“Always the same business, my sonny,” declared Mignon.  “You ought to go upstairs; you would force her to follow you.”

“Come now, you’re kind, you are!” said the journalist.  “Why don’t you go upstairs yourself?”

Then as Lucy began asking for Nana’s number, they besought her to make Rose come down; otherwise they would end by getting angry.

Nevertheless, Lucy and Caroline did not go up at once.  They had caught sight of Fontan strolling about with his hands in his pockets and greatly amused by the quaint expressions of the mob.  When he became aware that Nana was lying ill upstairs he affected sentiment and remarked: 

“The poor girl!  I’ll go and shake her by the hand.  What’s the matter with her, eh?”

“Smallpox,” replied Mignon.

The actor had already taken a step or two in the direction of the court, but he came back and simply murmured with a shiver: 

“Oh, damn it!”

The smallpox was no joke.  Fontan had been near having it when he was five years old, while Mignon gave them an account of one of his nieces who had died of it.  As to Fauchery, he could speak of it from personal experience, for he still bore marks of it in the shape of three little lumps at the base of his nose, which he showed them.  And when Mignon again egged him on to the ascent, on the pretext that you never had it twice, he violently combated this theory and with infinite abuse of the doctors instanced various cases.  But Lucy and Caroline interrupted them, for the growing multitude filled them with astonishment.

“Just look!  Just look what a lot of people!” The night was deepening, and in the distance the gas lamps were being lit one by one.  Meanwhile interested spectators became visible at windows, while under the trees the human flood grew every minute more dense, till it ran in one enormous stream from the Madeleine to the Bastille.  Carriages rolled slowly along.  A roaring sound went up from this compact and as yet inarticulate mass.  Each member of it had come out, impelled by the desire to form a crowd, and was now trampling along, steeping himself in the pervading fever.  But a great movement caused the mob to flow asunder.  Among the jostling, scattering groups a band of men in workmen’s caps and white blouses had come in sight, uttering a rhythmical cry which suggested the beat of hammers upon an anvil.

“To Ber-lin!  To Ber-lin!  To Ber-lin!” And the crowd stared in gloomy distrust yet felt themselves already possessed and inspired by heroic imaginings, as though a military band were passing.

“Oh yes, go and get your throats cut!” muttered Mignon, overcome by an access of philosophy.

But Fontan thought it very fine, indeed, and spoke of enlisting.  When the enemy was on the frontier all citizens ought to rise up in defense of the fatherland!  And with that he assumed an attitude suggestive of Bonaparte at Austerlitz.