ependant' has already been condemned, its title
alone suffices to enrage the middle classes of Plassans. Let dear
Aristide flounder about; this only moulds young people. He does not
appear to me to be cut out for carrying on the role of a martyr for any
length of time."

However, in her eagerness to point out the right way to her family,
now that she believed herself in possession of the truth, Felicite even
sought to convert her son Pascal. The doctor, with the egotism of a
scientist immersed in his researches, gave little heed to politics.
Empires might fall while he was making an experiment, yet he would not
have deigned to turn his head. He at last yielded, however, to certain
importunities of his mother, who accused him more than ever of living
like an unsociable churl.

"If you were to go into society," she said to him, "you would get some
well-to-do patients. Come, at least, and spend some evenings in our
drawing-room. You will make the acquaintance of Messieurs Roudier,
Granoux, and Sicardot, all gentlemen in good circumstances, who will pay
you four or five francs a visit. The poor people will never enrich you."

The idea of succeeding in life, of seeing all her family attain to
fortune, had become a form of monomania with Felicite. Pascal, in order
to be agreeable to her, came and spent a few evenings in the yellow
drawing-room. He was much less bored there than he had apprehended. At
first he was rather stupefied at the degree of imbecility to which
sane men can sink. The old oil and almond dealers, the marquis and the
commander even, appeared to him so many curious animals, which he
had not hitherto had an opportunity of studying. He looked with a
naturalist's interest at their grimacing faces, in which he discerned
traces of their occupations and appetites; he listened also to their
inane chatter, just as he might have tried to catch the meaning of
a cat's mew or a dog's bark. At this period he was occupied with
comparative natural history, applying to the human race the observations
which he had made upon animals with regard to the working of heredity.
While he was in the yellow drawing-room, therefore, he amused himself
with the belief that he had fallen in with a menagerie. He established
comparisons between the grotesque creatures he found there and certain
animals of his acquaintance. The marquis, with his leanness and small
crafty-looking head, reminded him exactly of a long green grasshopper.
Vuil