His Excellency [Son Exc. Eugène Rougon]

by Émile Zola

'Do be quiet!' said Madame Correur in a low voice, while catching hold of Gilquin's arms.

But he would not at once sit down again. He remained on tip-toes, watching the brougham as it mingled with the other carriages, and at last he hurled a parting shout after the fleeing wheels: 'Ah! the turn-tail! just because he wears gold lace on his coat now! All the same, my fat fellow, you were deucedly hard up once upon a time!'

Some middle-class citizens and their wives who were sitting at the seven or eight tables of the little café heard this and opened their eyes in astonishment. At one table there was a family, consisting of the father and mother and three children, who seemed profoundly interested in Gilquin's proceedings. The latter puffed himself out, quite delighted to find that he had an audience. He let his eyes travel round the customers of the café, and said in a loud voice as he dropped into his seat again: 'Rougon! why it was I who made him what he is!'

Then turning to Madame Correur, who was trying to quiet him, he appealed to her for corroboration. She knew that he was speaking the truth, he proclaimed. It had all happened at the Hôtel Vanneau in the Rue Vanneau. She surely wouldn't deny that he had lent Rougon his boots a score of times to enable him to go to the houses of highly-placed people and mix in a lot of mysterious goings-on. Why, in those days Rougon only possessed an old pair of split shoes, which a rag-picker wouldn't have taken as a gift. Then with a triumphant air Gilquin bent towards the family at the next table, and exclaimed: 'Oh, she won't confess it, but it was she who paid for his first pair of new boots in Paris.'

Madame Correur, however, turned her chair round, so that she might no longer seem to be one of Gilquin's party. The Charbonnels had become quite pale at hearing the man who was to put half a million francs in their pockets spoken of in such a fashion. Gilquin, however, was wound up, and rattled off innumerable stories of Rougon's early days. He, Gilquin, claimed to be a philosopher, and he began to laugh, and accosted the parties at the different tables one after another, smoking, spitting, and drinking, while telling them that he was quite accustomed to the ingratitude of mankind, and was satisfied with preserving his own self-respect. And he repeated that he himself had been the making of Rougon. At that time, he said, he had been a traveller in the perfumery line, but the Republic was bad for trade. Both he and Rougon had been living on the same floor in a state of starvation. Then he was struck with the idea of getting Rougon to send for some olive-oil from a producer at Plassans, and they had both wandered about Paris in different directions till ten o'clock at night with samples of olive-oil in their pockets. Rougon was not clever at the business, but he occasionally succeeded in getting some good orders from the fine folks to whose houses he went in the evenings.

Ah! that rascal Rougon, he was a bigger booby than a goose in most things, yet all the same he was very cunning. A little later, how he had made him, Gilquin, run about to further his politics! Here Gilquin lowered his voice a little and winked, and let them know that he himself had belonged to the Bonapartist band. He had haunted the low dancing-rooms crying out 'Long live the Republic'; for it was necessary to profess Republicanism to get influence over the people. The Empire certainly owed him a big debt for what he had done; but it hadn't even thanked him. No, while Rougon and his clique shared all the prizes, he was turned out of doors like a mangy dog. Well, on the whole, he preferred that it should be so, he would rather remain independent. He had only one regret now, and that was that he had not stuck to the Republicans and made an end of all this scum with his musket.

'It's just the same, too, with little Du Poizat,' he said in conclusion. 'He pretends not to know me now; a skinny little beggar to whom I've often given a pipe of tobacco! And yet he's a sub-prefect now! Why I've often seen him with big Amélie, who used to box his ears and kick him outside the door when he didn't behave properly.'

After this he became silent for a moment as if overcome by tender recollections amidst his maudlin fit. Then, glancing round at his audience, he began again.

'Well, you've just seen Rougon. I'm as tall a man as he is, and I'm the same age, and I flatter myself that I've got a better looking head on my shoulders. Well, now, don't you think that it would be much better for everyone if I were in that carriage instead of that great fat pig, with his body covered all over with gold lace?'

However, just at this moment such a shouting arose on the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, that the people at the café became much too excited to reply. The crowd made another rush; men's legs flew along, while women caught up their petticoats to enable themselves to run the faster. As the shouting came nearer and grew more distinct, Gilquin cried out: