who go tilting at windmills.  At the time of the last elections, you remember, Gavard said that the Emperor’s candidate had been bankrupt, and was mixed up in all sorts of scandalous matters.  Well, perhaps that was true, I don’t deny it; but all the same, you acted wisely in voting for him, for all that was not in question; you were not asked to lend the man any money or to transact any business with him, but merely to show the Government that you were pleased with the prosperity of the pork trade.”

At this moment Quenu called to mind a sentence of Charvet’s, asserting that “the bloated bourgeois, the sleek shopkeepers, who backed up that Government of universal gormandising, ought to be hurled into the sewers before all others, for it was owing to them and their gluttonous egotism that tyranny had succeeded in mastering and preying upon the nation.”  He was trying to complete this piece of eloquence when Lisa, carried off by her indignation, cut him short.

“Don’t talk such stuff!  My conscience doesn’t reproach me with anything.  I don’t owe a copper to anybody; I’m not mixed up in any dishonest business; I buy and sell good sound stuff; and I charge no more than others do.  What you say may perhaps apply to people like our cousins, the Saccards.  They pretend to be even ignorant that I am in Paris; but I am prouder than they are, and I don’t care a rap for their millions.  It’s said that Saccard speculates in condemned buildings, and cheats and robs everybody.  I’m not surprised to hear it, for he was always that way inclined.  He loves money just for the sake of wallowing in it, and then tossing it out of his windows, like the imbecile he is.  I can understand people attacking men of his stamp, who pile up excessive fortunes.  For my part, if you care to know it, I have but a bad opinion of Saccard.  But we—­we who live so quietly and peaceably, who will need at least fifteen years to put by sufficient money to make ourselves comfortably independent, we who have no reason to meddle in politics, and whose only aim is to bring up our daughter respectably, and to see that our business prospers—­why you must be joking to talk such stuff about us.  We are honest folks!”

She came and sat down on the edge of the bed.  Quenu was already much shaken in his opinions.

“Listen to me, now,” she resumed in a more serious voice.  “You surely don’t want to see your own shop pillaged, your cellar emptied, and your money taken from you?  If these men who meet at Monsieur Lebigre’s should prove triumphant, do you think that you would then lie as comfortably in your bed as you do now?  And on going down into the kitchen, do you imagine that you would set about making your galantines as peacefully as you will presently?  No, no, indeed!  So why do you talk about overthrowing a Government which protects you, and enables you to put money by?  You have a wife and a daughter, and your first duty is towards them.  You would