Piping Hot! by Émile Zola

That morning the house awoke with a great middle-class dignity. Nothing of the staircase preserved a trace of the scandals of the night, neither the imitation marble which had reflected that gallop of a woman in her chemise, nor the Wilton carpet from which all the odor of her semi-nudity had evaporated. Monsieur Gourd alone, when he went up-stairs toward seven o'clock to give his look round, sniffed at the walls; but what did not concern him, did not concern him; and as, on going down-stairs again, he saw two of the servants in the courtyard, Lisa and Julie, who were no doubt discussing the catastrophe, for they seemed deeply interested, he stared at them so fixedly that they at once separated. Then he went outside to make sure of the tranquillity of the street. It was calm.

Only, the servants must already have been talking, for some of the neighbors' wives stopped, tradespeople came to their shop doors, looking up in the air, examining and searching the different floors, in the gaping way in which the crowd scrutinizes houses where a crime has been committed. In the presence of the rich frontage, however, people held their tongues and politely passed on.