nce.

"It's to me you owe all this!" she exclaimed, in an outburst of triumph.
"If I hadn't looked after you, you would have been nicely taken in by
the insurgents. You booby, it was Garconnet, Sicardot, and the others,
that had got to be thrown to those wild beasts."

Then, showing her teeth, loosened by age, she added, with a girlish
smile: "Well, the Republic for ever! It has made our path clear."

But Pierre had turned cross. "That's just like you!" he muttered; "you
always fancy that you've foreseen everything. It was I who had the idea
of hiding myself. As though women understood anything about politics!
Bah, my poor girl, if you were to steer the bark we should very soon be
shipwrecked."

Felicite bit her lip. She had gone too far and forgotten her
self-assigned part of good, silent fairy. Then she was seized with one
of those fits of covert exasperation, which she generally experienced
when her husband tried to crush her with his superiority. And she again
promised herself, when the right time should arrive, some exquisite
revenge, which would deliver this man into her power, bound hand and
foot.

"Ah! I was forgetting!" resumed Rougon, "Monsieur Peirotte is amongst
them. Granoux saw him struggling in the hands of the insurgents."

Felicite gave a start. She was just at that moment standing at the
window, gazing with longing eyes at the house where the receiver of
taxes lived. She had felt a desire to do so, for in her mind the idea of
triumph was always associated with envy of that fine house.

"So Monsieur Peirotte is arrested!" she exclaimed in a strange tone as
she turned round.

For an instant she smiled complacently; then a crimson blush rushed
to her face. A murderous wish had just ascended from the depths of her
being. "Ah! if the insurgents would only kill him!"

Pierre no doubt read her thoughts in her eyes.

"Well, if some ball were to hit him," he muttered, "our business would
be settled. There would be no necessity to supercede him, eh? and it
would be no fault of ours."

But Felicite shuddered. She felt that she had just condemned a man to
death. If Monsieur Peirotte should now be killed, she would always
see his ghost at night time. He would come and haunt her. So she only
ventured to cast furtive glances, full of fearful delight, at the
unhappy man's windows. Henceforward all her enjoyment would be fraught
with a touch of guilty terror.

Moreover, Pierre, having now poured out his