He was in his bedroom, in the dark.  When he recognised his two faithful friends he felt relieved; but he would not let the maid bring a lamp, fearing lest the light might attract a bullet.  He seemed to think that the town was still full of insurgents.  Lying back on an arm-chair near the window, in his pants, and with a silk handkerchief round his head, he moaned:  “Ah! my friends, if you only knew!—­I tried to go to bed, but they were making such a disturbance!  At last I lay down in my arm-chair here.  I’ve seen it all, everything.  Such awful-looking men; a band of escaped convicts!  Then they passed by again, dragging brave Commander Sicardot, worthy Monsieur Garconnet, the postmaster, and others away with them, and howling the while like cannibals!”

Rougon felt a thrill of joy.  He made Granoux repeat to him how he had seen the mayor and the others surrounded by the “brigands.”

“I saw it all!” the poor man wailed.  “I was standing behind the blind.  They had just seized Monsieur Peirotte, and I heard him saying as he passed under my window:  ‘Gentlemen, don’t hurt me!’ They were certainly maltreating him.  It’s abominable, abominable.”

However, Roudier calmed Granoux by assuring him that the town was free.  And the worthy gentleman began to feel quite a glow of martial ardour when Pierre informed him that he had come to recruit his services for the purpose of saving Plassans.  These three saviours then took council together.  They each resolved to go and rouse their friends, and appoint a meeting at the cart-shed, the secret arsenal of the reactionary party.  Meantime Rougon constantly bethought himself of Felicite’s wild gestures, which seemed to betoken danger somewhere.  Granoux, assuredly the most foolish of the three, was the first to suggest that there must be some Republicans left in the town.  This proved a flash of light, and Rougon, with a feeling of conviction, reflected:  “There must be something of Macquart’s doing under all this.”

An hour or so later the friends met again in the cart-shed, which was situated in a very lonely spot.  They had glided stealthily from door to door, knocking and ringing as quietly as possible, and picking up all the men they could.  However, they had only succeeded in collecting some forty, who arrived one after the other, creeping along in the dark, with the pale and drowsy countenances of men who had been violently startled from their sleep.  The cart-shed, let to a cooper, was littered with old hoops and broken casks, of which there were piles in every corner.  The guns were stored in the middle, in three long boxes.  A taper, stuck on a piece of wood, illumined the strange scene with a flickering glimmer.  When Rougon had removed the covers of the three boxes, the spectacle became weirdly grotesque.  Above the fire-arms, whose barrels shown with a bluish, phosphorescent glitter, were outstretched necks and heads that bent with a sort of secret fear, while the yellow light of the taper cast shadows of huge noses and locks of stiffened hair upon the walls.