ich gives a man a position in an official salon. People
imagined that his wife held a rod over him, but they were mistaken. He
was as self-willed as a brute. Any determined expression of extraneous
will would drive him into a violent rage. Felicite was far too supple to
thwart him openly; with her light fluttering nature she did not attack
obstacles in front. When she wished to obtain something from her
husband, or drive him the way she thought best, she would buzz round him
in her grasshopper fashion, stinging him on all sides, and returning
to the charge a hundred times until he yielded almost unconsciously. He
felt, moreover, that she was shrewder than he, and tolerated her advice
fairly patiently. Felicite, more useful than the coach fly, would
sometimes do all the work while she was thus buzzing round Pierre's
ears. Strange to say, the husband and wife never accused each other
of their ill-success. The only bone of contention between them was the
education lavished on their children.

The Revolution of 1848 found all the Rougons on the lookout, exasperated
by their bad luck, and disposed to lay violent hands on fortune if ever
they should meet her in a byway. They were a family of bandits lying in
wait, ready to rifle and plunder. Eugene kept an eye on Paris; Aristide
dreamed of strangling Plassans; the mother and father, perhaps the most
eager of the lot, intended to work on their own account, and reap
some additional advantage from their sons' doings. Pascal alone, that
discreet wooer of science, led the happy, indifferent life of a lover in
his bright little house in the new town.

CHAPTER III

In that closed, sequestered town of Plassans, where class distinction
was so clearly marked in 1848, the commotion caused by political events
was very slight. Even at the present day the popular voice sounds very
faintly there; the middle classes bring their prudence to bear in the
matter, the nobility their mute despair, and the clergy their shrewd
cunning. Kings may usurp thrones, or republics may be established,
without scarcely any stir in the town. Plassans sleeps while Paris
fights. But though on the surface the town may appear calm and
indifferent, in the depths hidden work goes on which it is curious
to study. If shots are rare in the streets, intrigues consume the
drawing-rooms of both the new town and the Saint-Marc quarter. Until the
year 1830 the masses were reckoned of no account. Even at the present
t