Silence reigned again, broken a moment afterward by the ringing of the bell attached to the street door below. It had been attached to the door so that they might have notice when any one entered the house, too vast for the three persons who inhabited it. The servant appeared surprised, and grumbled a few words under her breath. Who could have come in such heat as this? She rose, opened the door, and went and leaned over the balustrade; then she returned, saying: “It is Mme. Félicité.” Old Mme. Rougon entered briskly. In spite of her eighty years, she had mounted the stairs with the activity of a young girl; she was still the brown, lean, shrill grasshopper of old. Dressed elegantly now in black silk, she might still be taken, seen from behind, thanks to the slenderness of her figure, for some coquette, or some ambitious woman following her favorite pursuit. Seen in front, her eyes still lighted up her withered visage with their fires, and she smiled with an engaging smile when she so desired. “What! is it you, grandmother?” cried Clotilde, going to meet her. “Why, this sun is enough to bake one.” Félicité, kissing her on the forehead, laughed, saying: “Oh, the sun is my friend!” Then, moving with short, quick steps, she crossed the room, and turned the fastening of one of the shutters. “Open the shutters a little! It is too gloomy to live in the dark in this way. At my house I let the sun come in.” Through the opening a jet of hot light, a flood of dancing sparks entered. And under the sky, of the violet blue of a conflagration, the parched plain could be seen, stretching away in the distance, as if asleep or dead in the overpowering, furnace-like heat, while to the right, above the pink roofs, rose the belfry of St. Saturnin, a gilded tower with arises that, in the blinding light, looked like whitened bones. “Yes,” continued Félicité, “I think of going shortly to the Tulettes, and I wished to know if Charles were here, to take him with me. He is not here—I see that—I will take him another day.” But while she gave this pretext for her visit, her ferret-like eyes were making the tour of the apartment. Besides, she did not insist, speaking immediately afterward of her son Pascal, on hearing the rhythmical noise of the pestle, which had not ceased in the adjoining chamber. “Ah! he is still at his devil’s cookery! Don’t disturb him, I have nothing to say to him.” Martine, who had resumed her work on the chair, shook her head, as if to say that she had no mind to disturb her master, and there was silence again, while Clotilde wiped her fingers, stained with crayon, on a cloth, and Félicité began to walk about the room with short steps, looking around inquisitively.