Felicite put her husband to bed with every care.  She called him “poor dear,” and repeatedly told him that he ought not to give way to evil fancies, and that all would end well.  But he shook his head; he felt grave apprehensions.  She let him sleep till eleven o’clock.  Then, after he had had something to eat, she gently turned him out of doors, making him understand that he must go through with the matter to the end.  At the town-hall, Rougon found only four members of the Commission in attendance; the others had sent excuses, they were really ill.  Panic had been sweeping through the town with growing violence all through the morning.  The gentlemen had not been able to keep quiet respecting the memorable night they had spent on the terrace of the Valqueyras mansion.  Their servants had hastened to spread the news, embellishing it with various dramatic details.  By this time it had already become a matter of history that from the heights of Plassans troops of cannibals had been seen dancing and devouring their prisoners.  Yes, bands of witches had circled hand in hand round their caldrons in which they were boiling children, while on and on marched endless files of bandits, whose weapons glittered in the moonlight.  People spoke too of bells that of their own accord, sent the tocsin ringing through the desolate air, and it was even asserted that the insurgents had fired the neighbouring forests, so that the whole country side was in flames.

It was Tuesday, the market-day at Plassans, and Roudier had thought it necessary to have the gates opened in order to admit the few peasants who had brought vegetables, butter, and eggs.  As soon as it had assembled, the Municipal Commission, now composed of five members only, including its president, declared that this was unpardonable imprudence.  Although the sentinel stationed at the Valqueyras mansion had seen nothing, the town ought to have been kept closed.  Then Rougon decided that the public crier, accompanied by a drummer, should go through the streets, proclaim a state of siege, and announce to the inhabitants that whoever might go out would not be allowed to return.  The gates were officially closed in broad daylight.  This measure, adopted in order to reassure the inhabitants, raised the scare to its highest pitch.  And there could scarcely have been a more curious sight than that of this little city, thus padlocking and bolting itself up beneath the bright sunshine, in the middle of the nineteenth century.

When Plassans had buckled and tightened its belt of dilapidated ramparts, when it had bolted itself in like a besieged fortress at the approach of an assault, the most terrible anguish passed over the mournful houses.  At every moment, in the centre of the town, people fancied they could hear a discharge of musketry in the Faubourgs.  They no longer received any news; they were, so to say, at the bottom of a cellar, in a walled hole, where they were anxiously awaiting either deliverance or the finishing stroke.