still he left the manuscript on his desk, though he did not add twenty lines to it a week. On the other hand, whenever anybody asked him how he employed his time, he explained his project at great length, and dwelt on its great import. This was the excuse which he employed to conceal the hateful emptiness of his life.

Months went on, and he turned a yet more serene and smiling face to the world. Not a sign of the utter weariness he was suffering did he allow to appear. When his intimates sympathised with him, he assured them of his perfect felicity and gave them the most convincing reasons for it. Had he not everything to make him happy? he asked. He delighted in study, and now he could work as he listed, which was infinitely preferable to the feverish agitation of public life. As the Emperor had no need of his services, he did well to leave him in quietude in his little corner. He never spoke of the Emperor in other terms than those of profound devotion. Still, he frequently said that at a sign from his master he was perfectly willing to take up the burden of power again, adding, however, that he would not venture on a single step to provoke that sign. To all appearances, indeed, he was very anxious to keep aloof. Amidst the quietude of those early years of the Empire, amidst the nation's strange stupor born of mingled dread and weariness, he could hear faint sounds as of a coming awakening, and, as a supreme hope, he reckoned on some catastrophe which would suddenly make him necessary to the State. He was the man for critical situations, 'the man with the big paws,' as M. de Marsy had put it.

The Rougons received their friends at their house in the Rue Marbeuf on Sundays and Thursdays. They chatted in the big red drawing-room till half-past ten o'clock, at which time Rougon pitilessly turned them out of doors, for he held that late hours fogged the brain. Exactly at ten o'clock, Madame Rougon herself served tea. Two plates of little cakes accompanied the tea, but no one ever touched them.

On the Thursday in the July of that year which followed the general elections, the whole band was assembled in the drawing-room at eight o'clock. Madame Bouchard, Madame Charbonnel, and Madame Correur sat in a circle near an open window to inhale the occasional whiffs of fresh air which came in from the little garden, and in their midst M. d'Escorailles related the pranks he had played in his Plassans days, when he had often gone off to Monaco for twelve hours or so, on the pretext of taking part in a shooting expedition with a friend. Madame Rougon, who, dressed in black, sat half concealed behind a curtain, paid no attention to all this, but would now and again quietly rise and leave the room. She frequently disappeared for a quarter of an hour at a time. M. Charbonnel, however, was perched at the edge of an easy chair near the ladies, in amazement at hearing a young man of high rank confessing such adventures. At the other end of the room stood Clorinde, listening inattentively to a conversation on crops which her husband and M. Béjuin had started. She wore a creamy dress, freely trimmed with straw-coloured ribbons, and she gently tapped the palm of her left hand with her fan while gazing at the bright globe of the one lamp with which the drawing-room was lighted. Meantime, Colonel Jobelin and M. Bouchard were playing piquet at a card-table, while Rougon, like a fortune-teller, was consulting a pack of cards in a corner, setting them out on the green cloth in a grave and methodical manner. This was his favourite amusement on Thursdays and Sundays, affording occupation both for his fingers and his mind.

'Well, will it come off?' Clorinde asked with a smile as she approached him.

'It always comes off,' he replied quietly.

She remained standing on the other side of the table while he dealt the pack into eight small heaps.

When he had turned the cards over and picked them up in pairs—two aces, two kings, two queens, and so forth—she remarked, 'Yes, you have managed it all right. But what did you want the cards to tell you?'

Rougon slowly raised his eyes as though surprised at the question. 'What kind of weather we shall have to-morrow,' he said at length.

Then he began to deal the cards afresh. Delestang and M. Béjuin had now ceased talking, and the silence was only broken by pretty Madame Bouchard's rippling laugh. Clorinde stepped up to a window and stood there for a moment peering into the deepening twilight.

'Is there any news of poor Monsieur Kahn?' she asked, without turning her head.

'I've had a letter from him,' said Rougon. 'I am expecting him this evening.'

Then the conversation turned upon M. Kahn's ill-fortune. During the last session of the Corps Législatif, he had been imprudent enough to criticise a government bill rather sharply, as, by authorising a very dangerous competition in a neighbouring district, it threatened the Bressuire blast-furnaces with ruin. In this, M. Kahn had not for a moment imagined that he had exceeded the bounds of permissible opposition; but on going down to Deux-Sèvres, to prepare for his re-election, he had been informed by the prefect himself that he was no longer the official candidate. He had lost favour, and the minister had just nominated a Niort attorney, a man of most mediocre abilities. This, of course, was a crushing blow.

Rougon was giving particulars of the matter, when M. Kahn himself came into the room, followed by Du Poizat. They had both arrived by the seven o'clock train, and had only taken sufficient time to dine before coming on to Rougon's.

'Well, what do you think of it?' said M. Kahn, standing in the middle of the room, while everyone pressed round him. 'Fancy me being a revolutionist!'

Du Poizat had thrown himself into an easy chair with a weary air. 'A nice campaign!' he cried. 'A pretty muddle! It's enough to disgust all decent people!'

However, the company insisted upon M. Kahn telling them the story in detail. He related that on his arrival in Deux-Sèvres he had noticed a sort of embarrassment among even his best friends. The prefect of the department, M. de Langlade, was a man of dissolute character, whom he accused of paying attentions to the wife of the new deputy, the Niort attorney. However, this Langlade had told him of the disfavour into which he had fallen in a kind enough fashion while they were smoking their cigars after a breakfast at the prefecture. Then M. Kahn repeated the conversation which had passed between himself and M. de Langlade. The worst of the matter, said he, was that his addresses and other bills were already being printed. He had felt so indignant at first that he had been inclined to stand all the same.

'Ah! if you hadn't written to us,' interposed Du Poizat, turning to Rougon, 'we should have taught the government a pretty lesson!'

Rougon shrugged his shoulders. 'You would have failed, and have compromised yourselves for ever,' said he, as he shuffled his cards. 'That would have been a fine feat!'

'I don't know what you're made of!' retorted Du Poizat, jumping up with a gesture of indignation. 'For my part, that fellow Marsy is getting past all bearing. It was you that he was aiming at when he struck our friend Kahn. Have you seen his circulars to the prefects? A pretty business his elections have been! He settled them all with bits of rhetoric! Don't smile! If you had been Minister of the Interior, you would have managed matters in a very different fashion.'

Then, seeing that Rougon still smiled as he looked at him, he added yet more violently: 'We were on the spot and saw the whole business. One unlucky fellow, an old comrade of mine, had the temerity to come forward as a Republican candidate. You can't imagine the abominable way in which he was treated. The prefect, the mayors, the gendarmes, the whole clique, fell foul of him. They defaced and tore his bills and threw his bulletins into the ditches; they arrested the few poor devils who distributed his circulars; and they couldn't even leave his poor aunt alone, a most estimable woman, who was obliged to beg him not to come to her house any more, as he only compromised her. And as for the newspapers, they spoke of him as though he were a cut-throat, and now, whenever he passes through a village, all the women cross themselves.'

Du Poizat noisily drew breath, then flung himself into his chair again and continued: 'Well, although Marsy has got a majority in all the departments, Paris at any rate has returned five opposition deputies. That's the awakening. If the Emperor goes on leaving power in the hands of that big coxcomb of a minister and those wanton prefects, who send husbands off to the Chamber so that they may make love to their wives, why, in five years from now the Empire will be on the verge of ruin. For my part, I'm delighted with the elections in Paris. They have avenged us, I think.'

'So, if you had been a prefect——' began Rougon quietly, with such a slight touch of irony that his thick lips barely curled.

Du Poizat showed his irregular white teeth, and grasped the arms of his chair with his frail, delicate hands as though he wished to twist them. 'Oh!' said he, 'if I had been prefect——' But he did not finish. He again fell back in his chair, and exclaimed: 'It's getting quite sickening. Besides, in reality, I have always been a Republican.'

