“You were waiting for me, weren’t you?” Pierre said to him, taking in the situation at a glance.  “Well, go and tell Monsieur Macquart that I’ve come home.  Go and ask for him at the Town Hall.”

Cassoute rose and took himself off, with an awkward bow.  He was going to get himself arrested like a lamb, to the great delight of Pierre, who laughed as he went upstairs, asking himself, with a feeling of vague surprise:  “I have certainly plenty of courage; shall I turn out as good a diplomatist?”

Felicite had not gone to bed last night.  He found her dressed in her Sunday clothes, wearing a cap with lemon-coloured ribbons, like a lady expecting visitors.  She had sat at the window in vain; she had heard nothing, and was dying with curiosity.

“Well?” she asked, rushing to meet her husband.

The latter, quite out of breath, entered the yellow drawing-room, whither she followed him, carefully closing the door behind her.  He sank into an arm-chair, and, in a gasping voice, faltered:  “It’s done; we shall get the receivership.”

At this she fell on his neck and kissed him.

“Really?  Really?” she cried.  “But I haven’t heard anything.  Oh, my darling husband, do tell me; tell me all!”

She felt fifteen years old again, and began to coax him and whirl round him like a grasshopper fascinated by the light and heat.  And Pierre, in the effusion of his triumph, poured out his heart to her.  He did not omit a single detail.  He even explained his future projects, forgetting that, according to his theories, wives were good for nothing, and that his must be kept in complete ignorance of what went on if he wished to remain master.  Felicite leant over him and drank in his words.  She made him repeat certain parts of his story, declaring she had not heard; in fact, her delight bewildered her so much that at times she seemed quite deaf.  When Pierre related the events at the Town Hall, she burst into a fit of laughter, changed her chair three times, and moved the furniture about, quite unable to sit still.  After forty years of continuous struggle, fortune had at last yielded to them.  Eventually she became so mad over it that she forgot all prudence.

“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.”