Felicite, at her window, listened with delight to all the rumours and laudatory and grateful remarks which arose from the town.  At that moment all Plassans was talking of her husband.  She felt that the two districts below her were quivering, wafting her the hope of approaching triumph.  Ah! how she would crush that town which she had been so long in getting beneath her feet!  All her grievances crowded back to her memory, and her past disappointments redoubled her appetite for immediate enjoyment.

At last she left the window, and walked slowly round the drawing-room.  It was there that, a little while previously, everybody had held out their hands to her husband and herself.  He and she had conquered; the citizens were at their feet.  The yellow drawing-room seemed to her a holy place.  The dilapidated furniture, the frayed velvet, the chandelier soiled with fly-marks, all those poor wrecks now seemed to her like the glorious bullet-riddled debris of a battle-field.  The plain of Austerlitz would not have stirred her to deeper emotion.

When she returned to the window, she perceived Aristide wandering about the place of the Sub-Prefecture, with his nose in the air.  She beckoned to him to come up, which he immediately did.  It seemed as if he had only been waiting for this invitation.

“Come in,” his mother said to him on the landing, seeing that he hesitated.  “Your father is not here.”

Aristide evinced all the shyness of a prodigal son returning home.  He had not been inside the yellow drawing-room for nearly four years.  He still carried his arm in a sling.

“Does your hand still pain you?” his mother asked him, ironically.

He blushed as he answered with some embarrassment:  “Oh! it’s getting better; it’s nearly well again now.”

Then he lingered there, loitering about and not knowing what to say.  Felicite came to the rescue.  “I suppose you’ve heard them talking about your father’s noble conduct?” she resumed.

He replied that the whole town was talking of it.  And then, as he regained his self-possession, he paid his mother back for her raillery in her own coin.  Looking her full in the face he added:  “I came to see if father was wounded.”

“Come, don’t play the fool!” cried Felicite, petulantly.  “If I were you I would act boldly and decisively.  Confess now that you made a false move in joining those good-for-nothing Republicans.  You would be very glad, I’m sure, to be well rid of them, and to return to us, who are the stronger party.  Well, the house is open to you!”

But Aristide protested.  The Republic was a grand idea.  Moreover, the insurgents might still carry the day.

“Don’t talk nonsense to me!” retorted the old woman, with some irritation.  “You’re afraid that your father won’t have a very warm welcome for you.  But I’ll see to that.  Listen to me:  go back to your newspaper, and, between now and to-morrow, prepare a number strongly favouring the Coup d’Etat.  To-morrow evening, when this number has appeared, come back here and you will be received with open arms.”