assassinate anybody. That's quite sufficient. What other folks do is no
concern of ours. If they choose to be rogues it's their affair."

She looked quite majestic and triumphant; and again pacing the room,
drawing herself up to her full height, she resumed: "A pretty notion
it is that people are to let their business go to rack and ruin just to
please those who are penniless. For my part, I'm in favour of making hay
while the sun shines, and supporting a Government which promotes trade.
If it does do dishonourable things, I prefer to know nothing about them.
I know that I myself commit none, and that no one in the neighbourhood
can point a finger at me. It's only fools who go tilting at windmills.
At the time of the last elections, you remember, Gavard said that the
Emperor's candidate had been bankrupt, and was mixed up in all sorts of
scandalous matters. Well, perhaps that was true, I don't deny it; but
all the same, you acted wisely in voting for him, for all that was not
in question; you were not asked to lend the man any money or to transact
any business with him, but merely to show the Government that you were
pleased with the prosperity of the pork trade."

At this moment Quenu called to mind a sentence of Charvet's, asserting
that "the bloated bourgeois, the sleek shopkeepers, who backed up that
Government of universal gormandising, ought to be hurled into the sewers
before all others, for it was owing to them and their gluttonous egotism
that tyranny had succeeded in mastering and preying upon the nation." He
was trying to complete this piece of eloquence when Lisa, carried off by
her indignation, cut him short.

"Don't talk such stuff! My conscience doesn't reproach me with anything.
I don't owe a copper to anybody; I'm not mixed up in any dishonest
business; I buy and sell good sound stuff; and I charge no more than