Is it you, mother, who have made him cut this figure ?" And he added cheerfully, with a gesture of determination: "Well, so much the worse! I'm a Bonapartist! Father is not the man to risk the chance of being killed unless it pays him well." "You're quite right," his mother replied; "I mustn't say anything; but to-morrow you'll see." He did not press her, but swore that she would soon have reason to be proud of him; and then he took his departure, while Felicite, feeling her old preference reviving, said to herself at the window, as she watched him going off, that he had the devil's own wit, that she would never have had sufficient courage to let him leave without setting him in the right path.
And now for the third time a night full of anguish fell upon Plassans.
The unhappy town was almost at its death-rattle.

The citizens hastened home and barricaded their doors with a great clattering of iron bolts and bars.

The general feeling seemed to be that, by the morrow, Plassans would no longer exist, that it would either be swallowed up by the earth or would evaporate in the atmosphere.

When Rougon went home to dine, he found the streets completely deserted.

This desolation made him sad and melancholy.