Felicite bit her lip.  She had gone too far and forgotten her self-assigned part of good, silent fairy.  Then she was seized with one of those fits of covert exasperation, which she generally experienced when her husband tried to crush her with his superiority.  And she again promised herself, when the right time should arrive, some exquisite revenge, which would deliver this man into her power, bound hand and foot.

“Ah!  I was forgetting!” resumed Rougon, “Monsieur Peirotte is amongst them.  Granoux saw him struggling in the hands of the insurgents.”

Felicite gave a start.  She was just at that moment standing at the window, gazing with longing eyes at the house where the receiver of taxes lived.  She had felt a desire to do so, for in her mind the idea of triumph was always associated with envy of that fine house.

“So Monsieur Peirotte is arrested!” she exclaimed in a strange tone as she turned round.

For an instant she smiled complacently; then a crimson blush rushed to her face.  A murderous wish had just ascended from the depths of her being.  “Ah! if the insurgents would only kill him!”

Pierre no doubt read her thoughts in her eyes.

“Well, if some ball were to hit him,” he muttered, “our business would be settled.  There would be no necessity to supercede him, eh? and it would be no fault of ours.”

But Felicite shuddered.  She felt that she had just condemned a man to death.  If Monsieur Peirotte should now be killed, she would always see his ghost at night time.  He would come and haunt her.  So she only ventured to cast furtive glances, full of fearful delight, at the unhappy man’s windows.  Henceforward all her enjoyment would be fraught with a touch of guilty terror.

Moreover, Pierre, having now poured out his soul, began to perceive the other side of the situation.  He mentioned Macquart.  How could they get rid of that blackguard?  But Felicite, again fired with enthusiasm, exclaimed:  “Oh! one can’t do everything at once.  We’ll gag him, somehow.  We’ll soon find some means or other.”

She was now walking to and fro, putting the arm-chairs in order, and dusting their backs.  Suddenly, she stopped in the middle of the room, and gave the faded furniture a long glance.

“Good Heavens!” she said, “how ugly it is here!  And we shall have everybody coming to call upon us!”

“Bah!” replied Pierre, with supreme indifference, “we’ll alter all that.”

He who, the night before, had entertained almost religious veneration for the arm-chairs and the sofa, would now have willingly stamped on them.  Felicite, who felt the same contempt, even went so far as to upset an arm-chair which was short of a castor and did not yield to her quickly enough.