Rougon, when he was alone again, felt amazed at this mutiny on the part of a man who was usually so meek and mild.  Vuillet’s conduct seemed to him suspicious.  But he had no time to seek an explanation; he had scarcely stretched himself out afresh in his arm-chair, when Roudier entered, with a big sabre, which he had attached to his belt, clattering noisily against his legs.  The sleepers awoke in a fright.  Granoux thought it was a call to arms.

“Eh? what!  What’s the matter?” he asked, as he hastily put his black silk cap into his pocket.

“Gentlemen,” said Roudier, breathlessly, without thinking of taking any oratorical precautions, “I believe that a band of insurgents is approaching the town.”

These words were received with the silence of terror.  Rougon alone had the strength to ask, “Have you seen them?”

“No,” the retired hosier replied; “but we hear strange noises out in the country; one of my men assured me that he had seen fires along the slope of the Garrigues.”

Then, as all the gentlemen stared at each other white and speechless, “I’ll return to my post,” he continued.  “I fear an attack.  You had better take precautions.”

Rougon would have followed him, to obtain further particulars, but he was already too far away.  After this the Commission was by no means inclined to go to sleep again.  Strange noises!  Fires!  An attack!  And in the middle of the night too!  It was very easy to talk of taking precautions, but what were they to do?  Granoux was very near advising the course which had proved so successful the previous evening:  that is of hiding themselves, waiting till the insurgents has passed through Plassans, and then triumphing in the deserted streets.  Pierre, however, fortunately remembering his wife’s advice, said that Roudier might have made a mistake, and that the best thing would be to go and see for themselves.  Some of the members made a wry face at this suggestion; but when it had been agreed that an armed escort should accompany the Commission, they all descended very courageously.  They only left a few men downstairs; they surrounded themselves with about thirty of the national guards, and then they ventured into the slumbering town, where the moon, creeping over the house roofs, slowly cast lengthened shadows.  They went along the ramparts, from one gate to the other, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.  The national guards at the various posts certainly told them that peculiar sounds occasionally reached them from the country through the closed gates.  When they strained their ears, however, they detected nothing but a distant murmur, which Granoux said was merely the noise of the Viorne.

Nevertheless they remained doubtful.  And they were about to return to the town-hall in a state of alarm, though they made a show of shrugging their shoulders and of treating Roudier as a poltroon and a dreamer, when Rougon, anxious to reassure them, thought of enabling them to view the plain over a distance of several leagues.  Thereupon he led the little company to the Saint-Marc quarter and knocked at the door of the Valqueyras mansion.