At that moment all Plassans was talking of her husband.

She felt that the two districts below her were quivering, wafting her the hope of approaching triumph.
Ah! how she would crush that town which she had been so long in getting beneath her feet! All her grievances crowded back to her memory, and her past disappointments redoubled her appetite for immediate enjoyment.
At last she left the window, and walked slowly round the drawing-room.
It was there that, a little while previously, everybody had held out their hands to her husband and herself.

He and she had conquered; the citizens were at their feet.

The yellow drawing-room seemed to her a holy place.

The dilapidated furniture, the frayed velvet, the chandelier soiled with fly-marks, all those poor wrecks now seemed to her like the glorious bullet-riddled debris of a battle-field.