He was already on the landing, when Granoux hurried after him, crying: “If you go to the mayor’s tell him what’s going on. I’ll just run home to my wife to reassure her.”
Then Felicite bent towards the marquis’s ear, and whispered with discreet gaiety: “Upon my word, it is best that devil of a commander should go and get himself arrested. He’s far too zealous.”
However, Rougon brought Granoux back to the drawingroom. Roudier, who had quietly followed the scene from his corner, making signs in support of the proposed measures of prudence, got up and joined them. When the marquis and Vuillet had likewise risen, Pierre began:
“Now that we are alone, among peaceable men, I propose that we should conceal ourselves so as to avoid certain arrest, and be at liberty as soon as ours again becomes the stronger party.”
Granoux was ready to embrace him. Roudier and Vuillet breathed more easily.
“I shall want you shortly, gentlemen,” the oil-dealer continued, with an important air. “It is to us that the honour of restoring order in Plassans is reserved.”
“You may rely upon us!” cried Vuillet, with an enthusiasm which disturbed Felicite.
Time was pressing. These singular defenders of Plassans, who hid themselves the better to protect the town, hastened away, to bury themselves in some hole or other. Pierre, on being left alone with his wife, advised her not to make the mistake of barricading herself indoors, but to reply, if anybody came to question her, that he, Pierre, had simply gone on a short journey. And as she acted the simpleton, feigning terror and asking what all this was coming to, he replied abruptly: “It’s nothing to do with you. Let me manage our affairs alone. They’ll get on all the better.”
A few minutes later he was rapidly threading his way along the Rue de la Banne. On reaching the Cours Sauvaire, he saw a band of armed workmen coming out of the old quarter and singing the “Marseillaise.”
“The devil!” he thought. “It was quite time, indeed; here’s the town itself in revolt now!”
He quickened his steps in the direction of the Porte de Rome. Cold perspiration came over him while he waited there for the dilatory keeper to open the gate. Almost as soon as he set foot on the high road, he perceived in the moonlight at the other end of the Faubourg the column of insurgents, whose gun barrels gleamed like white flames. So it was at a run that he dived into the Impasse Saint-Mittre, and reached his mother’s house, which he had not visited for many a long year.
CHAPTER IV
Antoine Macquart had returned to Plassans after the fall of the first Napoleon. He had had the incredible good fortune to escape all the final murderous campaigns of the Empire. He had moved from barracks to barracks, dragging on his brutifying military life. This mode of existence brought his natural vices to full development. His idleness became deliberate; his intemperance, which brought him countless punishments, became, to his mind, a veritable religious duty. But that which above all made him the worst of scapegraces was the supercilious disdain which he entertained for the poor devils who had to earn their bread.
“I’ve got money waiting for me at home,” he often said to his comrades; “when I’ve served my time, I shall be able to live like a gentleman.”
This belief, together with his stupid ignorance, prevented him from rising even to the grade of corporal.
Since his departure he had never spent a day’s furlough at Plassans, his brother having invented a thousand pretexts to keep him at a distance. He was therefore completely ignorant of the adroit manner in which Pierre had got possession of their mother’s fortune. Adelaide, with her profound indifference, did not even write to him three times to tell him how she was going on. The silence which generally greeted his numerous requests for money did not awaken the least suspicion in him; Pierre’s stinginess sufficed to explain the difficulty he experienced in securing from time to time a paltry twenty-franc piece. This, however, only increased his animosity towards his brother, who left him to languish in military service in spite of his formal promise to purchase his discharge. He vowed to himself that on his return home he would no longer submit like a child, but would flatly demand his share of the fortune to enable him to live as he pleased. In the diligence which conveyed him home he dreamed of a delightful life of idleness. The shattering of his castles in the air was terrible. When he reached the Faubourg, and could no longer even recognise the Fouques’ plot of ground, he was stupefied. He was compelled to ask for his mother’s new address. There a terrible scene occurred. Adelaide calmly informed him of the sale of the property. He flew into a rage, and even raised his hand against her.
The poor woman kept repeating: “Your brother has taken everything; it is understood that he will take care of you.”
At last he left her and ran off to see Pierre, whom he had previously informed of his return, and who was prepared to receive him in such a way as to put an end to the matter at the first word of abuse.
“Listen,” the oil-dealer said to him, affecting distant coldness; “don’t rouse my anger, or I’ll turn you out. As a matter of fact, I don’t know you. We don’t bear the same name. It’s quite misfortune enough for me that my mother misconducted herself, without having her offspring coming here and insulting me. I was well disposed towards you, but since you are insolent I shall do nothing for you, absolutely nothing.”
Antoine was almost choking with rage.
“And what about my money,” he cried; “will you give it up, you thief, or shall I have to drag you before the judges?”
Pierre shrugged his shoulders.
“I’ve got no money of yours,” he replied, more calmly than ever. “My mother disposed of her fortune as she thought proper. I am certainly not going to poke my nose into her business. I willingly renounced all hope of inheritance. I am quite safe from your foul accusations.”
And as his brother, exasperated by this composure, and not knowing what to think, muttered something, Pierre thrust Adelaide’s receipt under his nose. The reading of this scrap of paper completed Antoine’s dismay.
“Very well,” he said, in a calmer voice, “I know now what I have to do.”
The truth was, however, he did not know what to do. His inability to hit upon any immediate expedient for obtaining his share of the money and satisfying his desire of revenge increased his fury. He went back to his mother and subjected her to a disgraceful cross-examination. The wretched woman could do nothing but again refer him to Pierre.
“Do you think you are going to make me run to and fro like a shuttle?” he cried, insolently. “I’ll soon find out which of you two has the hoard. You’ve already squandered it, perhaps?”
And making an allusion to her former misconduct he asked her if there were still not some low fellow to whom she gave her last sous? He did not even spare his father, that drunkard Macquart, as he called him, who must have lived on her till the day of his death, and who left his children in poverty. The poor woman listened with a stupefied air; big tears rolled down her cheeks. She defended herself with the terror of a child, replying to her son’s questions as though he were a judge; she swore that she was living respectably, and reiterated with emphasis that she had never had a sou of the money,
