Clorinde had not yet opened her lips. The visitors kept glancing at her as though they expected her to say something. But for some time she rolled her head on her pillow, as though she were trying to rub the nape of her neck.
'That's right; scold him,' she said at last, speaking of her husband, though not mentioning him by name. 'He will have to be beaten into taking his real place.'
'The position of Minister for Agriculture and Commerce is quite a secondary one,' remarked M. Kahn in order to precipitate matters.
This was touching a sore spot. Clorinde was annoyed at her husband being shelved to what she considered a minor post. And she now sharply sprang into a sitting posture, and let fall the words that everyone had been waiting for: 'He can go to the office of the Interior as soon as ever we wish it,' said she.
Delestang tried to speak, but all the company rushed towards him amid an outburst of delight. Then at last he seemed to give in, a rosy flush suffused his cheeks, his handsome face fairly beamed with pleasure. Madame Correur and Madame Bouchard whispered to each other that he was remarkably good looking, and the latter, with that perverted taste which makes some women admire baldness, cast loving glances at his bare skull. Then M. Kahn, the colonel and the others, expressed by winks, gestures and hasty words the high estimate which they set upon his ability. They prostrated themselves before the feeblest mind of the whole coterie, and admired one another in his person. He, at any rate, would be an easy and docile master, and would never compromise them. They could set him up as a god with impunity, free from all fear of his thunderbolts.
'You are quite fatiguing him,' at last exclaimed pretty Madame Bouchard in her tender voice.
Fatiguing him, were they? At this there was a general outburst of sympathy. In point of fact Delestang was looking rather pale again, and his eyes had a sleepy expression. But nothing tries a man like brain-work, the visitors remarked to each other with an air of commiseration, and the poor fellow had been working since five o'clock that morning! Then they gently insisted that he should go to bed. And he obeyed them with quiet docility, kissing his wife on the forehead and then quitting the room.
It was now one o'clock, and the guests began to speak of retiring, whereupon Clorinde assured them that she was by no means sleepy, and that they might stay on. However, no one sat down again. The lamp in the boudoir had just gone out, and there was a strong smell of oil in the room. It was with difficulty that they could find sundry small articles, such as Madame Correur's fan, the colonel's stick, and Madame Bouchard's bonnet. Clorinde, calmly stretched on her bed, stopped Madame Correur just as the latter was going to ring for Antonia. The maid, it appeared, always went to bed at eleven o'clock. Then just as they were all going away, the colonel suddenly bethought himself of Auguste, whom he had forgotten. He found him asleep on a sofa in the boudoir, with his head resting on a dress which he had rolled up to form a pillow; and the others scolded him for not having attended to the lamp. In the gloom of the staircase, where the gas was turned very low, Madame Bouchard gave a little scream. She had twisted her foot, she said. Finally, as the visitors carefully felt their way with the aid of the balusters, loud peals of laughter were heard upstairs; Pozzo having lingered after the others had gone.
Every Thursday and Sunday the friends met at Clorinde's in this way; and it was generally rumoured that Madame Delestang now held political receptions. It was said that extremely liberal proclivities were aired at them, and that Rougon's despotic administration was vigorously attacked. The whole band indeed had now begun to dream of a sort of democratic empire in which every public liberty would gradually expand. The colonel, in his leisure moments, drew up codes of rules for trades-unions. M. Béjuin spoke of building cheap workmen's houses round his cut-glass works at Saint Florent, and M. Kahn talked to Delestang for hours at a time, of the democratic part that the Bonapartes were destined to play in modern society. And every fresh act of Rougon's was hailed with indignant protests, with expressions of patriotic alarm lest France should be ruined by such a man. One day Delestang started the theory that the Emperor was the only genuine Republican of his time. The coterie put on the airs of a religious sect to which the only means of salvation had been exclusively entrusted, and its members soon openly plotted the fat man's overthrow for the good of the country.
Clorinde, however, showed no inclination for haste. They would find her lying at full length on one or other of the couches in her rooms, gazing into the air as if examining patches of the ceiling. And while the others prated and walked impatiently about the room, she remained silent and impenetrable, merely glancing at them every now and then as though to advise them to be more guarded in their language. She now went out less than she had done previously, and with Antonia's assistance often amused herself by dressing as a man, seemingly to while away her time. She manifested, too, a sudden affection for her husband, kissing him before company, talking caressingly to him, and showing a lively anxiety about his health, which was excellent. It might be that she adopted these tactics to conceal the absolute sway and ceaseless surveillance which she maintained over him. She directed his slightest actions, taught him his lesson every morning like a school-boy who could not be trusted. Delestang on his side evinced the most docile obedience. He bowed, smiled, or frowned, said black was white or white was black, just as she pulled the string. And whenever he felt that he wanted winding up again, he voluntarily came back to her and placed himself in her hands to be manipulated. But all the while he seemed to outsiders to be the head of the household.