Rougon was no longer 'the great man.'
'No,' said Clorinde; 'but we may see him here this evening. My husband persists in bringing him to see me.'
'I was in a café this afternoon, where they were criticising him very severely,' the colonel continued, after a pause. 'They say that his position is very shaky, and that he won't last another two months.'
M. Kahn made a gesture of contempt. 'Well, for my part,' he said, 'I don't give him three weeks. Rougon, you see, is not cut out for governing He is too fond of power, and gets intoxicated with it; and then he strikes out right and left and treats people with revolting harshness. During these last five months he has been guilty of some most monstrous acts.'
'Yes, yes, indeed,' the colonel interrupted; 'all kinds of injustices and unfairnesses and absurdities. He abuses his power, most certainly he does.'
Madame Correur said nothing, but expressed, by a gesture, her opinion that Rougon's head was not particularly well balanced.
'Ah, yes, indeed,' said M. Kahn, noticing the gesture. 'He hasn't got a well-fixed head, has he?'
Then M. Béjuin observed that the others were looking at him, and felt called upon to say something. 'No! Rougon's not at all an able man,' he remarked; 'not at all.'
Clorinde lay back on her pillows, gazing at the luminous circle which the lamp cast on the ceiling, and letting the others talk on. When they paused, she said, with the intention of starting them again: 'There is no doubt that he has abused his power, but he asserts that the things with which people reproach him were done for the sole purpose of obliging his friends. I was talking to him on the subject the other day. The services which he has rendered you——'
'Rendered us! rendered us!' they all cried furiously. And they went on talking all together, eager to protest against any such insinuation. However, M. Kahn shouted the others down.