“Oh! you don’t know, you don’t understand. These Rougons pour all sorts of insults and abuse on the good woman. Aristide has forbidden his son even to recognise her. Félicité talks of having her placed in a lunatic asylum.”
The young man, as white as a sheet, abruptly interrupted his uncle: “Enough!” he cried. “I don’t want to know any more about it. There will have to be an end to all this.”
“I’ll hold my tongue, since it annoys you,” the old rascal replied, feigning a good-natured manner. “Still, there are some things that you ought not to be ignorant of, unless you want to play the part of a fool.”
Macquart, while exerting himself to set Silvère against the Rougons, experienced the keenest pleasure on drawing tears of anguish from the young man’s eyes. He detested him, perhaps, more than he did the others, and this because he was an excellent workman and never drank. He brought all his instincts of refined cruelty into play, in order to invent atrocious falsehoods which should sting the poor lad to the heart; then he revelled in his pallor, his trembling hands and his heart-rending looks, with the delight of some evil spirit who measures his stabs and finds that he has struck his victim in the right place. When he thought that he had wounded and exasperated Silvère sufficiently, he would at last touch upon politics.
“I’ve been assured,” he would say, lowering his voice, “that the Rougons are preparing some treachery.”
“Treachery?” Silvère asked, becoming attentive.
“Yes, one of these nights they are going to seize all the good citizens of the town and throw them into prison.”
The young man was at first disposed to doubt it, but his uncle gave precise details; he spoke of lists that had been drawn up, he mentioned the persons whose names were on these lists, he indicated in what manner, at what hour, and under what circumstances the plot would be carried into effect. Silvère gradually allowed himself to be taken in by this old woman’s tale, and was soon raving against the enemies of the Republic.
“It’s they that we shall have to reduce to impotence if they persist in betraying the country!” he cried. “And what do they intend to do with the citizens whom they arrest?”
“What do they intend to do with them? Why, they will shoot them in the lowest dungeons of the prison, of course,” replied Macquart, with a hoarse laugh. And as the young man, stupefied with horror, looked at him without knowing what to say: “This will not be the first lot to be assassinated there,” he continued. “You need only go and prowl about the Palais de Justice of an evening to hear the shots and groans.”