When she had tossed the coin into the bag, Clorinde held out her hand again. 'Aren't you going to give anything to the waiter?' she asked playfully. Rougon felt in his pocket and brought out a couple of sous, which he dropped into her hand. This insult was the only vengeance which his parvenu boorishness could think of. In spite of her self-possession, Clorinde blushed. But she quickly resumed her goddess-like demeanour, and went off bowing and saying: 'Thank you, your excellency.' Rougon did not dare to rise immediately. His legs felt nerveless, he was afraid of tottering, and desired to go away as he had come, with a firm gait and calm expression. He particularly disliked having to pass his old friends and associates, whose straining ears and staring eyes had not lost a point of what had taken place. So for a few moments longer he let his glance wander over the room, feigning perfect indifference. He was thinking over what had happened. Another act of his political life had come to a conclusion. He had fallen, undermined, eaten away and ruined by his band. His heavy shoulders had collapsed beneath the weight of the responsibilities he had assumed, the acts of folly and injustice which he had perpetrated entirely on their account in his braggart craving to be a feared and generous chief. And his mighty muscles only made his fall the more ignominious. The very conditions on which he had held power: the necessity of having behind him a crowd of greedy appetites whose longings he must satisfy, of maintaining himself in his position by dint of abusing his credit, had made his fall merely a question of time. And he now recalled the slow efforts of his band, whose sharp teeth had day by day nibbled away some of his authority. They had thronged around him, hung on to his knees, then to his breast, then to his throat, and finally they had choked him. They had availed themselves of him in every way. They had used his feet to climb with, his hands to plunder with, his jaws to devour with. They had, so to say, used his body as their own, used it for their personal gratification, indulging in every fancy without a thought of the morrow. And now, having drained his body, and hearing its frame-work crack, they abandoned him like rats, whom instinct warns of the approaching collapse of a house, the foundations of which they have undermined. They were all sleek and flourishing, and they were already battening upon some one else. M. Kahn had just sold his railway line from Niort to Angers to M. de Marsy. In another week the colonel would be gazetted to an appointment in the imperial palaces. M. Bouchard had received a formal promise that his _protégé_, the interesting Georges Duchesne, should be appointed assistant head clerk as soon as Delestang entered upon his duties at the Ministry of the Interior. Madame Correur was rejoicing over a serious illness which had fallen on Madame Martineau, and already pictured herself residing in