Félicité who, when gazing on the previous evening at the ruins of the yellow drawing-room, had thought of the plains of Austerlitz, now recalled the accursed field of Waterloo as she observed how mournful and deserted the place was. Then, as her husband said nothing, she mechanically went to the window—that window where she had inhaled with delight the incense of the entire town. She perceived numerous groups below on the square, but she closed the blinds upon seeing some heads turn towards their house, for she feared that she might be hooted. She felt quite sure that those people were speaking about them. Indeed, voices rose through the twilight. A lawyer was clamouring in the tone of a triumphant pleader. “That’s just what I said; the insurgents left of their own accord, and they won’t ask the permission of the forty-one to come back. The forty-one indeed! a fine farce! Why, I believe there were at least two hundred.” “No, indeed,” said a burly trader, an oil-dealer and a great politician, “there were probably not even ten. There was no fighting or else we should have seen some blood in the morning. I went to the town-hall myself to look; the courtyard was as clean as my hand.” Then a workman, who stepped timidly up to the group, added: “There was no need of any violence to seize the building; the door wasn’t even shut.” This remark was received with laughter, and the workman, thus encouraged, continued: “As for those Rougons, everybody knows that they are a bad lot.” This insult pierced Félicité to the heart. The ingratitude of the people was heartrending to her, for she herself was at last beginning to believe in the mission of the Rougons. She called for her husband. She wanted him to learn how fickle was the multitude. “It’s all a piece with their mirror,” continued the lawyer. “What a fuss they made about that broken glass! You know that Rougon is quite capable of having fired his gun at it just to make believe there had been a battle.”