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Rougon gravely declared that as the situation of affairs was unchanged, there was no need for them to continue to remain there en permanence. If anything serious should occur information would be sent to them. And, by a decision duly taken in council, he deputed to Roudier the carrying on of the administration.
When the train arrived, they hurried on board and, opening the door of a compartment which they thought empty, they saw old Mme. Rougon about to leave it. She did not speak to them, but passing them by, sprang down quickly in spite of her age, and walked away with a stiff and haughty air. "It is the 1st of July," said Clotilde when the train had started.
If I have sometimes talked to the little fellow about the Republic, it was only to bring him round to a more reasonable way of thinking. He was dotty. I love liberty myself, but it mustn't degenerate into license. And as for Rougon, I esteem him. He's a man of courage and common-sense."
In places like these, the good-natured fraternity which reigns among drunkards procured him a sympathetic audience; all the scum of the town espoused his cause, and poured forth bitter imprecations against that rascal Rougon, who left a brave soldier to starve; the discussion generally terminating with an indiscriminate condemnation of the rich.
When Vuillet came and spoke to him of the well-deserved reward that their friend had just received, he replied in a loud voice, so as to be heard by Felicite, who was sitting a little way off, that "men like Rougon were an ornament to the Legion of Honour." The bookseller joined in the chorus; he had that morning received a formal assurance that the custom of the college would be restored to him.
After kissing his father and mother, Eugene, who usually spoke in a drawling tone, exclaimed with vivacity: "You have understood me, father? There lies our fortune. We must work with all our energy in that direction. Trust in me." "I'll follow your instructions faithfully," Rougon replied. "Only don't forget what I asked you as the price of my cooperation."
When we are too poor, master shall send away Martine and keep me as his servant." Old Mme. Rougon wagged her chin. "Before being his servant it would be better if you had begun by being his wife. Why have you not got married? It would have been simpler and more proper."
The heroes set the matter right with scrupulous minuteness, for they felt that they were speaking for history! At last Rougon and his two lieutenants announced that they were expected at the town-hall. Respectful silence was then restored, and the company smiled at each other discreetly. Granoux was swelling with importance.
Roudier commanded the detachment remaining in the courtyard. As Rougon had surmised, it was Macquart who was comfortably installed upstairs in the mayor's office. He sat in the mayor's arm-chair, with his elbows on the mayor's writing-table.
Much of the story element in it is admirable, and, further, it shows M. Zola as a genuine satirist and humorist. The Rougons' yellow drawing-room and its habitues, and many of the scenes between Pierre Rougon and his wife Felicite, are worthy of the pen of Douglas Jerrold.
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