VII
SON-IN-LAW AND FATHER-IN-LAW
Freddy Béjard, the newly elected deputy, gave his political friends the great dinner postponed by the sacking of his house and the effervescence of the masses.
The disturbance had not lasted. The next day the peaceful bourgeois, whom the tumult had kept awake and shaking with fear in their beds, began to make the principal mansions ravaged by the populace the object of their promenades. And since the rich did not hesitate to impute these acts of vandalism to Bergmans, notwithstanding his protestations and energetic disavowals, Freddy Béjard benefited by the indignation of sober-minded and scrupulous citizens.
The newspapers, having been importuned by Dupoissey for weeks, published editorials dealing with "law and order," "the hydra of civil war" and "the specter of anarchy," with the result that many good people of Antwerp, detesting Béjard and foreigners in general, and inclining toward Bergmans, feared that by continuing to support him they were encouraging fresh disorder.
As it was incumbent upon the city to indemnify the victims of the mob, Béjard lost nothing, in
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