“You should hear what Jules says of those who speak against the Empire,” she remarked.  “They ought all to be thrown into the Seine, he told me; for it seems there isn’t a single respectable person amongst them.”

“Oh! there’s no harm done, of course, so long as only people like myself hear their foolish talk,” resumed Mademoiselle Saget.  “I’d rather cut my hand off, you know, than make mischief.  Last night now, for instance, Monsieur Quenu was saying——­”

She again paused.  Lisa had started slightly.

“Monsieur Quenu was saying that the Ministers and Deputies and all who are in power ought to be shot.”

At this Lisa turned sharply, her face quite white and her hands clenched beneath her apron.

“Quenu said that?” she curtly asked.

“Yes, indeed, and several other similar things that I can’t recollect now.  I heard him myself.  But don’t distress yourself like that, Madame Quenu.  You know very well that I sha’n’t breathe a word.  I’m quite old enough to know what might harm a man if it came out.  Oh, no; it will go no further.”

Lisa had recovered her equanimity.  She took a pride in the happy peacefulness of her home; she would not acknowledge that there had ever been the slightest difference between herself and her husband.  And so now she shrugged her shoulders and said with a smile:  “Oh, it’s all a pack of foolish nonsense.”

When the three others were in the street together they agreed that handsome Lisa had pulled a very doleful face; and they were unanimously of opinion that the mysterious goings-on of the cousin, the Mehudins, Gavard, and the Quenus would end in trouble.  Madame Lecoeur inquired what was done to the people who got arrested “for politics,” but on this point Mademoiselle Saget could not enlighten her; she only knew that they were never seen again—­no, never.  And this induced La Sarriette to suggest that perhaps they were thrown into the Seine, as Jules had said they ought to be.

Lisa avoided all reference to the subject at breakfast and dinner that day; and even in the evening, when Florent and Quenu went off together to Monsieur Lebigre’s, there was no unwonted severity in her glance.  On that particular evening, however, the question of framing a constitution for the future came under discussion, and it was one o’clock in the morning before the politicians could tear themselves away from the little room.  The shutters had already been fastened, and they were obliged to leave by a small door, passing out one at a time with bent backs.  Quenu returned home with an uneasy conscience.  He opened the three or four doors on his way to bed as gently as possible, walking on tip-toe and stretching out his hands as he passed through the sitting-room, to avoid a collision with any of the furniture.  The whole house seemed to be asleep.  When he reached the bedroom, he was annoyed to find that Lisa had not extinguished the candle, which was burning