His brawny body, however, was suffering terribly from his enforced inactivity. If he had dared, he would have seized a spade and dug up his garden. However, he preferred to commence a long piece of writing in which he would carefully compare the English constitution with the Imperial constitution of 1852, with the idea of proving—all allowance made for the history and political customs of the two nations—that the French had as much liberty as the English. However, when he had consulted all the necessary authorities and collected sufficient notes, he had to force himself into taking up the pen. He could easily have made a long speech on the subject before the Chamber, but to write a treatise in which each sentence must be carefully thought out appeared to him a task of immense difficulty; and one, too, of no immediate usefulness. To express himself in good literary style had always embarrassed him, and it was for this reason that he pretended to hold style in contempt. He only got ten pages of his treatise written, still he left the manuscript on his desk, though he did not add twenty lines to it a week. On the other hand, whenever anybody asked him how he employed his time, he explained his project at great length, and dwelt on its great import. This was the excuse which he employed to conceal the hateful emptiness of his life.
Months went on, and he turned a yet more serene and smiling face to the world. Not a sign of the utter weariness he was suffering did he allow to appear. When his intimates sympathised with him, he assured them of his perfect felicity and gave them the most convincing reasons for it. Had he not everything to make him happy? he asked. He delighted in study, and now he could work as he listed, which was infinitely preferable to the feverish agitation of public life. As the Emperor had no need of his services, he did well to leave him in quietude in his little corner. He never spoke of the Emperor in other terms than those of profound devotion. Still, he frequently said that at a sign from his master he was perfectly willing to take up the burden of power again, adding, however, that he would not venture on a single step to provoke that sign. To all appearances, indeed, he was very anxious to keep aloof. Amidst the quietude of those early years of the Empire, amidst the nation's strange stupor born of mingled dread and weariness, he could hear faint sounds as of a coming awakening, and, as a supreme hope, he reckoned on some catastrophe which would suddenly make him necessary to the State. He was the man for critical situations, 'the man with the big paws,' as M. de Marsy had put it.
The Rougons received their friends at their house in the Rue Marbeuf on Sundays and Thursdays. They chatted in the big red drawing-room till half-past ten o'clock, at which time Rougon pitilessly turned them out of doors, for he held that late hours fogged the brain. Exactly at ten o'clock, Madame Rougon herself served tea. Two plates of little cakes accompanied the tea, but no one ever touched them.
On the Thursday in the July of that year which followed the general elections, the whole band was assembled in the drawing-room at eight o'clock. Madame Bouchard, Madame Charbonnel, and Madame Correur sat in a circle near an open window to inhale the occasional whiffs of fresh air which came in from the little garden, and in their midst M. d'Escorailles related the pranks he had played in his Plassans days, when he had often gone off to Monaco for twelve hours or so, on the pretext of taking part in a shooting expedition with a friend. Madame Rougon, who, dressed in black, sat half concealed behind a curtain, paid no attention to all this, but would now and again quietly rise and leave the room. She frequently disappeared for a quarter of an hour at a time. M. Charbonnel, however, was perched at the edge of an easy chair near the ladies, in amazement at hearing a young man of high rank confessing such adventures. At the other end of the room stood Clorinde, listening inattentively to a conversation on crops which her husband and M. Béjuin had started. She wore a creamy dress, freely trimmed with straw-coloured ribbons, and she gently tapped the palm of her left hand with her fan while gazing at the bright globe of the one lamp with which the drawing-room was lighted. Meantime, Colonel Jobelin and M. Bouchard were playing piquet at a card-table, while Rougon, like a fortune-teller, was consulting a pack of cards in a corner, setting them out on the green cloth in a grave and methodical manner. This was his favourite amusement on Thursdays and Sundays, affording occupation both for his fingers and his mind.
'Well, will it come off?' Clorinde asked with a smile as she approached him.
'It always comes off,' he replied quietly.
She remained standing on the other side of the table while he dealt the pack into eight small heaps.
When he had turned the cards over and picked them up in pairs—two aces, two kings, two queens, and so forth—she remarked, 'Yes, you have managed it all right. But what did you want the cards to tell you?'
Rougon slowly raised his eyes as though surprised at the question. 'What kind of weather we shall have to-morrow,' he said at length.