an opportunity to resume in some new direction their secular intrigues. The marquis, who had now become a useless agent, remained only inquisitive on one point — he wished to know how the turmoil would finish, and in what manner the Rougons would play their role to the end.
“Oh! it’s you, little one!” he exclaimed, as soon as he recognized Felicite. “I wanted to see you; your affairs are getting muddled!”
“Oh, no; everything is going on all right,” she replied, in an absent-minded way.
“So much the better. You’ll tell me all about it, won’t you? Ah! I must confess that I gave your husband and his colleagues a terrible fright the other night. You should have seen how comical they looked on the terrace, while I was pointing out a band of insurgents in every cluster of trees in the valley! You forgive me?”
“I’m much obliged to you,” said Felicite quickly. “You should have made them die of fright. My husband is a big slyboots. Come and see me some morning, when I am alone.”
Then she turned away, as though this meeting with the marquis had determined her. From head to foot the whole of her little person betokened implacable resolution. At last she was going to revenge herself on Pierre for his petty mysteries, have him under her heel, and secure, once for all, her omnipotence at home. There would be a fine scene, quite a comedy, indeed, the points of which she was already enjoying in anticipation, while she worked out her plan with all the spitefulness of an injured woman.
She found Pierre in bed, sleeping heavily; she brought the candle near him for an instant, and gazed with an air of compassion, at his big face, across which slight twitches occasionally passed; then she sat down at the head of the bed, took off her cap, let her hair fall loose, assumed the appearance of one in despair, and began to sob quite loudly.
“Hallo! What’s the matter? What are you crying for?” asked Pierre, suddenly awaking.
She did not reply, but cried more bitterly.
“Come, come, do answer,” continued her husband, frightened by this mute despair. “Where have you been? Have you seen the insurgents?”
She shook her head; then, in a faint voice, she said: “I’ve just come from the Valqueyras mansion. I wanted to ask Monsieur de Carnavant’s advice. Ah! my dear, all is lost.”
Pierre sat up in bed, very pale. His bull neck, which his unbuttoned nightshirt exposed to view, all his soft, flabby flesh seemed to swell with terror. At last he sank back, pale and tearful, looking like some grotesque Chinese figure in the middle of the untidy bed.
“The marquis,” continued Felicite, “thinks that Prince Louis has succumbed. We are ruined; we shall never get a sou.”
Thereupon, as often happens with cowards, Pierre flew into a passion. It was the marquis’s fault, it was his wife’s fault, the fault of all his family. Had he ever thought of politics at all, until Monsieur de Carnavant and Felicite had driven him to that tomfoolery?
“I wash my hands of it altogether,” he cried. “It’s you two who are responsible for the blunder. Wasn’t it better to go on living on our little savings in peace and quietness? But then, you were always determined to have your own way! You see what it has brought us to.”
He was losing his head completely, and forgot that he had shown himself as eager as his wife. However, his only desire now was to vent his anger, by laying the blame of his ruin upon others.
“And, moreover,” he continued, “could we ever have succeeded with children like ours? Eugene abandons us just at the critical moment; Aristide has dragged us through the mire, and even that big simpleton Pascal is compromising us by his philanthropic practising among the insurgents. And to think that we brought ourselves to poverty simply to give them a university education!”
Then, as he drew breath, Felicite said to him softly: “You are forgetting Macquart.”
“Ah! yes; I was forgetting him,” he resumed more violently than ever; “there’s another whom I can’t think of without losing all patience! But that’s not all; you know little Silvere. Well, I saw him at my mother’s the other evening with his hands covered with blood. He has put some gendarme’s eye out. I did not tell you of it, as I didn’t want to frighten you. But you’ll see one of my nephews in the Assize Court. Ah! what a family! As for Macquart, he has annoyed us to such an extent that I felt inclined to break his head for him the other day when I had a gun in my hand. Yes, I had a mind to do it.”
Felicite let the storm pass over. She had received her husband’s reproaches with angelic sweetness, bowing her head like a culprit, whereby she was able to smile in her sleeve. Her demeanour provoked and maddened Pierre. When speech failed the poor man, she heaved deep sighs, feigning repentance; and then she repeated, in a disconsolate voice: “Whatever shall we do! Whatever shall we do! We are over head and ears in debt.”
“It’s your fault!” Pierre cried, with all his remaining strength.
The Rougons, in fact, owed money on every side. The hope of approaching success had made them forget all prudence. Since the beginning of 1851 they had gone so far as to entertain the frequenters of the yellow drawingroom every evening with syrup and punch, and cakes — providing, in fact, complete collations, at which they one and all drank to the death of the Republic. Besides this, Pierre had placed a quarter of his capital at the disposal of the reactionary party, as a contribution towards the purchase of guns and cartridges.
“The pastrycook’s bill amounts to at least a thousand francs,” Felicite resumed, in her sweetest tone, “and we probably owe twice as much to the liqueur-dealer. Then there’s the butcher, the baker, the greengrocer — — “
Pierre was in agony. And Felicite struck him a final blow by adding: “I say nothing of the ten thousand francs you gave for the guns.”
“I, I!” he faltered, “but I was deceived, I was robbed! It was that idiot Sicardot who let me in for that by swearing that the Napoleonists would be triumphant. I thought I was only making an advance. But the old dolt will have to repay me my money.”
“Ah! you won’t get anything back,” said his wife, shrugging her shoulders. “We shall suffer the fate of war. When we have paid off everything, we sha’n’t even have enough to buy dry bread with. Ah! it’s been a fine campaign. We can now go and live in some hovel in the old quarter.”
This last phrase had a most lugubrious sound. It seemed like the knell of their existence. Pierre pictured the hovel in the old quarter, which had just been mentioned by Felicite. ‘Twas there, then, that he would die on a pallet, after striving all his life for the enjoyment of ease and luxury. In vain had he robbed his mother, steeped his hands in the foulest intrigues, and lied and lied for many a long year. The Empire would not pay his debts — that Empire which alone could save him. He jumped out of bed in his nightshirt, crying: “No; I’ll take my gun; I would rather let the insurgents kill me.”
“Well!” Felicite rejoined, with great composure, “you can have that done tomorrow or the day after; the Republicans are not far off. And that way will do as well as another to make an end of matters.”
Pierre shuddered. It seemed as if some one had suddenly poured a large pail of cold water over his shoulders. He slowly got into bed again, and when he was warmly wrapped up in the sheets, he began to cry. This fat fellow easily burst into tears — gently flowing, inexhaustible tears — which streamed from his eyes without an effort. A terrible reaction was now going on within him. After his wrath he became as weak as a child.
