The happiest person in all this was Felicite.  At last she had people coming to her drawing-room.  It was true she felt a little ashamed of her old yellow velvet furniture.  She consoled herself, however, thinking of the rich things she would purchase when the good cause should have triumphed.  The Rougons had, in the end, regarded their royalism as very serious.  Felicite went as far as to say, when Roudier was not present, that if they had not made a fortune in the oil business the fault lay in the monarchy of July.  This was her mode of giving a political tinge to their poverty.  She had a friendly word for everybody, even for Granoux, inventing each evening some new polite method of waking him up when it was time for departure.

The drawing-room, that little band of Conservatives belonging to all parties, and daily increasing in numbers, soon wielded powerful influence.  Owing to the diversified characters of its members, and especially to the secret impulse which each one received from the clergy, it became the centre of the reactionary movement and spread its influence throughout Plassans.  The policy of the marquis, who sank his own personality, transformed Rougon into the leader of the party.  The meetings were held at his house, and this circumstance sufficed in the eyes of most people to make him the head of the group, and draw public attention to him.  The whole work was attributed to him; he was believed to be the chief artisan of the movement which was gradually bringing over to the Conservative party those who had lately been enthusiastic Republicans.  There are some situations which benefit only persons of bad repute.  These lay the foundations of their fortune where men of better position and more influence would never dare to risk theirs.  Roudier, Granoux, and the others, all men of means and respectability, certainly seemed a thousand times preferable to Pierre as the acting leaders of the Conservative party.  But none of them would have consented to turn his drawing-room into a political centre.  Their convictions did not go so far as to induce them to compromise themselves openly; in fact, they were only so many provincial babblers, who liked to inveigh against the Republic at a neighbour’s house as long as the neighbour was willing to bear the responsibility of their chatter.  The game was too risky.  There was no one among the middle classes of Plassans who cared to play it except the Rougons, whose ungratified longings urged them on to extreme measures.

In the month of April, 1849, Eugene suddenly left Paris, and came to stay with his father for a fortnight.  Nobody ever knew the purpose of this journey.  It is probable that Eugene wanted to sound his native town, to ascertain whether he might successfully stand as a candidate for the legislature which was about to replace the Constituent Assembly.  He was too shrewd to risk a failure.  No doubt public opinion appeared to him little in his favour, for he abstained