The ladies by the window had now turned their heads towards the others, and were listening to what was being said. M. d'Escorailles held a large fan, with which he was fanning pretty Madame Bouchard, who looked quite overcome by the heat. The colonel and M. Bouchard, who had just commenced a fresh game, ceased playing every now and then to express their approval or disapproval of what was being said by nodding or shaking their heads. A wide circle of chairs had been drawn up around Rougon. Clorinde, listening attentively with her chin resting upon her hand, did not venture even on a gesture. Delestang, dwelling upon some tender recollection, sat smiling at his wife; while M. Béjuin, with his hands clasped on his knees, looked at the ladies and gentlemen in succession with a scared face. The sudden arrival of Du Poizat and M. Kahn had stirred up a perfect storm in the quiet drawing-room. They seemed to have brought with them an odour of opposition.

'Well, in the end I followed your advice and retired,' resumed M. Kahn. 'I was warned that if I persisted I should receive even worse treatment than the Republican candidate—I who have served the Empire with such devotion! You must admit that such ingratitude is enough to damp the enthusiasm of the firmest supporters.'

Then he bitterly complained of a whole string of annoyances and vexations. He had been anxious to start a newspaper which should support his scheme of a railway line from Niort to Angers, and which later on would have become a very useful financial weapon in his hands; but he had been refused the necessary authorisation. M. de Marsy had suspected that Rougon was behind him, and that the proposed journal would be used for attacking his administration.

'They are afraid lest some one should at last write the truth about them,' said Du Poizat. 'Ah! I would have furnished you with some sweet articles! It is disgraceful to have such a press as we have, gagged and threatened with suppression at the first word of complaint it dares to print. A friend of mine, who is bringing out a novel serially, was recently summoned to the Ministry, where a head clerk requested him to change the colour of his hero's waistcoat, as the colour he had assigned to it was distasteful to the minister. Oh! it's perfectly true. It's no invention.'

He cited other facts, and told them of terrible stories which circulated among the people; of the suicides of a young actress and a relation of the Emperor's, and of an alleged duel between two generals, one of whom had killed the other, in one of the corridors of the Tuileries, as the outcome of some story of robbery.[9] 'Would such stories ever have found any credence if the press had been allowed to speak freely?' asked Du Poizat; and he added: 'I am a Republican, decidedly I am.'

'You are very fortunate,' remarked M. Kahn; 'I no longer know what I am.'

Rougon, bending his broad shoulders, had just then commenced a very elaborate réussite. His aim, after dealing his thirty-two cards three times, first into seven heaps, then into five, and finally into three, was to bring the eight clubs together. He seemed completely absorbed in what he was doing, still he pricked up his ears at certain words.

'The parliamentary system afforded us reliable guarantees,' remarked the colonel. 'Ah! if we could only have the princes back!'

When his fits of opposition were on, Colonel Jobelin was an Orleanist. He often recounted the engagement of Mouzaïa, when he had fought by the side of the Duc d'Aumale, at that time a captain in the fourth regiment of the Line. 'We all got on very well under Louis Philippe,' he continued, noticing the silence with which his expression of regret was received. 'Don't you believe that, if we had a responsible cabinet, our friend here would be at the head of the government within six months?'

M. Bouchard, however, showed signs of impatience. He professed himself a Legitimist, probably because his grandfather had had some connection with the Court in former days. Thus, he and his cousin Jobelin often had heated discussions upon politics. 'Nonsense!' he exclaimed, 'your July monarchy only existed by dint of expedients. There is only one real principle, as you know very well.'

Thereupon they began to get rather warm. They made a clean sweep of the Empire, and each installed in its place the government of his particular choice. Would the Orleans family, cried Jobelin, have ever made the decoration of an old soldier a matter of bargain? Would the Legitimist kings, retorted Bouchard, ever have been guilty of such unjust favouritism as was now to be seen every day in the government offices? Thus they went on till they covertly alluded to one another as fools, when all at once the colonel, angrily picking up his cards, exclaimed: 'Make less noise, do you hear, Bouchard, and please attend to the game!'

Delestang, whom the dispute had awakened from his reverie, now felt bound to defend the Empire. Certainly, said he, it was not everything that he could wish. He would have liked a government of broader sympathies. And he attempted to explain his aspirations, which embraced a somewhat involved form of socialism, with such desiderata as the extinction of pauperism and the co-operation of the working classes, a system, in fact, much like that of his model farm of Chamade, but on a large scale. While her husband spoke, wagging his handsome head with an official air, Clorinde kept her eyes on him, and slightly pouted.

'Yes, certainly I'm a Bonapartist,' he repeated; 'a liberal Bonapartist, if you like.'

'And you, Béjuin?' M. Kahn suddenly inquired.

'Oh, I am one too,' replied M. Béjuin; 'there are shades and distinctions of course, but I am certainly a Bonapartist.'

Du Poizat burst into a shrill laugh. 'Of course, you are!' he exclaimed. And as they pressed him to explain himself, he continued: 'Oh! you amuse me. You haven't been turned out, you see. Delestang is still a member of the Council of State, and Béjuin has just been re-elected.'

'That was a matter of course,' said Béjuin; 'the prefect of the Cher—'

'Oh, you are not responsible, I don't accuse you. We all know how these matters are worked. Combelot, too, is re-elected, and La Rouquette also. So, of course, the Empire is a magnificent institution!'

M. d'Escorailles, who was still fanning pretty Madame Bouchard, now felt constrained to put in a word. He defended the Empire from another point of view. He had adhered to it, he said, because it seemed to him that the Emperor had a grand mission to fulfil. 'The salvation of France before everything else!'

'You have retained your berth as auditor, haven't you?' asked Du Poizat, raising his voice. 'Well, then, there's no difficulty in guessing your opinions. You all seem terribly scandalised by what I'm saying; but it is a very simple matter. Kahn and I, you see, are no longer paid to keep our eyes shut.'

At this the others began to show a little temper. It was disgraceful to take such a view of politics, they said. There were other things besides personal interests to be considered. Even the colonel and M. Bouchard, although they were not Bonapartists themselves, admitted that a man might be a Bonapartist in all good faith; and they waxed hot in support of their own principles, as though an attempt was being made to wrench them from them. As for Delestang, he seemed much offended. He complained that he had been quite misunderstood, and went on to point out how he differed from the blind partisans of the Empire. This led him into fresh explanations of the democratic developments which he thought compatible with the Emperor's government. Then both M. Béjuin and M. d'Escorailles objected to be looked upon as Bonapartists pure and simple. They spoke of many different shades of opinion, each clinging to his own particular, but somewhat vaguely defined, views. And thus in ten minutes or so the whole company had gone over to the opposition. Voices rang out in dispute, and such terms as 'Legitimist,' 'Orleanist,' and 'Republican,' were bandied about amidst repeated declarations of political faith. Madame Rougon looked in at one of the doors for a moment, as if somewhat uneasy, and then quietly disappeared again.

Rougon, however, had now just succeeded in getting his clubs into proper sequence, whereupon Clorinde stooped and asked him amidst the general uproar: 'Well, have you managed it?'

'Certainly,' he replied, with his quiet smile. Then, as if he had only just become aware of the war of words that was going on, he shook his hand, remarking: 'You are making a lot of noise.'

Thinking that he wanted to say something, the others then ceased talking, and perfect silence ensued. However, while they waited, Rougon simply spread thirteen cards upon the table, reckoned them over, and finally, amidst general attention, exclaimed: 'Three queens, the sign of a quarrel. A dark woman, who is not to be trusted——'

But Du Poizat impatiently interrupted him. 'Well, Rougon, and what is your opinion?'

