Felicite understood this so well that she replied:  “I know you have accused us of being hard upon you, because you imagine we are in comfortable circumstances; but you are mistaken, my dear brother; we are poor people; we have never been able to act towards you as our hearts would have desired.”  She hesitated a moment, and then continued:  “If it were absolutely necessary in some serious contingency, we might perhaps be able to make a sacrifice; but, truly, we are very poor, very poor!”

Macquart pricked up his ears.  “I have them!” he thought.  Then, without appearing to understand his sister-in-law’s indirect offer, he detailed the wretchedness of his life in a doleful manner, and spoke of his wife’s death and his children’s flight.  Felicite, on her side, referred to the crisis through which the country was passing, and declared that the Republic had completely ruined them.  Then from word to word she began to bemoan the exigencies of a situation which compelled one brother to imprison another.  How their hearts would bleed if justice refused to release its prey!  And finally she let slip the word “galleys!”

“Bah!  I defy you,” said Macquart calmly.

But she hastily exclaimed:  “Oh!  I would rather redeem the honour of the family with my own blood.  I tell you all this to show you that we shall not abandon you.  I have come to give you the means of effecting your escape, my dear Antoine.”

They gazed at each other for a moment, sounding each other with a look, before engaging in the contest.

“Unconditionally?” he asked, at length.

“Without any condition,” she replied.

Then she sat down beside him on the sofa, and continued, in a determined voice:  “And even, before crossing the frontier, if you want to earn a thousand-franc note, I can put you in the way of doing so.”

There was another pause.

“If it’s all above board I shall have no objection,” Antoine muttered, apparently reflecting.  “You know I don’t want to mix myself up with your underhand dealings.”

“But there are no underhand dealings about it,” Felicite resumed, smiling at the old rascal’s scruples.  “Nothing can be more simple:  you will presently leave this room, and go and conceal yourself in your mother’s house, and this evening you can assemble your friends and come and seize the town-hall again.”

Macquart did not conceal his extreme surprise.  He did not understand it at all.

“I thought,” he said, “that you were victorious.”

“Oh!  I haven’t got time now to tell you all about it,” the old woman replied, somewhat impatiently.  “Do you accept or not?”

“Well, no; I don’t accept—­I want to think it over.  It would be very stupid of me to risk a possible fortune for a thousand francs.”

Felicite rose.  “Just as you like my dear fellow,” she said, coldly.  “You don’t seem to realise the position you are in.  You came to my house and treated me as though I were a mere outcast; and then, when I am kind enough to hold out a hand to you in the hole into which you have stupidly let yourself fall, you stand on ceremony, and refuse to be rescued.  Well, then, stay here, wait till the authorities come back.  As for me, I wash my hands of the whole business.”