And when anyone asked him where his brother ought to be, he would reply, “At the galleys!” in a formidable voice.

His hatred further increased when the Rougons had gathered the Conservatives round them, and thus acquired a certain influence in Plassans.  The famous yellow drawing-room became, in his hare-brained chatter at the cafe, a cave of bandits, an assembly of villains who every evening swore on their daggers that they would murder the people.  In order to incite the starvelings against Pierre, Macquart went so far as to circulate a report that the retired oil-dealer was not so poor as he pretended, but that he concealed his treasures through avarice and fear of robbery.  His tactics thus tended to rouse the poor people by a repetition of absurdly ridiculous tales, which he often came to believe in himself.  His personal animosity and his desire for revenge were ill concealed beneath his professions of patriotism; but he was heard so frequently, and he had such a loud voice, that no one would have dared to doubt the genuineness of his convictions.

At bottom, all the members of this family had the same brutish passions.  Felicite, who clearly understood that Macquart’s wild theories were simply the fruit of restrained rage and embittered envy, would much have liked to purchase his silence.  Unfortunately, she was short of money, and did not dare to interest him in the dangerous game which her husband was playing.  Antoine now injured them very much among the well-to-do people of the new town.  It sufficed that he was a relation of theirs.  Granoux and Roudier often scornfully reproached them for having such a man in their family.  Felicite consequently asked herself with anguish how they could manage to cleanse themselves of such a stain.

It seemed to her monstrous and indecent that Monsieur Rougon should have a brother whose wife sold chestnuts, and who himself lived in crapulous idleness.  She at last even trembled for the success of their secret intrigues, so long as Antoine seemingly took pleasure in compromising them.  When the diatribes which he levelled at the yellow drawing-room were reported to her, she shuddered at the thought that he was capable of becoming desperate and ruining all their hopes by force of scandal.

Antoine knew what consternation his demeanour must cause the Rougons, and it was solely for the purpose of exhausting their patience that he from day to day affected fiercer opinions.  At the cafe he frequented he used to speak of “my brother Pierre” in a voice which made everybody turn round; and if he happened to meet some reactionary from the yellow drawing-room in the street, he would mutter some low abuse which the worthy citizen, amazed at such audacity, would repeat to the Rougons in the evening, as though to make them responsible for his disagreeable encounter.

One day Granoux arrived in a state of fury.

“Really,” he exclaimed, when scarcely across the threshold, “it’s intolerable; one can’t move a step without being insulted.”  Then, addressing Pierre, he added:  “When one has a brother like yours, sir, one should rid society of him.  I was just quietly walking past the Sub-Prefecture, when that rascal passed me muttering something in which I could clearly distinguish the words ‘old rogue.’”