The great man thereupon threw himself back in his chair and stretched his legs, while raising his hand to his mouth to conceal a slight yawn. And he raised his chin as though his neck were paining him.

'Oh, I,' he said, with his eyes turned to the ceiling, 'I believe in the principle of authority. It is a necessity with me. It was born with me. It is very foolish of you to wrangle. In France, whenever one gets five men together, it is certain that five different kinds of government are represented. But that doesn't prevent a man from loyally serving the established government. That is so, is it not? You're talking just for the sake of talking.'

Then he let his chin drop and glanced slowly round the room, as he resumed: 'Marsy has managed the elections very well. You did wrong to blame his circulars. The last one was an extremely good one. And as for the press, I think that it has too much liberty already. What kind of state should we be in, if any one could write everything he liked? I should have taken the same course as Marsy in refusing to grant Kahn permission to start a newspaper. It is always unwise to provide your opponents with weapons. Soft-hearted Empires invariably come to grief. France requires an iron hand, and is none the worse for being grasped a little tightly.'

Delestang felt bound to protest against this. 'But, at any rate, there are certain necessary liberties——' he commenced.

Clorinde, however, made him stop. She had expressed her approval of all Rougon had said by ostentatious nods. She had even brought herself forward so that he might see her better, submissive and convinced before him. And it was at her that he cast a quick glance as he exclaimed: 'Oh, yes! the necessary liberties! I was expecting that they would be dragged in! Well, if the Emperor took my advice, he would never grant a single liberty.'

Then as Delestang again showed an inclination to protest, his wife reduced him to silence by a threatening frown of her beautiful brow.

'Never!' repeated Rougon energetically. And he sprang from his chair and looked so formidable that no one ventured to speak a word. Then, however, he dropped down again, and his limbs seemed to grow limp as he muttered: 'You've made me shout as well——However, I'm only a simple private citizen now, and have no occasion to mix myself up in it all, thank goodness. Heaven grant that the Emperor may have no further occasion for my services!'

Just at that moment the door of the drawing-room was opened, and Rougon, raising his finger to his mouth, added in a whisper: 'Hush!'

It was M. La Rouquette who entered. Rougon suspected that he came to the Rue Marbeuf at the instigation of his sister, Madame de Llorentz, to spy upon what went on there. M. de Marsy, although he had only been married six months, had just renewed his intimacy with this lady, whose name had been associated with his own for nearly two years. And so as soon as the young deputy made his appearance, politics were set aside and the drawing-room resumed its decorous quietude. Rougon himself went to fetch a large shade which he placed over the lamp, and then one saw only the withered hands of the colonel and M. Bouchard throwing down their cards in the circle of yellow light. At the window Madame Charbonnel was now telling her troubles in a low voice to Madame Correur, while M. Charbonnel punctuated each detail with a deep sigh. They would soon have been two years in Paris, the lady was saying sadly, and their wretched lawsuit seemed as though it would never end. On the day before she had been obliged to buy herself six new chemises and her husband six new shirts, having learnt that the matter had been again adjourned. Somewhat in the rear of this group, near a curtain, was Madame Bouchard, who had apparently dropped asleep, rendered drowsy by the heat. M. d'Escorailles approached her again, and then, as no one was looking, he had the calm impudence to print a kiss upon her half-closed lips. At this, she opened her eyes, looking very solemn, but she kept quite still.

'Oh dear, no!' M. La Rouquette was saying just at that moment; 'I haven't been to the Variétés. I saw the full-dress rehearsal of the piece. It's a tremendous success; the music is wonderfully gay. It will draw all Paris. But to-day I had some work to finish, something I am preparing.'

He had shaken hands with the men, and had gallantly kissed Clorinde's wrist above her glove. And he remained standing, smiling and leaning against the back of an arm-chair. He was irreproachably dressed, and there was an assumption of solemn gravity in the way in which his frock-coat was buttoned up.

'By-the-bye,' he said, addressing himself to the master of the house, 'à propos of your great work, I should like to call your attention to a most interesting paper on the English constitution which has just appeared in a Vienna review. Are you making progress?'

'Oh, I'm getting on very slowly,' Rougon replied. 'I have got to a chapter which gives me a great deal of trouble.'

As a rule he delighted to make the young deputy talk, for through him he learnt all that went on at the Tuileries. He felt sure that La Rouquette had been sent to his house that evening to find out what he thought about the success of the official candidates, and he succeeded in worming a large amount of information out of him, though he himself did not make a remark that was worth repeating. He began by congratulating the young man upon his own election, and then kept up the conversation by occasional nods. La Rouquette, who was fond of talking, rattled on without a pause. The Court was delighted, he said. The Emperor had learnt the result of the elections, at Plombières, and it was said that on the arrival of the telegram he had been obliged to sit down, as his legs gave way with emotion. But there was one great source of uneasiness amidst the victory. Paris had shown monstrous ingratitude.

'Pooh! Paris can be muzzled!' said Rougon, stifling another yawn, as though bored at finding nothing of interest in all M. La Rouquette's chatter.

Ten o'clock struck, and Madame Rougon, having placed a small round table in the centre of the room, began to serve the tea. The company scattered in little groups about the room. M. Kahn was standing cup in hand in front of Delestang, who never took tea because it affected his nerves, and was giving him some additional particulars of his journey to La Vendée. His great scheme for a railway from Niort to Angers was no further advanced, he said. However, that scamp of a Langlade, the prefect of Deux-Sèvres, had audaciously availed himself of it to influence the constituency in favour of the new official candidate.

Meantime. M. La Rouquette, who had slipped behind the ladies, was whispering remarks which made them smile; while Madame Correur, screened by a rampart of chairs, talked somewhat excitedly to Du Poizat. She asked him about her brother Martineau, the notary at Coulonges, and the other told her that he had seen him for a moment in front of the church, looking just the same as ever, with his hard face and solemn air. Then, as she started on her usual recriminations, he mischievously advised her never to go home again, as Madame Martineau had sworn she would fling her out of doors. Madame Correur finished her tea, feeling quite choked.

'Come, my children, it's time to go to bed,' said Rougon paternally.

It was now twenty-five minutes past ten, and he gave them five minutes longer. Some of the company, however, withdrew at once. Rougon went to the door with M. Kahn and M. Béjuin, whom Madame Rougon invariably charged with compliments for their wives, though she saw the ladies twice a year at the utmost. Then Rougon gently pushed the Charbonnels towards the door. They were always greatly embarrassed about taking their leave. And afterwards, as pretty Madame Bouchard was going off between M. d'Escorailles and M. La Rouquette, he turned to the card-table and exclaimed: 'Come, Monsieur Bouchard, they are carrying off your wife!'

But the chief-clerk, without appearing to hear, went on calling out his points: 'A major quint in clubs! That's good, eh? Three kings; they are good too.'

However, Rougon gathered up the cards. 'Come, you've had enough!' said he. 'Get away home with you. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves for getting so excited over it. Come, colonel, come.'

It was just the same every Thursday and Sunday. He had to stop them in the middle of a game, and sometimes even turn the lamp out before they would give up their play. And they went off, disputing with each other.

Delestang and Clorinde were the last to go, and while her husband was hunting about the room for her fan, the young woman said to Rougon in an undertone: 'It is foolish of you not to take a little exercise; you will make yourself ill.'

However he made a gesture of indifference and resignation: Madame Rougon was already gathering together the cups and teaspoons. Then as Delestang shook hands with him, the great man frankly yawned in his face. In order, however, that they might not think his evening had bored him, he excused himself by saying: 'Ah! dash it, I shall sleep well to-night.'

