ice, drowned in tears:

"What is that you could not find?"

"The little girl's clothes."

"Well--well--look again, and find them--or you'll have to answer to me."

The man, knowing that the Mayor would not brook opposition, set forth
again with hesitating steps, casting on the corpse indirect and timid
glances.

Distant voices arose under the trees, a confused sound, the noise of an
approaching crowd; for Mederic had, in the course of his rounds carried
the news from door to door. The people of the neighborhood, stupefied at
first, had gone chatting from their own firesides into the street, from
one threshold to another. Then they gathered together. They talked over,
discussed, and commented on the event for some minutes, and they had now
come to see it for themselves.

They arrived in groups a little faltering and uneasy through fear of the
first impression of such a scene on their minds. When they saw the body
they stopped, not daring to advance, and speaking low. They grew bold,
went on a few steps, stopped again, advanced once more, and soon they
formed around the dead girl, her mother, the doctor, and Renardet, a
thick circle, agitated and noisy, which crushed forward under the sudden
pushes of the last comers. And now they touched the corpse. Some of them
even bent down to feel it with their fingers. The doctor kept them back.
But the mayor, waking abruptly out of his torpor, broke into a rage,
and, seizing Dr. Labarbe's stick, flung himself on his townspeople,
stammering:

"Clear out--clear out--you pack of brutes--clear out!"

And in a second, the crowd of sightseers had fallen back two hundred
meters.

La Roque was lifted up, turned round, and placed in a sitting posture,
and she now remained weeping with her hands clasped over her face.

The occurrence was discussed among the crowd; and young lads' eager eyes
curiously scrutinized this naked body of a girl. Renardet perceived
this, and abruptly taking off his vest, he flung it over the little
girl, who was entirely lost to view under the wide garment.

The spectators drew near quietly. The wood was filled with people, and a
continuous hum of voices rose up under the tangled foliage of the tall
trees.

The Mayor, in his shirt sleeves, remained standing, with his stick in
his hands, in a fighting attitude. He seemed exasperated by this
curiosity on the part of the people, and kept repeating:

"If one of you come nearer, I'll break his head just a