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Updated: June 27, 2025
The cemetery, whose oppressive odours and dark vegetation had breathed eager desire into the children's hearts, while alluringly spreading out its couches of rank grass, without succeeding however in throwing them into one another's arms, now longed to imbibe Silvere's warm blood. For two summers past it had been expecting the young lovers. "Is it here?" asked the one-eyed man.
Their hearts communed with each other, they understood how useless and cruel would be any verbal plaint. The girl, however, could at last no longer contain herself, and, choking with emotion, she gave expression, in one phrase, to their mutual misgivings. "You will come back again, won't you?" she whispered, as she hung on Silvere's neck.
When she came to again, she would stagger about with such a scared, stupefied look, that the gossips of the Faubourg used to say: "She's been drinking, the crazy old thing!" Little Silvere's childish smile was for her the last pale ray which brought some warmth to her frozen limbs. Weary of solitude, and frightened at the thought of dying alone in one of her fits, she had asked to have the child.
However, Macquart felt that he had acted foolishly, and strove to take advantage of Silvere's affection for Adelaide by charging the Rougons with her forlornness and poverty. According to him, he had always been the best of sons, whereas his brother had behaved disgracefully; Pierre had robbed his mother, and now, when she was penniless, he was ashamed of her.
When aunt Dide came round, she would get up with difficulty, and set about her work in the hovel without even questioning Silvere. She remembered nothing, and the child, from a sort of instinctive prudence, avoided the least allusion to what had taken place. These recurring fits, more than anything else, strengthened Silvere's deep attachment for his grandmother.
As he was emerging from the Impasse Saint-Mittre with hesitating steps, wondering whether it would not be dangerous to solicit Silvere's pardon from the prefect, he saw Aristide prowling about the timber-yard. The latter, recognising his father, ran up to him with an expression of anxiety and whispered a few words in his ear.
You must not leave me. I thought I was going to die just now. We did wrong to make an opening in the wall. I have suffered ever since. I was certain that door would bring us further misfortune Oh! the innocent darlings, what sorrow! They will kill them as well, they will be shot down like dogs." Then she relapsed into catalepsy; she was no longer even aware of Silvere's presence.
And he recalled his own bootless wickedness and underhand intrigues. Not one member of the family had ever been on his side; neither Aristide, nor Silvere's brother, nor Silvere himself, who was a fool to grow so enthusiastic about the Republic and would never do any good for himself.
In spite of the softening effect which Silvere's friendship had had upon her, she still at times gave way to angry outbreaks of temper, when all the stubbornness and rebellion latent in her nature stiffened her with scowling eyes and tightly-drawn lips.
The dangers to which the innocence of their love had lately been exposed had left no other trace in Silvere's mind than great admiration for Miette's physical strength. She had learned to swim in a fortnight, and often, when they raced together, he had seen her stem the current with a stroke as rapid as his own.
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