Merle was making sweeping gesticulations to excuse himself, but his master bade him close the door. Then he quietly said to Du Poizat: 'I thought you were at Bressuire. So you desert your sub-prefecture as easily as an old mistress, eh?'

Du Poizat, who was a slightly built man with a mean-looking face and very white irregular teeth, shrugged his shoulders as he replied: 'I arrived in Paris this morning on business, and I did not intend to come and see you till the evening, when I should have called upon you in the Rue Marbeuf and have asked you to give me some dinner. But when I read the Moniteur——' Then he broke off, pulled an easy-chair in front of the writing-table, and seated himself face to face with Rougon. 'Well now, what's been happening, eh?' he resumed. 'I've come from the depths of the Deux-Sèvres. I had heard something down there, but I had no idea of this. Why didn't you write to me?'

Rougon, in his turn, shrugged his shoulders. It was evident that tidings of his disgrace had reached Du Poizat in the country, and that he had hastened to Paris to see if he could find a means of securing stability for his own position. So Rougon gave him a keen glance as he rejoined: 'I should have written to you this evening. Send in your resignation, my good fellow.'

'That's all that I wanted to know. Well, I will resign,' replied Du Poizat quietly.

Then he rose from his seat and began to whistle. As he slowly paced the room he caught sight of Delestang kneeling on the carpet in the midst of a litter of pasteboard boxes. He approached and silently shook hands with him. Then he took a cigar out of his pocket and lighted it at the candle.

'I may smoke here, I suppose, as you are moving?' he said, again sitting down in the easy-chair. 'It's good fun is moving!'

Rougon, however, was absorbed in a bundle of papers which he read with deep attention, sorting them very carefully, burning some and preserving others. Du Poizat, with his head lolling back, and puffing light clouds of smoke from between his lips, remained watching him. They had become acquainted with each other some months before the Revolution of February, 1848. At that time they were both boarding with Madame Correur at the Hôtel Vanneau in the Rue Vanneau. Du Poizat had found himself quite at home there, for he and Madame Correur had both been born at Coulonges, a little town in the district of Niort. His father, a process-server, had sent him to study law in Paris, where he allowed him only a hundred francs a month, although he had amassed large sums by lending money for short periods at extortionate interest. The old man's wealth seemed, indeed, so inexplicably great to his country neighbours that it was said he had discovered a large treasure in an old chest of drawers upon which he had distrained. From the outset of the Bonapartist propaganda Rougon had availed himself of the services of this scraggy youth, who, chafing and fuming, made such short work of his monthly hundred francs, and they dabbled together in the most risky undertakings. Later on, when Rougon was desirous of entering the Legislative Assembly, Du Poizat worked energetically to secure his election for Deux-Sèvres. Then, after the coup d'état, Rougon in his turn used all his influence on behalf of Du Poizat and got him appointed sub-prefect at Bressuire. The young man, then barely thirty years of age, had desired to return in triumph to his own neighbourhood, where he would be near his father, through whose avarice he had led a life of torture ever since leaving college.

'And how is your father?' asked Rougon, without raising his eyes.

'Oh, much too well,' answered Du Poizat bluntly. 'He has sent his last remaining servant away because she ate three pounds of bread a week. Now he keeps a couple of loaded guns behind his door, and when I go to see him I have to parley with him over the wall of the yard.'

While talking, Du Poizat leaned forward and poked his fingers into the bronze vase, where some fragments of paper were lying only half-consumed. Rougon sharply raised his head as he noticed this. He had always felt somewhat distrustful of his old lieutenant, whose irregular white teeth resembled those of a young wolf. In the days when they had worked together he had always made a point of never allowing any compromising document to fall into his hands; and now, as he saw him trying to decipher some words that still remained legible on the charred fragments, he threw a handful of blazing letters into the vase. Du Poizat perfectly understood why he did so; however, he merely smiled and began to joke. 'It's a thorough cleaning you're going in for,' he said.