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Updated: May 2, 2025
She hesitated a moment, and then continued: "If it were absolutely necessary in some serious contingency, we might perhaps be able to make a sacrifice; but, truly, we are very poor, very poor!" Macquart pricked up his ears. "I have them!" he thought.
Then, in this peaceful and sunny solitude she was seized with a strange chill, and she called: "Macquart! Macquart!" The door of the house under the mulberry trees stood wide open. But she did not dare to go in; this empty house with its wide open door gave her a vague uneasiness. And she called again: "Macquart! Macquart!" Not a sound, not a breath.
As for you, Macquart, you must leave this very night. Swear to me that you will! I'm going to find Monsieur de Bleriot." He stammered as he spoke, and felt more eager than ever to get out into the fresh air of the streets. Pascal fixed a penetrating look on the madwoman, and then on his father and uncle.
In order to while away the time he resolved to issue a proclamation to the inhabitants of Plassans. Four of his party set to work to draw up this proclamation, and when it was finished Macquart, assuming a dignified manner in the mayor's arm-chair, had it read to him before sending it to the printing office of the "Independant," on whose patriotism he reckoned.
First was the foundress of the family, Adelaide Fouque, the tall, crazy girl, the first nervous lesion giving rise to the legitimate branch, Pierre Rougon, and to the two illegitimate branches, Ursule and Antoine Macquart, all that bourgeois and sanguinary tragedy, with the coup d'etat of December, 1854, for a background, the Rougons, Pierre and Felicite, preserving order at Plassans, bespattering with the blood of Silvere their rising fortunes, while Adelaide, grown old, the miserable Aunt Dide, was shut up in the Tulettes, like a specter of expiation and of waiting.
When the band had reached the top of the Rue de la Banne, Macquart, who had stationed himself at the rear, detained four of his companions, big fellows who were not over-burdened with brains and whom he swayed by his tavern bluster. He easily persuaded them that the enemies of the Republic must be arrested immediately if they wished to prevent the greatest calamities.
He's only a twopenny-halfpenny doctor, and hasn't got a decent patient in all his practice." When once Macquart was fully launched, he could not stop. "It's like that little viper, Aristide," he would say, "a false brother, a traitor. Are you taken in by his articles in the 'Independant, Silvere? You would be a fine fool if you were.
"And you have done nothing to make you so; you have good reason to ridicule us. Only there is one thing I am afraid of, look you, that some day in lighting your pipe, you may set yourself on fire like a bowl of punch." Macquart, flattered, gave a sneering laugh. "Have your jest, have your jest, my boy! A glass of cognac is worth more than all your filthy drugs.
The doorkeeper, who was entrusted with the duty of supplying Macquart with food, went upstairs with her to open the door of the dressing-room, which had been turned into a cell. Then quietly he came down again. Macquart had now been kept in the room for two days and two nights. He had had time to indulge in lengthy reflections.
"But there are no underhand dealings about it," Felicite resumed, smiling at the old rascal's scruples. "Nothing can be more simple: you will presently leave this room, and go and conceal yourself in your mother's house, and this evening you can assemble your friends and come and seize the town-hall again." Macquart did not conceal his extreme surprise. He did not understand it at all.
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