Then, leaving her husband in silent consternation, she returned to the shop, where she served a customer with her usual affable smile.  The fact was that, having artfully inveigled Gavard into a political discussion, the poultry dealer had told her that she would soon see how the land lay, that they were going to make a clean sweep of everything, and that two determined men like her brother-in-law and himself would suffice to set the fire blazing.  This was the evil trick of which she had spoken to Quenu, some conspiracy to which Gavard was always making mysterious allusions with a sniggering grin from which he seemingly desired a great deal to be inferred.  And in imagination Lisa already saw the gendarmes invading the pork shop, gagging herself, her husband, and Pauline, and casting them into some underground dungeon.

In the evening, at dinner, she evinced an icy frigidity.  She made no offers to serve Florent, but several times remarked:  “It’s very strange what an amount of bread we’ve got through lately.”

Florent at last understood.  He felt that he was being treated like a poor relation who is gradually turned out of doors.  For the last two months Lisa had dressed him in Quenu’s old trousers and coats; and, as he was as thin as his brother was fat, these ragged garments had a most extraordinary appearance upon him.  She also turned her oldest linen over to him:  pocket-handkerchiefs which had been darned a score of times, ragged towels, sheets which were only fit to be cut up into dusters and dish-cloths, and worn-out shirts, distended by Quenu’s corpulent figure, and so short that they would have served Florent as under-vests.  Moreover, he no longer found around him the same good-natured kindliness as in the earlier days.  The whole household seemed to shrug its shoulders after the example set by handsome Lisa.  Auguste and Augustine turned their backs upon him, and little Pauline, with the cruel frankness of childhood, let fall some bitter remarks about the stains on his coat and the holes in his shirt.  However, during the last days he suffered most at table.  He scarcely dared to eat, as he saw the mother and daughter fix their gaze upon him whenever he cut himself a piece of bread.  Quenu meantime peered into his plate, to avoid having to take any part in what went on.

That which most tortured Florent was his inability to invent a reason for leaving the house.  During a week he kept on revolving in his mind a sentence expressing his resolve to take his meals elsewhere, but could not bring himself to utter it.  Indeed, this man of tender nature lived in such a world of illusions that he feared he might hurt his brother and sister-in-law by ceasing to lunch and dine with them.  It had taken him over two months to detect Lisa’s latent hostility; and even now he was sometimes inclined to think that he must be mistaken, and that she was in reality kindly disposed towards him.  Unselfishness with him extended to forgetfulness