The evenings always passed away in this manner. There was a sombre atmosphere about the room, and Du Poizat even said that 'it smelt too much of cant.' Clorinde called very frequently. She often came by herself in the afternoon to fulfil some commission with which she had charged herself. She would playfully tell Madame Rougon that she had come to make love to her husband, and the wife, with a smile on her pale lips, would leave them together for hours at a time. They conversed familiarly, without appearing to recollect the past, exchanging friendly grasps of the hand in the very room where but a year before Rougon had paced up and down, so restless with passion. But they seemed to have forgotten all that, and gave themselves up to quiet friendship. Rougon would push back the young woman's straying hair, which always seemed to be blowing loose, or help her with the train of her dress, which was invariably very long and apt to become entangled among the chairs. One day, as they went through the garden, she had the curiosity to push the stable-door open. She even entered, giving a glance at Rougon and laughing lightly. But he merely remarked with a smile, as he stood with his hands in his pockets: 'How foolish people can be sometimes!'

Whenever she came to see him, he always gave her good advice. He spoke much in favour of Delestang, who, on the whole, made a very good husband. Clorinde said that she had great esteem for him, and he did not appear to have any cause of complaint against her. She said that she never flirted, and this was quite true. Her slightest remarks seemed tinged with indifference, almost with contempt, for men. When any one spoke of a woman with more lovers than could be counted, an expression of surprise would come into her big child-like eyes, and she would ask what pleasure any one could find in such conduct. For weeks together she seemed unconscious of her beauty, and only recollected it in some emergency, when she availed herself of it as a weapon. One day when Rougon, who harped upon the subject with singular pertinacity, was advising her to keep faithful to Delestang, she ended by getting angry and exclaiming: 'Oh, leave me alone. I'm quite aware of all you're saying. Really, you are becoming offensive.' And on another day she added bluntly: 'After all, it is no concern of yours.'

Rougon blushed, and for some time afterwards said nothing more on the subject of her duties and the proprieties. A persistent thrill of jealousy was all that now remained to him of his old passion. He watched her in the drawing-rooms which she frequented; and, if he had scented any intrigue, he would probably have warned her husband. As a matter of fact, when he was alone with the latter, he did try to put him on his guard, by speaking of his wife's extraordinary beauty. But Delestang always laughed with an air of fatuous confidence, and it was Rougon who really endured all the jealous torments of a betrayed husband.

His other counsels, practical ones, testified to his great affection for Clorinde. It was he who by degrees persuaded her to send her mother back to Italy. Countess Balbi, left alone in her little house in the Champs Élysées, had begun to lead a careless life which gave rise to much talk. Rougon took upon himself to settle the delicate question of an allowance. The house was next sold, and thus the young woman's past was wiped out. Then Rougon tried to cure her of her eccentricities, but in this matter he found himself confronted by utter naïveté and resolute feminine obstinacy. Clorinde, now that she was married and wealthy, squandered money lavishly, though she was subject to sudden impulses of sordid avarice. She had kept her little maid, the dusky Antonia, who sucked oranges from morning till night; and between them they made an abominable mess of Clorinde's rooms in the big house in the Rue du Colisée. When Rougon went to see the young woman, he would find dirty plates on the chairs, and bottles of syrup strewn along the floor beside the wall. Beneath the furniture too he could espy an untidy accumulation of things which had been hastily thrust out of sight when he was announced.

And amidst the greasy hangings and soiled, dusty wood-work, Clorinde still indulged in the most extraordinary caprices. She would often receive her friends wrapt round with a rug, and lying on a couch, while complaining of the strangest disorders—of a dog, for instance, which was gnawing at her foot, or of a pin which she had accidentally swallowed, and the point of which must be trying to force its way out through her leg. At other times she would close the shutters at three o'clock in the afternoon, light all the candles, and begin to dance with Antonia, the one facing the other, and indulging in such paroxysms of laughter that when Rougon arrived the maid had to stand panting by the door for five minutes before she could leave the room. One day too Clorinde determined to remain invisible; she sewed her bed curtains together from top to bottom; and sat up on the bolster inside the cage she had thus formed, talking to Rougon for more than an hour, as calmly as though they had been sitting on either side of the fire. These extravagancies seemed quite natural to her. When Rougon chided her for them, she appeared quite surprised, and declared that she was doing nothing improper. It was in vain that he preached propriety to her, and promised to make her the most fascinating woman in Paris in a month's time, if she would let herself be guided by him; she only grew angry, and exclaimed: 'It's my nature to be like this; I always go on like this. What harm does it do anybody?' And sometimes she would smile and say: 'Oh, well, people love me all the same! Don't preach!'

Delestang, indeed, worshipped her. To him she was quite unlike a wife, but for that very reason exercised the more influence. He shut his eyes to her caprices, smitten with a terrible fear lest she should leave him, as she had one day threatened to do. Beneath his meek submission there was probably a feeling that she was his superior, well able to do whatever she liked with him. In society he treated her almost like a child, and spoke to her with the complacency of a serious man. But when they were by themselves, this handsome fellow, with the haughty head, would burst into tears if she would not let him kiss her. The only check he put upon her was to take possession of the keys of the first floor rooms, in order that the reception apartments might be kept free from grease and dirt.

Rougon, though he failed in some things, managed to induce Clorinde to dress a little more like other people. With all her failings she was very shrewd, with the shrewdness of those lunatics who in lucid intervals manage to appear perfectly rational before strangers. He met her at certain houses, looking very demure and reserved, allowing her husband to do all the talking, and remaining quite decorous amidst the admiration excited by her beauty. At her own house, Rougon frequently found M. de Plouguern, and Clorinde would sit between them making playful remarks, while they poured forth moral disquisitions for her benefit. Sometimes the old senator would familiarly pat the girl's cheeks, much to Rougon's annoyance, though he never ventured to express what he thought on the subject. He was more courageous with regard to Luigi Pozzo, Chevalier Rusconi's secretary, whom he had frequently noticed leaving the house at unusual hours. When he hinted to the young woman that this might compromise her very seriously, she raised her eyes with a pretty look of surprise, and burst out laughing. She didn't care for what people thought, she cried. Besides, Luigi counted for nothing. He was her cousin, and he brought her little Milanese cakes, which he purchased for her in the Passage Colbert.

It was with politics, however, that Clorinde's mind was chiefly occupied. Since she had married Delestang, her brain had been busy with deep and intricate matters, of which no one knew the importance. She found in them, however, a means of satisfying her craving for intrigue, which had so long found scope in her attempts to ensnare those whom she thought to be coming men; and she seemed to be preparing herself in this way for some yet greater schemes which she had in contemplation. She kept up a regular correspondence with her mother, who was now settled at Turin; and went almost every day to the Sardinian legation, where Chevalier Rusconi took her apart, and talked to her in low tones. Then too she went on mysterious errands to all parts of Paris, making furtive visits to great personages, and keeping appointments in the most out-of-the-way places. All the Venetian refugees, the Brambillas, and the Staderinos, and the Viscardis, came to see her secretly, and gave her scraps of paper covered with memoranda. She had bought a large red morocco case, a genuine ministerial portfolio with a steel lock, and in it she stowed away a wonderful collection of documents. When she drove out, she kept it on her knees like a muff; and wherever she called she carried it about with her under her arm; and she might even be met early in the morning, on foot, clasping it against her breast with both her hands. The case soon began to look worn, and it split at the seams. Then she buckled straps round it. And ever laden as she was with this shapeless leather case bursting with papers, she looked like some money-grubbing solicitor running from one police-court to another in the hope of picking up a petty fee.

