For the last two days the insurgents, who were scouring the country, had cut off all communication.  Plassans found itself isolated from the rest of France.  It felt that it was surrounded by a region in open rebellion, where the tocsin was ever ringing and the “Marseillaise” was ever roaring like a river that has overflowed its banks.  Abandoned to its fate and shuddering with alarm the town lay there like some prey which would prove the reward of the victorious party.  The strollers on the Cours Sauvaire were ever swaying between fear and hope according as they fancied that they could see the blouses of insurgents or the uniforms of soldiers at the Grand’-Porte.  Never had sub-prefecture, pent within tumble-down walls, endured more agonising torture.

Towards two o’clock it was rumoured that the Coup d’Etat had failed, that the prince-president was imprisoned at Vincennes, and that Paris was in the hands of the most advanced demagogues.  It was reported also that Marseilles, Toulon, Draguignan, the entire South, belonged to the victorious insurrectionary army.  The insurgents would arrive in the evening and put Plassans to the sword.

Thereupon a deputation repaired to the town-hall to expostulate with the Municipal Commission for closing the gates, whereby they would only irritate the insurgents.  Rougon, who was losing his head, defended his order with all his remaining strength.  This locking of the gates seemed to him one of the most ingenious acts of his administration; he advanced the most convincing arguments in its justification.  But the others embarrassed him by their questions, asking him where were the soldiers, the regiment that he had promised.  Then he began to lie, and told them flatly that he had promised nothing at all.  The non-appearance of this legendary regiment, which the inhabitants longed for with such eagerness that they had actually dreamt of its arrival, was the chief cause of the panic.  Well-informed people even named the exact spot on the high road where the soldiers had been butchered.

At four o’clock Rougon, followed by Granoux, again repaired to the Valqueyras mansion.  Small bands, on their way to join the insurgents at Orcheres, still passed along in the distance, through the valley of the Viorne.  Throughout the day urchins climbed the ramparts, and bourgeois came to peep through the loopholes.  These volunteer sentinels kept up the terror by counting the various bands, which were taken for so many strong battalions.  The timorous population fancied it could see from the battlements the preparations for some universal massacre.  At dusk, as on the previous evening, the panic became yet more chilling.

On returning to the municipal offices Rougon and his inseparable companion, Granoux, recognised that the situation was growing intolerable.  During their absence another member of the Commission had disappeared.  They were only four now, and they felt they were making themselves ridiculous by staying there for hours, looking at each other’s pale countenances, and never saying a word.  Moreover, they were terribly afraid of having to spend a second night on the terrace of the Valqueyras mansion.