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The hovel in the Impasse Saint-Mittre remained closed and preserved its secrets. It was merely guessed that Macquart had probably acquired the habit of beating Adelaide, although the sound of a quarrel never issued from the house. However, on several occasions she was seen with her face black and blue, and her hair torn away.
Henceforward all her enjoyment would be fraught with a touch of guilty terror. Moreover, Pierre, having now poured out his soul, began to perceive the other side of the situation. He mentioned Macquart. How could they get rid of that blackguard? But Felicite, again fired with enthusiasm, exclaimed: "Oh! one can't do everything at once. We'll gag him, somehow. We'll soon find some means or other."
Think of Uncle Macquart starting on his journey through space; first diffused through the four corners of the room, dissolved in air and floating about, bathing all that belonged to him; then escaping in a cloud of dust through the window, when I opened it for him, soaring up into the sky, filling the horizon. Why, that is an admirable death!
When he saw the visitor, whom he no doubt recognized, approaching, he stopped howling for an instant and went and stood further off, then he began again to whine softly. Pascal, filled with apprehension, could not keep back the uneasy cry that rose to his lips: "Macquart! Macquart!"
But this new disappointment put the finishing stroke to Felicite's ill-humor; she grew angry when Macquart proposed that all five should go in a body in search of the boy. "What an idea! Go you alone, and come back quickly. We have no time to lose."
And as they never knew anything of the history of those strange amours, they accused that rogue Macquart of having taken advantage of Adelaide's weak mind to rob her of her money. The legitimate son, little Pierre Rougon, grew up with his mother's other offspring.
"Still, there are some things that you ought not to be ignorant of, unless you want to play the part of a fool." Macquart, while exerting himself to set Silvere against the Rougons, experienced the keenest pleasure on drawing tears of anguish from the young man's eyes. He detested him, perhaps, more than he did the others, and this because he was an excellent workman and never drank.
He was no longer "Monsieur" Macquart, the clean-shaven workman, who wore his Sunday clothes every day and played the gentleman; he again became the big slovenly devil who had once speculated on his rags. Felicite did not dare to go to market now that he was so often coming there to sell his baskets. He once had a violent quarrel with her there.
"Is my brigand of a brother at home?" Then, all at once both leaves of the door were violently thrown back and slammed against the walls, and a crowd of armed men, in the midst of whom marched Rougon, with his face very red and his eyes starting out of their sockets, swarmed into the office, brandishing their guns like cudgels. "Ah! the blackguards, they're armed!" shouted Macquart.
She would a thousand times rather have been beaten than glared at like that. Those implacable looks, which followed her everywhere, threw her at last into such unbearable torments that on several occasions she determined to see her lover no more. As soon, however, as Macquart returned she forgot her vows and hastened to him.
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