Rougon had made several attempts to discover what it was that so engrossed Clorinde's thoughts. One day when he was left alone for a few moments with her famous portfolio, he had not scrupled to pull out some letters which protruded through its gaps. But all that he could find out in one fashion or another seemed to him so incoherent and disconnected that he smiled at the young woman's pretensions to politics. One afternoon, however, she quietly began to expound to him a vast scheme. She was working to bring about an alliance between France and Italy, in view of a speedy campaign against Austria. Rougon, who for a moment was very much struck by this, ended by shrugging his shoulders at the heap of absurdities which found place in her plan. He had in no way modified his opinion about women. Clorinde, on her side, so far as he was concerned, seemed to accept the subordinate position of a disciple quite willingly. When she went to see him in the Rue Marbeuf, she assumed an air of submissive humility, and questioned him, and listened to him with the eagerness of a neophyte anxious for instruction. For his part, he frequently forgot to whom he was speaking, and unfolded his theory of government, and talked to her in the most unrestrained and confidential manner. In fact, their conversations gradually became a regular habit, and he made her his confidante, breaking the silence which he observed in the presence of his best friends, and treating her like a discreet pupil, whose respectful admiration had a great charm for him.

During the months of August and September, Clorinde increased the frequency of her visits. She would call on Rougon three or four times a week, and never had she shown herself so gentle and affectionate. She paid him the most flattering compliments, eulogised his genius, and spoke regretfully of the great things which he would have accomplished if he had not retired. One day, as an idea flashed through his mind, he said to her with a laugh: 'There's something you want me to do for you?'

'Yes,' she replied candidly.

But she quickly reassumed her expression of admiring wonder. Politics were much more interesting than novels, she declared. However, whenever Rougon turned his back for a moment, she would open her eyes quite widely, and a momentary gleam would flash from them, suggesting some old feeling of bitterness which still lived on. She often let her hands linger in his, as though she still felt too weak for what she was contemplating, and was waiting till she had drained away sufficient of his strength to be able to throttle him.

However, his increasing lassitude at this juncture was really a source of much uneasiness to her. He seemed to be falling fast asleep amidst his boredom. She had made, at first, full allowance for all possible pretence which there might be in his demeanour, but was at length forced to believe that he really did feel discouraged. His movements had grown sluggish, and his voice languid; and sometimes he seemed so listless and indifferent that the young woman felt quite alarmed, and seriously wondered if he were not going to abide by his relegation to the Senate as a played-out politician.

Towards the end of September, however, Rougon seemed very thoughtful. At last, in one of his customary conversations with Clorinde, he told her that he was maturing a great scheme. He was growing weary of Paris, and needed fresh air. Then all at once he spoke out. It was a great scheme of an altogether fresh life: a voluntary exile to the Landes of Gascony, the clearing of several square leagues of ground, and the founding of a new town amidst the conquered territory. Clorinde turned quite pale as she listened to him.

'But your position here!' she cried; 'your prospects!'

'Bah! castles in the air!' he said disdainfully. 'I have come to the conclusion that I am not cut out for politics.'

Then he reverted to his pet idea of being a great landowner, with herds of cattle which he would rule in all sovereignty. But his ambition was now greater. In the Landes of Gascony he would be like the conquering king of a new territory. He would have a people under him. He gave Clorinde all kinds of particulars. For the last fortnight, without saying a word to anyone, he had been reading technical treatises. And in imagination he had been reclaiming marshes, clearing the soil of stones with the aid of powerful machines, checking the advance of the sandhills by plantations of pines, and dowering France with a tract of wondrously fertile country. All his dormant activity, all his latent giant's strength, awoke within him at the thought of this undertaking. He clenched his fists as though he were already face to face with rebellious rocks. In imagination he turned the whole soil over at a single stroke; carried houses completely built on his shoulders, and dropped them as his fancy listed on the banks of some river, whose bed he had hollowed out by a single kick of his foot. It all seemed so easy, and it would give him the work he so much desired. The Emperor, no doubt, still retained sufficient good-will towards him to let him reclaim those waste lands. And erect, bracing up his big form, and with his cheeks aglow, he burst into a proud laugh: 'It is a magnificent idea!' he cried. 'I shall give my name to the town, and I, too, shall found a little Empire!'

Clorinde imagined that it was all a mere caprice, a whim born of the boredom in which he was struggling. But when they subsequently met, Rougon again spoke of his scheme with even greater enthusiasm than before. Each time she came to see him, she found him amidst a litter of maps strewn over the desk, the chairs, and the carpet alike. One afternoon she was not able to see him, as he was conferring with two engineers. Thereupon she began to feel really alarmed. Could he really mean to give her the slip like that and go off and found this town of his in the wilderness? Wasn't it rather some new stratagem he was arranging? However, she relinquished her endeavours to ascertain the truth, and thought it best to give the alarm to the whole band.

There was great consternation. Du Poizat flew into a passion. For more than a year now he had been living by shifts, and on his last journey to La Vendée his father had hastily taken a pistol from a drawer on his venturing to ask him for ten thousand francs to float a magnificent speculation. So now the ex-sub-prefect was half-starving again just as in 1848. M. Kahn showed equal anger. His blast-furnaces at Bressuire were being threatened with speedy ruin, and he felt that he would be lost if he could not obtain the railway grant within the next six months. All the others, M. Béjuin, the colonel, the Bouchards, and the Charbonnels, were similarly upset. Things could not possibly be allowed to end like that, they cried. Really, such conduct on Rougon's part was not reasonable. They must talk to him about it.

A fortnight, however, went by. Clorinde, whose ideas were approved by the whole band, had come to the conclusion that it would be hazardous to make an open attack on the great man. They must wait for a fitting opportunity. This they did, and one Sunday evening, towards the middle of October, when they were all assembled in the drawing-room in the Rue Marbeuf, Rougon smilingly remarked to them: 'You'd never guess what I received to-day.'

Then he took a pink card from behind the timepiece and showed it to them. 'An invitation to Compiègne, from the Emperor,' he said.

At this moment his valet quietly opened the door, and told him that the gentleman he was expecting had arrived. Rougon excused himself and left the room. Clorinde had risen to her feet and stood there listening. Then, as silence fell, she exclaimed, energetically: 'He must go to Compiègne!'

The friends glanced round suspiciously; but they were quite alone. Madame Rougon had gone off some minutes previously. And so in low voices, and with their eyes fixed on the doors, they began to speak their minds. The ladies were gathered in a circle in front of the fire-place, where a huge log was smouldering. M. Bouchard and the colonel were busy with their everlasting piquet, while the other men had wheeled their chairs into a corner to isolate themselves. Clorinde alone remained standing in the middle of the room, her head bent as if deep in thought.

'He was expecting somebody, then?' began Du Poizat. 'Who can it be, I wonder?'

The others shrugged their shoulders, as if to say that they did not know.

'Something to do with this idiotic scheme of his, perhaps,' continued the ex-sub-prefect. 'One of these evenings, you'll see, I shall tell him plainly what I think of him.'

'Hush!' exclaimed M. Kahn, raising his finger to his lips.

Du Poizat had raised his voice in an alarming way. For a moment they all strained their ears to listen. Then M. Kahn himself said in a very low tone: 'There is no doubt but what he has pledged himself to us.'

'Say, rather, that he has contracted a debt,' interposed the colonel, laying down his cards.

'Yes, yes; a debt; that is the word,' declared M. Bouchard. 'We didn't mince matters that last day at the Council of State.'

