Felicite turned pale, and felt it necessary to apologise to Granoux, but he refused to accept any excuses, and threatened to leave altogether.  The marquis, however, exerted himself to arrange matters.

“It is very strange,” he said, “that the wretched fellow should have called you an old rogue.  Are you sure that he intended the insult for you?”

Granoux was perplexed; he admitted at last, however, that Antoine might have muttered:  “So you are again going to that old rogue’s?”

At this Monsieur de Carnavant stroked his chin to conceal the smile which rose to his lips in spite of himself.

Then Rougon, with superb composure, replied:  “I thought as much; the ‘old rogue’ was no doubt intended for me.  I’ve very glad that this misunderstanding is now cleared up.  Gentlemen, pray avoid the man in question, whom I formally repudiate.”

Felicite, however, did not take matters so coolly; every fresh scandal caused by Macquart made her more and more uneasy; she would sometimes pass the whole night wondering what those gentlemen must think of the matter.

A few months before the Coup d’Etat, the Rougons received an anonymous letter, three pages of foul insults, in which they were warned that if their party should ever triumph, the scandalous story of Adelaide’s amours would be published in some newspaper, together with an account of the robbery perpetrated by Pierre, when he had compelled his mother, driven out of her senses by debauchery, to sign a receipt for fifty thousand francs.  This letter was a heavy blow for Rougon himself.  Felicite could not refrain from reproaching her husband with his disreputable family; for the husband and wife never for a moment doubted that this letter was Antoine’s work.

“We shall have to get rid of the blackguard at any price,” said Pierre in a gloomy tone.  “He’s becoming too troublesome by far.”

In the meantime, Macquart, resorting to his former tactics, looked round among his own relatives for accomplices who would join him against the Rougons.  He had counted upon Aristide at first, on reading his terrible articles in the “Independant.”  But the young man, in spite of all his jealous rage, was not so foolish as to make common cause with such a fellow as his uncle.  He never even minced matters with him, but invariably kept him at a distance, a circumstance which induced Antoine to regard him suspiciously.  In the taverns, where Macquart reigned supreme, people went so far as to say the journalist was paid to provoke disturbances.

Baffled on this side, Macquart had no alternative but to sound his sister Ursule’s children.  Ursule had died in 1839, thus fulfilling her brother’s evil prophecy.  The nervous affection which she had inherited from her mother had turned into slow consumption, which gradually killed her.  She left three children; a daughter, eighteen years of age, named Helene, who married a clerk, and two boys,