“Let him save it, then, as quickly as possible,” interrupted the marquis, “and let him then understand his duty by restoring it to its legitimate masters.”

Pierre seemed to approve this fine retort, and having thus given proof of his ardent royalism, he ventured to remark that Prince Louis Bonaparte had his entire sympathy in the matter.  He thereupon exchanged a few short sentences with the commander, commending the excellent intentions of the President, which sentences one might have thought prepared and learnt beforehand.  Bonapartism now, for the first time, made its entry into the yellow drawing-room.  It is true that since the election of December 10 the Prince had been treated there with a certain amount of consideration.  He was preferred a thousand times to Cavaignac, and the whole reactionary party had voted for him.  But they regarded him rather as an accomplice than a friend; and, as such, they distrusted him, and even began to accuse him of a desire to keep for himself the chestnuts which he had pulled out of the fire.  On that particular evening, however, owing to the fighting at Rome, they listened with favour to the praises of Pierre and the commander.

The group led by Granoux and Roudier already demanded that the President should order all republican rascals to be shot; while the marquis, leaning against the mantelpiece, gazed meditatively at a faded rose on the carpet.  When he at last lifted his head, Pierre, who had furtively watched his countenance as if to see the effect of his words, suddenly ceased speaking.  However, Monsieur de Carnavant merely smiled and glanced at Felicite with a knowing look.  This rapid by-play was not observed by the other people.  Vuillet alone remarked in a sharp tone: 

“I would rather see your Bonaparte at London than at Paris.  Our affairs would get along better then.”

At this the old oil-dealer turned slightly pale, fearing that he had gone too far.  “I’m not anxious to retain ‘my’ Bonaparte,” he said, with some firmness; “you know where I would send him to if I were the master.  I simply assert that the expedition to Rome was a good stroke.”

Felicite had followed this scene with inquisitive astonishment.  However, she did not speak of it to her husband, which proved that she adopted it as the basis of secret study.  The marquis’s smile, the significance of which escaped her, set her thinking.

From that day forward, Rougon, at distant intervals, whenever the occasion offered, slipped in a good word for the President of the Republic.  On such evenings, Commander Sicardot acted the part of a willing accomplice.  At the same time, Clerical opinions still reigned supreme in the yellow drawing-room.  It was more particularly in the following year that this group of reactionaries gained decisive influence in the town, thanks to the retrograde movement which was going on at Paris.  All those anti-Liberal laws which the country called “the Roman expedition at