For one man, such as Salvan, who rejoiced with Marc at each successive interview, how many there were who no longer slept o' nights at the thought that all the iniquity which had been buried was about to be exhumed! Fresh elections were impending, and the politicians feared lest they should be unseated. Lemarrois, the Radical, the ex-Mayor of Beaumont, once the town's indispensable man, was terrified by the rise of Delbos's popularity; Marcilly, the amiable _arriviste_, ever anxious to be on the winning side, floundered in uncertainty, no longer knowing which party to support; the reactionary senators and deputies, headed by the fierce Hector de Sanglebœuf, resisted desperately as they saw the storm, which might sweep them away, rising all round. In the government world and the university world the anxiety was no less keen; Prefect Hennebise lamented that he could not stifle the affair; Rector Forbes, losing his depth, cast everything upon the shoulders of Academy Inspector Le Barazer, who alone remained calm and smiling amid the tempest, while Depinvilliers, the Director of the Lycée, took his daughters to Mass despairingly, even as one may throw oneself into a river, and Inspector Mauraisin, in anguish and astonishment at the turn which things were taking, wondered if the time had not come to go over to the Freemasons.[2] [Footnote 2: The French Freemasons are largely identified with Republican and anti-Catholic views.--_Trans._] But the emotion was particularly keen in the judicial world, for did not a revision of the former trial mean a new trial directed against the judges who had conducted the first proceedings? and if the papers in the case should be exhumed and examined would not terrible revelations ensue? Investigating Magistrate Daix, that unlucky honest man, who was haunted by remorse for having yielded to his wife's covetous ambition, looked livid when he repaired in silence each morning to his office at the Palace of Justice. And if Raoul de La Bissonnière, the dapper Public Prosecutor, made, on the contrary, an excessive show of good humour and ease of mind, one could divine that he did so from a torturing desire to prevent his fears from being seen. As for Presiding Judge Gragnon, who was the most compromised of all, he seemed to have aged quite suddenly; his face had become heavy, his shoulders bent beneath some invisible weight, and he dragged his big body about with shuffling steps, unless he noticed that he was being watched, when, with a suspicious glance, he made an effort to draw himself erect. Meantime the gentlemen's ladies had once more transformed their _salons_ into hotbeds of intrigue, barter, and propaganda. And from the _bourgeois_ to their servants, from the servants to the tradespeople, from the tradespeople to the working classes, the whole population followed on, becoming more and more crazed amid the tempest which cast men and things into general dementia.