“Oh!” said Felicite, “I’ll undertake to make him supple.  Do you think the department will revolt?”

“To my mind it’s a certainty.  Plassans, perhaps, will not make a stir; the reaction has secured too firm a hold here for that.  But the neighbouring towns, especially the small ones and the villages, have long been worked by certain secret societies, and belong to the advanced Republican party.  If a Coup d’Etat should burst forth, the tocsin will be heard throughout the entire country, from the forests of the Seille to the plateau of Sainte-Roure.”

Felicite reflected.  “You think, then,” she resumed, “that an insurrection is necessary to ensure our fortune!”

“That’s my opinion,” replied Monsieur de Carnavant.  And he added, with a slightly ironical smile:  “A new dynasty is never founded excepting upon an affray.  Blood is good manure.  It will be a fine thing for the Rougons to date from a massacre, like certain illustrious families.”

These words, accompanied by a sneer, sent a cold chill through Felicite’s bones.  But she was a strong-minded woman, and the sight of Monsieur Peirotte’s beautiful curtains, which she religiously viewed every morning, sustained her courage.  Whenever she felt herself giving way, she planted herself at the window and contemplated the tax-receiver’s house.  For her it was the Tuileries.  She had determined upon the most extreme measures in order to secure an entree into the new town, that promised land, on the threshold of which she had stood with burning longing for so many years.

The conversation which she had held with the marquis had at last clearly revealed the situation to her.  A few days afterwards, she succeeded in reading one of Eugene’s letters, in which he, who was working for the Coup d’Etat, seemed also to rely upon an insurrection as the means of endowing his father with some importance.  Eugene knew his department well.  All his suggestions had been framed with the object of placing as much influence as possible in the hands of the yellow drawing-room reactionaries, so that the Rougons might be able to hold the town at the critical moment.  In accordance with his desires, the yellow drawing-room was master of Plassans in November, 1851.  Roudier represented the rich citizens there, and his attitude would certainly decide that of the entire new town.  Granoux was still more valuable; he had the Municipal Council behind him:  he was its most powerful member, a fact which will give some idea of its other members.  Finally, through Commander Sicardot, whom the marquis had succeeded in getting appointed as chief of the National Guard, the yellow drawing-room had the armed forces at their disposal.