“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.”