"Pooh! don't talk to me! your father would have taken the money just like anybody else. We were disgracefully plundered, and it's high time we had our rights."
Then Macquart, for the hundredth time, began to recount the story of the fifty thousand francs. His nephew, who knew it by heart, and all the variations with which he embellished it, listened to him rather impatiently.
"If you were a man," Antoine would say in conclusion, "you would come some day with me, and we would kick up a nice row at the Rougons. We would not leave without having some money given us."
Silvere, however, grew serious, and frankly replied: "If those wretches robbed us, so much the worse for them. I don't want their money. You see, uncle, it's not for us to fall on our relatives. If they've done wrong, well, one of these days they'll be severely punished for it."
"Ah! what a big simpleton you are!" the uncle cried. "When we have the upper hand, you'll see whether I sha'n't settle my own little affairs myself. God cares a lot about us indeed! What a foul family ours is! Even if I were starving to death, not one of those scoundrels would throw me a dry crust."
Whenever Macquart touched upon this subject, he proved inexhaustible. He bared all his bleeding wounds of envy and covetousness. He grew mad with rage when he came to think that he was the only unlucky one in the family, and was forced to eat potatoes, while the others had meat to their heart's content. He would pass all his relations in review, even his grand-nephews, and find some grievance and reason for threatening every one of them.
"Yes, yes," he repeated bitterly, "they'd leave me to die like a dog."
Gervaise, without raising her head or ceasing to ply her needle, would sometimes say timidly: "Still, father, cousin Pascal was very kind to us, last year, when you were ill."
"He attended you without charging a sou," continued Fine, coming to her daughter's aid, "and he often slipped a five-franc piece into my hand to make you some broth."
"He! he'd have killed me if I hadn't had a strong constitution!" Macquart retorted. "Hold your tongues, you fools! You'd let yourselves be twisted about like children. They'd all like to see me dead. When I'm ill again, I beg you not to go and fetch my nephew, for I didn't feel at all comfortable in his hands. 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. They're not even written in good French; I've always maintained that this contraband Republican is in league with his worthy father to humbug us. You'll see how he'll turn his coat. And his brother, the illustrious Eugene, that big blockhead of whom the Rougons make such a fuss! Why, they've got the impudence to assert that he occupies a good position in Paris! I know something about his position; he's employed at the Rue de Jerusalem; he's a police spy."
"Who told you so? You know nothing about it," interrupted Silvere, whose upright spirit at last felt hurt by his uncle's lying accusations.
"Ah! I know nothing about it? Do you think so? I tell you he is a police spy. You'll be shorn like a lamb one of these days, with your benevolence. You're not manly enough. I don't want to say anything against your brother Francois; but, if I were in your place, I shouldn't like the scurvy manner in which he treats you. He earns a heap of money at Marseilles, and yet he never sends you a paltry twenty-franc pierce for pocket money. If ever you become poor, I shouldn't advise you to look to him for anything."
"I've no need of anybody," the young man replied in a proud and slightly injured tone of voice. "My own work suffices for aunt Dide and myself. You're cruel, uncle."
"I only say what's true, that's all. I should like to open your eyes. Our family is a disreputable lot; it's sad but true. Even that little Maxime, Aristide's son, that little nine-year-old brat, pokes his tongue out at me when me meets me. That child will some day beat his own mother, and a good job too! Say what you like, all those folks don't deserve their luck; but it's always like this in families, the good ones suffer while the bad ones make their fortunes."
All this dirty linen, which Macquart washed with such complacency before his nephew, profoundly disgusted the young man. He would have liked to soar back into his dream. As soon as he began to show unmistakable signs of impatience, Antoine would employ strong expedients to exasperate him against their relatives.
"Defend them! Defend them!" he would say, appearing to calm down. "I, for my part, have arranged to have nothing more to do with them. I only mention the matter out of pity for my poor mother, whom all that gang treat in a most revolting manner."
"They are wretches!" Silvere murmured.
"Oh! you don't know, you don't understand. These Rougons pour all sorts of insults and abuse on the good woman. Aristide has forbidden his son even to recognise her. Felicite talks of having her placed in a lunatic asylum."
The young man, as white as a sheet, abruptly interrupted his uncle: "Enough!" he cried. "I don't want to know any more about it. There will have to be an end to all this."
"I'll hold my tongue, since it annoys you," the old rascal replied, feigning a good-natured manner. "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 brought all his instincts of refined cruelty into play, in order to invent atrocious falsehoods which should sting the poor lad to the heart; then he revelled in his pallor, his trembling hands and his heart-rending looks, with the delight of some evil spirit who measures his stabs and finds that he has struck his victim in the right place. When he thought that he had wounded and exasperated Silvere sufficiently, he would at last touch upon politics.
"I've been assured," he would say, lowering his voice, "that the Rougons are preparing some treachery."
"Treachery?" Silvere asked, becoming attentive.
"Yes, one of these nights they are going to seize all the good citizens of the town and throw them into prison."
The young man was at first disposed to doubt it, but his uncle gave precise details; he spoke of lists that had been drawn up, he mentioned the persons whose names were on these lists, he indicated in what manner, at what hour, and under what circumstances the plot would be carried into effect. Silvere gradually allowed himself to be taken in by this old woman's tale, and was soon raving against the enemies of the Republic.
"It's they that we shall have to reduce to impotence if they persist in betraying the country!" he cried. "And what do they intend to do with the citizens whom they arrest?"
"What do they intend to do with them? Why, they will shoot them in the lowest dungeons of the prison, of course," replied Macquart, with a hoarse laugh. And as the young man, stupefied with horror, looked at him without knowing what to say: "This will not be the first lot to be assassinated there," he continued. "You need only go and prowl about the Palais de Justice of an evening to hear the shots and groans."
"Oh, the wretches!" Silvere murmured.
Thereupon uncle and nephew launched out into high politics. Fine and Gervaise, on finding them hotly debating things, quietly went to bed without attracting their attention. Then the two men remained together till midnight, commenting on the news from Paris and discussing the approaching and inevitable struggle. Macquart bitterly denounced the men of his own party, Silvere dreamed his dream of ideal liberty aloud, and for himself only. Strange conversations these were, during which the uncle poured out many a little nip for himself, and from which the nephew emerged quite intoxicated with enthusiasm. Antoine, however, never succeeded in obtaining from the young Republican any perfidious suggestion or play of warfare against the Rougons. In vain he tried to goad him on; he seldom heard him suggest aught but an appeal to eternal justice, which sooner or later would punish the evil-doers.