lqueyras, had begged him to withdraw from
public notice for a little time. Monsieur de Carnavant's refusal vexed
the Rougons; but Felicite consoled herself by resolving to make a more
profuse display. She hired a pair of candelabra and ordered several
additional dishes as a kind of substitute for the marquis. The table was
laid in the yellow drawing-room, in order to impart more solemnity to
the occasion. The Hotel de Provence had supplied the silver, the china,
and the glass. The cloth had been laid ever since five o'clock in order
that the guests on arriving might feast their eyes upon it. At either
end of the table, on the white cloth, were bouquets of artificial roses,
in porcelain vases gilded and painted with flowers.

When the habitual guests of the yellow drawing-room were assembled
there they could not conceal their admiration of the spectacle. Several
gentlemen smiled with an air of embarrassment while they exchanged
furtive glances, which clearly signified, "These Rougons are mad,
they are throwing their money out of the window." The truth was that
Felicite, on going round to invite her guests, had been unable to hold
her tongue. So everybody knew that Pierre had been decorated, and that
he was about to be nominated to some post; at which, of course, they
pulled wry faces. Roudier indeed observed that "the little black woman
was puffing herself out too much." Now that "prize-day" had come this
band of bourgeois, who had rushed upon the expiring Republic--each one
keeping an eye on the other, and glorying in giving a deeper bite than
his neighbour--did not think it fair that their hosts should have all
the laurels of the battle. Even those who had merely howled by instinct,
asking no recompense of the rising Empire, were greatly annoyed to see
that, thanks to them, the poorest and least reputable of them all should
be decorated with the red ribbon. The whole yellow drawing-room ought to
have been decorated!

"Not that I value the decoration," Roudier said to Granoux, whom he had
dragged into the embrasure of a window. "I refused it in the time of
Louis-Philippe, when I was purveyor to the court. Ah! Louis-Philippe was
a good king. France will never find his equal!"

Roudier was becoming an Orleanist once more. And he added, with the
crafty hypocrisy of an old hosier from the Rue Saint-Honore: "But you,
my dear Granoux; don't you think the ribbon would look well in your
button-hole? After all, you did as much