All the others nodded assent. There was a general lamentation. Rougon had ruined them. M. Bouchard added, that if it had not been for his fidelity, he would have got his promotion long ago; and, to hear the colonel talk, anyone would have imagined that he had been offered a commander's cross, and a post for his son Auguste, on the part of M. de Marsy, and that he had simply refused them out of friendship for Rougon. M. d'Escorailles' parents, said pretty Madame Bouchard, were much disappointed at seeing their son remain a mere auditor when for the last six months they had been expecting his promotion to higher rank. Even those who said nothing, Delestang, M. Béjuin, Madame Correur, and the Charbonnels, bit their lips and raised their eyes to heaven with the expression of martyrs whose patience was at last beginning to fail them.

'Well, the long and the short of it is that we are being defrauded,' cried Du Poizat. 'But he shall not go away; I answer for that! Is there any sense in a man setting off and struggling with stones when there are such serious interests to keep him in Paris? Are you willing that I should speak to him?'

Clorinde now awoke from her reverie. She waved her hand to obtain silence; and after opening the door to see that there was no one outside, she repeated: 'I tell you that he must go to Compiègne!'

Then, as every face turned towards her, she checked all questions with another wave of her hand: 'Hush! not here!'

She told them, however, that she and her husband had also been invited to Compiègne, and she made some mention of M. de Marsy and Madame de Llorentz without consenting to enter into further details. However, they would push the great man into power in spite of himself, she said; they would compromise him, if he drove them to it. M. Beulin-d'Orchère and the whole judicial bench secretly supported him; and M. La Rouquette had confessed that the Emperor, amidst all the hatred expressed against Rougon by those who surrounded him, had kept absolute silence on the matter. Whenever the great man's name was mentioned in his presence, he became serious and lowered his eyes.

'It is not we alone who are concerned,' M. Kahn now declared. 'If we succeed, the whole country will owe us thanks.'

Then, raising their voices, they all began to sing the praises of the master of the house. A buzz of conversation in an adjoining room had just become audible. Du Poizat was so carried away by curiosity, that he pushed the door open as though he were going out, and then closed it again with sufficient deliberation to take a look at the man who was speaking with Rougon. It was Gilquin, wearing a heavy overcoat in good condition, and holding in his hand a stout cane with a knob of yellow metal. He was saying in his full voice, with exaggerated familiarity: 'Don't send any more, you understand, to the Rue Virginie at Grenelle. I'm at Batignolles now, Passage Guttin. Well, you can reckon upon me. Good-bye for the present.'

Then he shook hands with Rougon.

When the latter returned to the drawing-room he apologised for his absence, but gave Du Poizat a keen glance: 'A good fellow, whom you know, Du Poizat, don't you?' said he. 'He is going to enlist some colonists for my new world in the Landes. By the way, I mean to take you all with me; so you had better get your things together. Kahn shall be my Prime Minister. Delestang and his wife shall have the portfolio of Foreign Affairs. Béjuin shall be Postmaster. And I won't forget the ladies. Madame Bouchard shall be Queen of Beauty, and I'll give the keys of our store-rooms to Madame Charbonnel.'

In this wise he playfully rattled on, while his friends, very ill at ease, were wondering if he had perchance heard them through some chink or other. When he proceeded to say that he would decorate the colonel with all the orders in his gift, the latter almost lost his temper. Clorinde, however, was looking at the invitation to Compiègne which she had taken from off the mantelpiece.

'Do you mean to go?' she asked, with an appearance of unconcern.

'Oh, no doubt,' replied Rougon, surprised at the question. 'I mean to take advantage of the opportunity to get the Emperor to give me my department.'

Just then ten o'clock struck, and Madame Rougon returned to the room and served tea.

[VII]

AT COURT

Towards seven o'clock on the evening of her arrival at Compiègne, Clorinde was engaged in conversation with M. de Plouguern near one of the windows in the Gallery of the Maps. They were waiting for the Emperor and Empress before entering the dining-room. The second batch of the season's guests had scarcely been more than three hours at the château, and all of them had not yet come down from their rooms. Clorinde occupied herself by briefly criticising them as they entered the gallery, one by one. The ladies, in low dresses, and wearing flowers in their hair, put on smiles as soon as they reached the threshold; while the gentlemen, wearing white cravats, black knee-breeches, and silk stockings, preserved a solemn air.

'Ah; here comes the Chevalier!' muttered Clorinde. 'He looks very nice, doesn't he? But just look at M. Beulin-d'Orchère, godfather! Doesn't he look as though he were going to bark? And, good heavens, what legs!'

M. de Plouguern began to grin, much amused by this backbiting. Chevalier Rusconi came up and bowed to Clorinde, with the languid gallantry of a handsome Italian; then he made the round of the ladies, swaying to and fro with a series of gentle rhythmical reverences. A few yards away, Delestang, looking very serious, was examining the huge maps of the Forest of Compiègne, which covered the walls of the gallery.

'Whereabouts in the train were you?' Clorinde continued. 'I looked out for you at the station, so that we might travel together. Just fancy, I was squeezed up with a whole crowd of men.' Then she stopped, and stifled a laugh with her fingers. 'How demure Monsieur La Rouquette looks!' said she.

'Yes, indeed; he's like a simpering schoolgirl,' rejoined the senator sarcastically.

Just at that moment a loud rustling was heard by the door, which was thrown wide open to admit a lady wearing a dress which was so lavishly adorned with bows and flowers and lace, that she had to press it down with both hands in order to get through. It was Madame de Combelot, Clorinde's sister-in-law. The latter stared at her, and murmured: 'Good gracious!'

Then, as M. de Plouguern glanced at her own dress of simple tarlatan, worn over an ill-cut under-skirt of rose-silk, she continued, with an air of complete unconcern: 'Ah! I don't care about dress, godfather! People must take me, you know, as I am.'

Delestang, however, had quitted the maps, and after joining his sister, led her to his wife. The two women were not particularly fond of each other, and exchanged rather stiff greetings. Then Madame de Combelot walked off, dragging her satin train, which looked like a strip of flower garden, through the clusters of silent men, who stepped back out of the way of this flood of lace flounces. Clorinde, as soon as she was alone again with M. de Plouguern, referred playfully to the lady's great passion for the Emperor. And when the old senator had told her that there was no reciprocal feeling on the Emperor's part, she continued: 'Well, there's no great merit in that; she's so dreadfully lean. I have been told that some men consider her good-looking, but I don't know why. She has absolutely no figure at all.'

While talking in this strain, Clorinde none the less kept her eyes upon the door. 'Ah! this time it must surely be Monsieur Rougon,' she said as it opened again. But, almost immediately, she resumed with a flash in her eyes: 'Ah, no! it is Monsieur de Marsy.'

The minister, looking quite irreproachable in his black dress-coat and knee-breeches, stepped up to Madame de Combelot with a smile, and while he was paying compliments to her, he glanced round at the assembled guests, blinking his eyes as though he recognised no one. But, as they began to bow to him, he inclined his head with an expression of great amiability. Several men approached him, and he soon became the centre of a group. His pale face, with its subtle cunning air, towered over the shoulders clustering round him.

'By the way,' said Clorinde, pushing M. de Plouguern into a window-recess, 'I have been relying upon you for some information. What do you know about Madame de Llorentz's famous letters?'

'Only what all the world knows,' replied the old senator.

Then he began to speak of the famous three letters which had been written, it was said, by Count de Marsy to Madame de Llorentz nearly five years previously, a short time before the Emperor's marriage. Madame de Llorentz, who had just lost her husband, a general of Spanish origin, was then at Madrid, looking after her deceased husband's affairs. It was the heyday of her connection with Marsy, who, to amuse her, and yielding to his own sportive proclivities, had sent her some very piquant details concerning certain august personages with whom he was living on intimate terms. And it was asserted that Madame de Llorentz, who was an extremely jealous beauty, had carefully preserved these letters, and kept them hanging over M. de Marsy's head as an ever-ready means of vengeance, should he presume to wander in his affections.

