ght to all the rumours and
laudatory and grateful remarks which arose from the town. At that moment
all Plassans was talking of her husband. She felt that the two districts
below her were quivering, wafting her the hope of approaching triumph.
Ah! how she would crush that town which she had been so long in getting
beneath her feet! All her grievances crowded back to her memory, and her
past disappointments redoubled her appetite for immediate enjoyment.

At last she left the window, and walked slowly round the drawing-room.
It was there that, a little while previously, everybody had held out
their hands to her husband and herself. He and she had conquered; the
citizens were at their feet. The yellow drawing-room seemed to her a
holy place. The dilapidated furniture, the frayed velvet, the chandelier
soiled with fly-marks, all those poor wrecks now seemed to her like
the glorious bullet-riddled debris of a battle-field. The plain of
Austerlitz would not have stirred her to deeper emotion.

When she returned to the window, she perceived Aristide wandering about
the place of the Sub-Prefecture, with his nose in the air. She beckoned
to him to come up, which he immediately did. It seemed as if he had only
been waiting for this invitation.

"Come in," his mother said to him on the landing, seeing that he
hesitated. "Your father is not here."

Aristide evinced all the shyness of a prodigal son returning home. He
had not been inside the yellow drawing-room for nearly four years. He
still carried his arm in a sling.

"Does your hand still pain you?" his mother asked him, ironically.

He blushed as he answered with some embarrassment: "Oh! it's getting
better; it's nearly well again now."

Then he lingered there, loitering about and not knowing what to say.
Felicite came to the rescue. "I suppose you've heard them talking about
your father's noble conduct?" she resumed.

He replied that the whole town was talking of it. And then, as he
regained his self-possession, he paid his mother back for her raillery
in her own coin. Looking her full in the face he added: "I came to see
if father was wounded."

"Come, don't play the fool!" cried Felicite, petulantly. "If I were you
I would act boldly and decisively. Confess now that you made a false
move in joining those good-for-nothing Republicans. You would be very
glad, I'm sure, to be well rid of them, and to return to us, who are the
stronger party. Well, the house is open t