ious eye. This bookseller, half-sacristan and half-journalist,
spoke less than the others, but was more observant. He had noticed
that Eugene occasionally conversed at times in a corner with Commander
Sicardot. So he determined to watch them, but never succeeded in
overhearing a word. Eugene silenced the commander by a wink whenever
Vuillet approached them. From that time, Sicardot never spoke of the
Napoleons without a mysterious smile.

Two days before his return to Paris, Eugene met his brother Aristide, on
the Cours Sauvaire, and the latter accompanied him for a short distance
with the importunity of a man in search of advice. As a matter of fact,
Aristide was in great perplexity. Ever since the proclamation of the
Republic, he had manifested the most lively enthusiasm for the new
government. His intelligence, sharpened by two years' stay at Paris,
enabled him to see farther than the thick heads of Plassans. He divined
the powerlessness of the Legitimists and Orleanists, without clearly
distinguishing, however, what third thief would come and juggle the
Republic away. At all hazard he had ranged himself on the side of the
victors, and he had severed his connection with his father, whom he
publicly denounced as an old fool, an old dolt whom the nobility had
bamboozled.

"Yet my mother is an intelligent woman," he would add. "I should never
have thought her capable of inducing her husband to join a party whose
hopes are simply chimerical. They are taking the right course to end
their lives in poverty. But then women know nothing about politics."

For his part he wanted to sell himself as dearly as possible. His great
anxiety as to the direction in which the wind was blowing, so that he
might invariably range himself on the side of that party, which, in
the hour of triumph, would be able to reward him munificently.
Unfortunately, he was groping in the dark. Shut up in his far away
province, without a guide, without any precise information, he felt
quite lost. While waiting for events to trace out a sure and certain
path, he preserved the enthusiastic republican attitude which he had
assumed from the very first day. Thanks to this demeanour, he remained
at the Sub-Prefecture; and his salary was even raised. Burning, however,
with the desire to play a prominent part, he persuaded a bookseller,
one of Vuillet's rivals, to establish a democratic journal, to which
he became one of the most energetic contributors. Under hi