'She allowed herself to be talked over,' continued M. de Plouguern, 'when Marsy had to marry the Wallachian princess; but, after consenting to their spending a month's honeymoon together, she gave him to understand that if he did not return to her feet, she would some day lay the three terrible letters on the Emperor's desk. So he has taken up his fetters again, and lavishes the most loving attention upon her in the hope that he may get her to give these letters up.'

Clorinde laughed heartily; the story amused her, and she began to ask all sorts of questions. If the Count should deceive Madame de Llorentz, would she really carry her threat into execution? Where did she keep those letters? Was it really in the bosom of her dress, stitched between two pieces of satin ribbon, as some people said? M. de Plouguern, however, could give no further information. No one but Madame de Llorentz herself had ever read the letters; but he knew a young man who had vainly made himself her humble slave for nearly six months in the hope of being able to get a copy of them.

'But look at Marsy,' he continued, 'he never takes his eyes off you. Ah! I had forgotten; you have made a conquest of him. Is it true that, at the last soirée at the ministry, he remained talking to you for nearly an hour?'

The young woman made no reply. Indeed she was not listening, but stood majestic and motionless under M. de Marsy's steady gaze. Then slowly raising her head and looking at him in her turn, she waited for him to bow to her. He thereupon stepped up, and she smiled upon him very sweetly. They did not, however, exchange a word. The Count went back to the group he had left, in which M. La Rouquette now was talking very loudly, perpetually speaking of him as 'His Excellency.'

The gallery had gradually filled. There were nearly a hundred persons present: high functionaries, generals, foreign diplomatists, five deputies, three prefects, two painters, a novelist, and a couple of academicians, to say nothing of the court officials, the chamberlains, and the aides-de-camp and equerries. A subdued murmur of voices arose amid the glare of the chandeliers. Those who were familiar with the château paced slowly up and down, while those who had been asked there for the first time remained where they stood, too timid to venture among the ladies. The want of ease which for the first hour or so prevailed among these guests, many of whom were unacquainted with one another, but who found themselves suddenly assembled in the ante-chamber of the Imperial dining-room, gave to their faces an expression of sullen reserve. Every now and then there were sudden intervals of silence, and heads turned anxiously round. The very furniture of the spacious apartment, the pier tables with straight legs, and the square chairs, all in the stiff First Empire style, seemed to impart additional solemnity to this spell of waiting.

'Here he comes at last!' murmured Clorinde.

Rougon had just entered and stood still for a moment, blinking. He had donned his expression of good natured simplicity; his back was slightly bent, and his face had a sleepy look. He noticed at a glance the faint tremor of hostility which thrilled some of the guests at his appearance. However, in quiet fashion, shaking hands here and there, he steered his way so as to come face to face with M. de Marsy. They bowed to one another, and seemed delighted to meet; and they began to talk in very friendly fashion, though they kept their eyes on each other like foes who respected each other's strength. An empty space had been cleared around them. The ladies watched their slightest gestures with interest; while the men, affecting great discretion, pretended to look in another direction, though every now and then they cast furtive glances at them. Much whispering went on in different corners of the room. What secret plan had the Emperor got in his head? Why had he brought those two men together? M. La Rouquette felt sorely perplexed, but fancied he could scent some very grave business. So he went up to M. de Plouguern, and began to question him. But the old senator gave rein to his jocosity. 'Oh,' said he, 'perhaps Rougon is going to upset Marsy, so it is as well to treat him deferentially. On the other hand, perhaps the Emperor merely wanted to see them together, in the hope that something amusing might happen.'

However, the whispering ceased, and there was a general stir. Two officers of the household went from group to group saying something in low tones. Then the guests, who had suddenly become serious again, made their way towards the door on the left, where they formed themselves into a double line, the men on one side and the ladies on the other. M. de Marsy posted himself near the door, keeping Rougon by his side; and the rest of the company ranged themselves in the order of their rank. Then, keeping perfect silence, they continued waiting for another three minutes.

At last the folding-doors were thrown wide open. The Emperor, in full dress, and wearing the red ribbon of the Legion of Honour across his chest, came into the room first, followed by the chamberlain on duty, M. de Combelot. He smiled slightly as he stopped before M. de Marsy and Rougon, swaying slightly, and slowly twisting his long moustache, as, in an embarrassed tone, he said: 'You must tell Madame Rougon how extremely sorry we were to hear that she was ill. We should have much liked to see her here with you. We must hope that she will very soon be well again. There are a great many colds about just now.'

Then he passed on. After taking a few steps, however, he stopped to shake hands with a general, asking him after his son, whom he called 'my little friend Gaston.' Gaston was of the same age as the Prince Imperial, but was already much more vigorous. The guests bowed as the Emperor passed them. When he had got to the end of the line, M. de Combelot presented to him one of the two academicians, who had come to Court for the first time. The Emperor spoke of a recent work which this writer had issued, and declared that certain passages of it had afforded him the greatest pleasure.

By this time the Empress Eugénie had also entered the room, attended by Madame de Llorentz. She was dressed very simply in a blue silk gown with a tunic of white lace, and she advanced with slow steps, smiling towards the ladies and graciously inclining her bare neck, from which a diamond heart was suspended by a ribbon of blue velvet. The ladies curtsied to her with much rustling and spreading of their skirts, from which rose strong perfumes. Madame de Llorentz presented a young woman, who seemed deeply moved; whereas Madame de Combelot put on an air of affectionate familiarity.

When the sovereigns had reached the end of the double line, they retraced their steps; the Emperor now turning towards the ladies, and the Empress towards the men. There were some more presentations. No one spoke; respectful embarrassment kept all the guests face to face in silence. However, when the adjutant-general of the palace entered to announce that dinner was served, the lines broke up, remarks were exchanged sotto voce, and there came little bursts of cheery laughter.

'Ah! you don't want me any longer now!' said M. de Plouguern in Clorinde's ear.

She smiled at him. She had kept in front of M. de Marsy in order to compel him to offer her his arm, which he did with a gallant air. There was some little confusion. The Emperor and Empress went out first, followed by the guests who were to sit on their right and left. That day two foreign diplomatists, a young American lady, and a minister's wife had been selected for this honour. After these came the other guests in such order as they chose, each gentleman giving his arm to the lady he had been pleased to select. And thus the procession got slowly under way.

The entry into the dining-hall was very pompous. Five cut-glass chandeliers sparkled above the long table, illumining the silver centre-pieces, which represented such hunting scenes as the starting of the stag, the horns sounding the view-halloa, and the hounds seizing the quarry. Silver plates were disposed round the edge of the cloth like a border of glittering moons; and the silver warmers reflecting the blaze of the candles, the glass with its quivering coruscations, the fruit stands, and the bright pink flower vases, gave quite a splendour to the Imperial table, a sheeny brilliance which filled the whole huge room.

The procession slowly crossed the Hall of the Guards before entering the dining-room, whose folding doors stood wide open. The men bent down and said a word or two, and then drew erect again, feeling secretly vain of this triumphal march, while the ladies beamed radiantly, their bare shoulders steeped in the brilliant light. Their long trains, sweeping the carpets at regular intervals between each successive couple, lent additional majesty to the procession, the rustling of all the rich tissues sounding like a soft accompaniment. As the threshold of the dining-room was reached, and the superb array of the table came into sight, a military band, hidden from view in an adjoining gallery, greeted the company with a flourish, like a signal for some fairy gala, and, at the sound of it, the gentlemen, who felt somewhat ill at ease in their short breeches, involuntarily pressed their partners' arms.

