“He attended you without charging a sou,” continued Fine, coming to her daughter’s aid, “and he often slipped a five-franc piece into my hand to make you some broth.”
“He! he’d have killed me if I hadn’t had a strong constitution!” Macquart retorted. “Hold your tongues, you fools! You’d let yourselves be twisted about like children. They’d all like to see me dead. When I’m ill again, I beg you not to go and fetch my nephew, for I didn’t feel at all comfortable in his hands. He’s only a twopenny-halfpenny doctor, and hasn’t got a decent patient in all his practice.”
When once Macquart was fully launched, he could not stop. “It’s like that little viper, Aristide,” he would say, “a false brother, a traitor. Are you taken in by his articles in the ‘Indépendant,’ Silvère? You would be a fine fool if you were. They’re not even written in good French; I’ve always maintained that this contraband Republican is in league with his worthy father to humbug us. You’ll see how he’ll turn his coat. And his brother, the illustrious Eugène, that big blockhead of whom the Rougons make such a fuss! Why, they’ve got the impudence to assert that he occupies a good position in Paris! I know something about his position; he’s employed at the Rue de Jerusalem; he’s a police spy.”
“Who told you so? You know nothing about it,” interrupted Silvère, whose upright spirit at last felt hurt by his uncle’s lying accusations.
“Ah! I know nothing about it? Do you think so? I tell you he is a police spy. You’ll be shorn like a lamb one of these days, with your benevolence. You’re not manly enough. I don’t want to say anything against your brother Francois; but, if I were in your place, I shouldn’t like the scurvy manner in which he treats you. He earns a heap of money at Marseilles, and yet he never sends you a paltry twenty-franc piece for pocket money. If ever you become poor, I shouldn’t advise you to look to him for anything.”
“I’ve no need of anybody,” the young man replied in a proud and slightly injured tone of voice. “My own work suffices for aunt Dide and myself. You’re cruel, uncle.”
“I only say what’s true, that’s all. I should like to open your eyes. Our family is a disreputable lot; it’s sad but true. Even that little Maxime, Aristide’s son, that little nine-year-old brat, pokes his tongue out at me when he meets me. That child will some day beat his own mother, and a good job too! Say what you like, all those folks don’t deserve their luck; but it’s always like this in families, the good ones suffer while the bad ones make their fortunes.”
All this dirty linen, which Macquart washed with such complacency before his nephew, profoundly disgusted the young man. He would have liked to soar back into his dream. As soon as he began to show unmistakable signs of impatience, Antoine would employ strong expedients to exasperate him against their relatives.
“Defend them! Defend them!” he would say, appearing to calm down. “I, for my part, have arranged to have nothing more to do with them. I only mention the matter out of pity for my poor mother, whom all that gang treat in a most revolting manner.”
“They are wretches!” Silvère murmured.