sympathy with Silvere; politics bored him, and he thought his
cousin "cracked." When only the women remained, if they unfortunately
started some whispered converse after clearing the table, Macquart would
cry: "Now, you idlers! Is there nothing that requires mending? we're
all in rags. Look here, Gervaise, I was at your mistress's to-day, and I
learnt some fine things. You're a good-for-nothing, a gad-about."

Gervaise, now a grown girl of more than twenty, coloured up at
thus being scolded in the presence of Silvere, who himself felt
uncomfortable. One evening, having come rather late, when his uncle was
not at home, he had found the mother and daughter intoxicated before
an empty bottle. From that time he could never see his cousin without
recalling the disgraceful spectacle she had presented, with the maudlin
grin and large red patches on her poor, pale, puny face. He was not
less shocked by the nasty stories that circulated with regard to her.
He sometimes looked at her stealthily, with the timid surprise of a
schoolboy in the presence of a disreputable character.

When the two women had taken up their needles, and were ruining their
eyesight in order to mend his old shirts, Macquart, taking the best
seat, would throw himself back with an air of delicious comfort, and sip
and smoke like a man who relishes his laziness. This was the time when
the old rogue generally railed against the wealthy for living on
the sweat of the poor man's brow. He was superbly indignant with the
gentlemen of the new town, who lived so idly, and compelled the poor
to keep them in luxury. The fragments of communistic notions which he
culled from the newspapers in the morning became grotesque and monstrous
on falling from his lips. He would talk of a time near at hand when
no one would be obliged to work. He always, however, kept his fiercest
animosity for the Rougons. He never could digest the potatoes he had
eaten.

"I saw that vile creature Felicite buying a chicken in the market this
morning," he would say. "Those robbers of inheritances must eat chicken,
forsooth!"

"Aunt Dide," interposed Silvere, "says that uncle Pierre was very kind
to you when you left the army. Didn't he spend a large sum of money in
lodging and clothing you?"

"A large sum of money!" roared Macquart in exasperation; "your
grandmother is mad. It was those thieves who spread those reports
themselves, so as to close my mouth. I never had anything."

Fine again