However, the Empress passed down the room on the right, and remained standing by the centre of the table, while the Emperor, going to the left, took up position opposite to her. Then, when the selected guests had taken their places at the right and left of their Majesties, the others glanced round for a moment, and chose what places they liked. On that particular evening covers were laid for eighty-seven. Some three minutes elapsed before everyone had entered the room and chosen seats. The satiny sheen of the ladies' shoulders, the bright flowers in their dresses, and the diamonds sparkling in their piled-up hair, lent as it were living mirth to the full light of the crystal chandeliers. At last the footmen took the Court hats, which the gentlemen had hitherto carried in their hands; and then everyone sat down.

M. de Plouguern had followed Rougon. After the soup had been served, he nudged him and inquired—'Have you commissioned Clorinde to bring about a reconciliation between you and Marsy?'

Then, with a glance, he pointed out the young woman, who sat on the other side of the table beside the Count, to whom she was talking with an air of tender interest. Rougon seemed much annoyed, but he merely shrugged his shoulders, and pretended to look in another direction. In spite, however, of his attempt at indifference, his eyes strayed back to Clorinde, and he began to observe her slightest gestures, and even the movements of her lips, as though he were anxious to discover what she was saying.

Just then, however, he was spoken to.

'Monsieur Rougon,' said Madame de Combelot, who had got as near to the Emperor as she could, 'do you recollect that accident when you got a cab for me? One of the flounces of my dress was completely torn away.'

She was trying to make herself interesting by relating how her carriage had been nearly cut in halves by the landau of a Russian prince. Then Rougon was obliged to reply; and for a short time the incident became the subject of conversation among those placed near the middle of the table. All kinds of accidents were quoted, and, among others, one which had happened to a woman, a well-known dealer in perfumery, who had fallen from her horse during the previous week, and had broken her arm. The Empress on hearing this raised a slight exclamation of pity. The Emperor said nothing but listened with a profound expression, while eating very slowly.

'Where's Delestang got to?' Rougon now asked of M. de Plouguern.

They looked about, and the senator at last caught sight of him at the end of the table. Seated next to M. de Combelot, among a row of men, he was listening to the broad conversation which was there being carried on under cover of the general talk. M. La Rouquette had been relating a somewhat free story about a laundress of his native place, and now Chevalier Rusconi was favouring the others with some personal criticisms of the women of Paris; while one of the two artists and the novelist, a little lower down the table, bluntly passed judgment on the ladies whose lean or over-fleshy arms excited their mockery. And Rougon angrily transferred his gaze from Clorinde, who was growing more and more amiable in her manner towards the Count, to her imbecile of a husband, who sat smiling, in a dignified way, at the rather strong anecdotes with which his ears were being regaled.

'Why didn't he come and sit with us?' muttered the great man.

'Oh! I don't pity him. They seem to be amusing themselves down there,' said M. de Plouguern. And he continued in a whisper: 'I fancy they are making merry at Madame de Llorentz's expense. Have you noticed how indecently she's dressed? Just look at her bodice, how low it is.'

However, as he turned to get a better view of Madame de Llorentz, who was on the same side of the table as himself, some five seats away, his face suddenly became very grave. The lady's countenance—she was a beautiful, plump blonde—had assumed a furious expression; she was white with suppressed rage, and her blue eyes seemed to be turning black as they glowered fiercely on M. de Marsy and Clorinde.

'There's going to be a row,' muttered the old senator between his teeth, in such wise that even Rougon could not tell what he was saying.

The band was still playing; the hidden, distant music sounding as though it proceeded from the ceiling. Every now and then, at some sudden blare of the brass instruments, the guests raised their heads, as though seeking to identify the strain which was being played; but the next moment they could hear nothing distinctly for the light notes of the clarionets mingled with the jingling of the silver plate, which the servants carried about in piles. The big dishes gave out a clanking sound, like so many cymbals. All round the table there was much silent hurrying to and fro. A whole army of servants flitted hither and thither without speaking a word; ushers in swallow-tails and bright blue breeches, with swords at their sides and cocked hats under their arms; and footmen with powdered hair, in full-dress livery of green cloth, laced with gold. The dishes were brought in and the wines circulated in proper order, while the heads of the different household services, the controllers, the chief carver, and the chief custodian of the plate, stood round, and superintended all the intricate manœuvring which marked the seeming confusion, in which the rôles of the most insignificant footmen had been carefully arranged beforehand. And behind the Emperor and Empress were their Majesties' own private valets, who waited upon them with an air of decorous dignity.

When the roasts arrived and the great wines of Burgundy were poured into the guests' glasses, the chatter of voices grew louder. Among the men at the end of the table, M. La Rouquette was now discoursing upon culinary matters, notably with regard to the amount of cooking which the haunch of venison then being served had received. The previous dishes had comprised Crecy soup, salmon au bleu, fillet of beef with shallot sauce, pullets à la financière, partridges with cabbage, and oyster patties.

'I'll bet that we shall have stewed cardoons and vegetable-marrow with melted butter,' said the young deputy.

'I have seen some crayfish,' remarked Delestang politely.

However, as the cardoons and vegetable-marrow were just then served, M. La Rouquette was loud in his expressions of triumph. He knew the Empress's tastes, he declared. But the novelist glanced at the artist, and said, with a cluck of the tongue: 'The cooking's rather poor.'

The artist pouted his assent. Then, when he had taken a sip from his glass, he said: 'The wines are exquisite.'

Just at that moment, however, a sudden laugh from the Empress rang so loudly through the room that everyone became silent, and craned forward to discover what had given rise to it. The Empress was talking to the Prussian Ambassador, who sat on her right. She was still laughing and uttering broken words which the guests could not catch. But amidst the silence caused by the general curiosity, a cornet-à-piston, softly accompanied by some bassoons, began to play a pretty, sentimental air. Then the general murmur of conversation arose once more. Chairs were turned half-round and elbows rested on the table as sections of the guests began to chat together, as if they were at some luxurious table-d'hôte.

'Will you have a rout cake?' asked M. de Plouguern.

Rougon shook his head in refusal. For a moment he had been eating nothing. The servants had replaced the silver plate by Sèvres porcelain, beautifully decorated in blue and pink. Then the whole dessert went in procession past Rougon, but he would only accept a small piece of Camembert. He had ceased to exercise any restraint over himself, and gazed openly at M. de Marsy and Clorinde, in the hope, probably, of being able to intimidate the young woman. But she affected such familiarity with Marsy that she seemed to have forgotten where she was, and to fancy herself in some private room where a light supper had been served for two. Her beautiful face sparkled with tenderness; and as she munched the sweetmeats which the Count handed to her, she tranquilly prosecuted her conquest with never-failing smile and superb assurance. The people near them had begun to whisper.

However, the general conversation turned upon the subject of fashion, and M. de Plouguern mischievously asked Clorinde about the new shape of bonnets. Then, as she pretended not to hear him, he turned round in order to address the same question to Madame de Llorentz. But when he saw her angry, threatening face, with its clenched teeth and tragic expression of furious jealousy, he did not dare to carry out his intention. Clorinde, as it happened, had just surrendered her hand to M. de Marsy on the pretext of letting him look at an antique cameo which she wore on a finger-ring. And she let the Count hold her hand while he took off the ring and then put it back again. This seemed to be going too far. Madame de Llorentz, who was nervously playing with a spoon, upset a wine-glass and broke it. One of the servants immediately removed the fragments.

'They will be tearing each other's hair by-and-bye,' the senator whispered to Rougon. 'Have you watched them? But, the deuce take me if I can understand Clorinde's game! What's she up to, eh?'

Then, as he raised his eyes to his neighbour, he was quite taken aback by the strange change which he noticed in Rougon's face. 'What's the matter with you? Aren't you well?' he asked.