s impulse the
"Independant" waged merciless warfare against the reactionaries. But the
current gradually carried him further than he wished to go; he ended by
writing inflammatory articles, which made him shudder when he re-perused
them. It was remarked at Plassans that he directed a series of attacks
against all whom his father was in the habit of receiving of an evening
in his famous yellow drawing-room. The fact is that the wealth of
Roudier and Granoux exasperated Aristide to such a degree as to make him
forget all prudence. Urged on by his jealous, insatiate bitterness,
he had already made the middle classes his irreconcilable enemy,
when Eugene's arrival and demeanour at Plassans caused him great
consternation. He confessed to himself that his brother was a skilful
man. According to him, that big, drowsy fellow always slept with one
eye open, like a cat lying in wait before a mouse-hole. And now here was
Eugene spending entire evenings in the yellow drawing-room, and devoting
himself to those same grotesque personages whom he, Aristide, had so
mercilessly ridiculed. When he discovered from the gossip of the town
that his brother shook hands with Granoux and the marquis, he asked
himself, with considerable anxiety, what was the meaning of it? Could he
himself have been deceived? Had the Legitimists or the Orleanists
really any chance of success? The thought terrified him. He lost his
equilibrium, and, as frequently happens, he fell upon the Conservatives
with increased rancour, as if to avenge his own blindness.

On the evening prior to the day when he stopped Eugene on the Cours
Sauvaire, he had published, in the "Independant," a terrible article
on the intrigues of the clergy, in response to a short paragraph from
Vuillet, who had accused the Republicans of desiring to demolish the
churches. Vuillet was Aristide's bugbear. Never a week passed but these
two journalists exchanged the greatest insults. In the provinces,
where a periphrastic style is still cultivated, polemics are clothed in
high-sounding phrases. Aristide called his adversary "brother Judas,"
or "slave of Saint-Anthony." Vuillet gallantly retorted by terming the
Republican "a monster glutted with blood whose ignoble purveyor was the
guillotine."

In order to sound his brother, Aristide, who did not dare to appear
openly uneasy, contented himself with asking: "Did you read my article
yesterday? What do you think of it?"

Eugene lightly shrugged hi