binet" window facing the Rue Pirouette. She had found her casement an
excellent post of observation, as it overlooked that milky transparency,
on which the gaslight threw silhouettes of the politicians, with noses
suddenly appearing and disappearing, gaping jaws abruptly springing into
sight and then vanishing, and huge arms, apparently destitute of bodies,
waving hither and thither. This extraordinary jumble of detached
limbs, these silent but frantic profiles, bore witness to the heated
discussions that went on in the little room, and kept the old maid
peering from behind her muslin curtains until the transparency turned
black. She shrewdly suspected some "bit of trickery," as she phrased it.
By continual watching she had come to recognise the different shadows
by their hands and hair and clothes. As she gazed upon the chaos of
clenched fists, angry heads, and swaying shoulders, which seemed to
have become detached from their trunks and to roll about one atop of the
other, she would exclaim unhesitatingly, "Ah, there's that big booby of
a cousin; there's that miserly old Gavard; and there's the hunchback;
and there's that maypole of a Clemence!" Then, when the action of the
shadow-play became more pronounced, and they all seemed to have
lost control over themselves, she felt an irresistible impulse to go
downstairs to try to find out what was happening. Thus she now made a
point of buying her black-currant syrup at nights, pretending that she
felt out-of-sorts in the morning, and was obliged to take a sip as soon
as ever she was out of bed. On the evening when she noticed Quenu's
massive head shadowed on the transparency in close proximity to
Charvet's fist, she made her appearance at Monsieur Lebigre's in a
breathless condition. To gain more time, she made Rose rinse out her
little bottle for her; however, she was about to return to her room when
she heard the pork butcher exclaim with a sort of childish candour:

"No, indeed, we'll stand for it no longer! We'll make a clean sweep of
all those humbugging Deputies and Ministers! Yes, we'll send the whole
lot packing."

Eight o'clock had scarcely struck on the following morning when
Mademoiselle Saget was already at the pork shop. She found Madame
Lecoeur and La Sarriette there, dipping their noses into the
heating-pan, and buying hot sausages for breakfast. As the old maid had
managed to draw them into her quarrel with La Normande with respect to
the ten-sou dab, the