er, this brother was actually playing the gentleman with
money stolen from him. Whenever Macquart touched upon this subject, he
became fiercely enraged; he clamoured for hours together, incessantly
repeating his old accusations, and never wearying of exclaiming: "If
my brother was where he ought to be, I should be the moneyed man at the
present time!"

And when anyone asked him where his brother ought to be, he would reply,
"At the galleys!" in a formidable voice.

His hatred further increased when the Rougons had gathered the
Conservatives round them, and thus acquired a certain influence in
Plassans. The famous yellow drawing-room became, in his hare-brained
chatter at the cafe, a cave of bandits, an assembly of villains who
every evening swore on their daggers that they would murder the people.
In order to incite the starvelings against Pierre, Macquart went so far
as to circulate a report that the retired oil-dealer was not so poor as
he pretended, but that he concealed his treasures through avarice and
fear of robbery. His tactics thus tended to rouse the poor people by a
repetition of absurdly ridiculous tales, which he often came to believe
in himself. His personal animosity and his desire for revenge were ill
concealed beneath his professions of patriotism; but he was heard so
frequently, and he had such a loud voice, that no one would have dared
to doubt the genuineness of his convictions.

At bottom, all the members of this family had the same brutish passions.
Felicite, who clearly understood that Macquart's wild theories were
simply the fruit of restrained rage and embittered envy, would much have
liked to purchase his silence. Unfortunately, she was short of money,
and did not dare to interest him in the dangerous game which her husband
was playing. Antoine now injured them very much among the well-to-do
people of the new town. It sufficed that he was a relation of theirs.
Granoux and Roudier often scornfully reproached them for having such a
man in their family. Felicite consequently asked herself with anguish
how they could manage to cleanse themselves of such a stain.

It seemed to her monstrous and indecent that Monsieur Rougon should have
a brother whose wife sold chestnuts, and who himself lived in crapulous
idleness. She at last even trembled for the success of their secret
intrigues, so long as Antoine seemingly took pleasure in compromising
them. When the diatribes which he levelled at the yello