Pascal looked at his mother with naive astonishment, then with a smile replied:  “My real opinions?  I don’t quite know—­I am accused of being a Republican, did you say?  Very well!  I don’t feel at all offended.  I am undoubtedly a Republican, if you understand by that word a man who wishes the welfare of everybody.”

“But you will never attain to any position,” Felicite quickly interrupted.  “You will be crushed.  Look at your brothers, they are trying to make their way.”

Pascal then comprehended that he was not called upon to defend his philosophic egotism.  His mother simply accused him of not speculating on the political situation.  He began to laugh somewhat sadly, and then turned the conversation into another channel.  Felicite could never induce him to consider the chances of the various parties, nor to enlist in that one of them which seemed likely to carry the day.  However, he still occasionally came to spend an evening in the yellow drawing-room.  Granoux interested him like an antediluvian animal.

In the meantime, events were moving.  The year 1851 was a year of anxiety and apprehension for the politicians of Plassans, and the cause which the Rougons served derived advantage from this circumstance.  The most contradictory news arrived from Paris; sometimes the Republicans were in the ascendant, sometimes the Conservative party was crushing the Republic.  The echoes of the squabbles which were rending the Legislative Assembly reached the depths of the provinces, now in an exaggerated, now in an attenuated form, varying so greatly as to obscure the vision of the most clear-sighted.  The only general feeling was that a denouement was approaching.  The prevailing ignorance as to the nature of this denouement kept timid middle class people in a terrible state of anxiety.  Everybody wished to see the end.  They were sick of uncertainty, and would have flung themselves into the arms of the Grand Turk, if he would have deigned to save France from anarchy.

The marquis’s smile became more acute.  Of an evening, in the yellow drawing-room, when Granoux’s growl was rendered indistinct by fright, he would draw near to Felicite and whisper in her ear:  “Come, little one, the fruit is ripe—­but you must make yourself useful.”

Felicite, who continued to read Eugene’s letters, and knew that a decisive crisis might any day occur, had already often felt the necessity of making herself useful, and reflected as to the manner in which the Rougons should employ themselves.  At last she consulted the marquis.

“It all depends upon circumstances,” the little old man replied.  “If the department remains quiet, if no insurrection occurs to terrify Plassans, it will be difficult for you to make yourselves conspicuous and render any services to the new government.  I advise you, in that case, to remain at home, and peacefully await the bounties of your son Eugene.  But if the people rise, and our brave bourgeois think themselves in danger, there will be a fine part to play.  Your husband is somewhat heavy—­”