t. When he at last lifted his head, Pierre, who had furtively
watched his countenance as if to see the effect of his words, suddenly
ceased speaking. However, Monsieur de Carnavant merely smiled and
glanced at Felicite with a knowing look. This rapid by-play was not
observed by the other people. Vuillet alone remarked in a sharp tone:

"I would rather see your Bonaparte at London than at Paris. Our affairs
would get along better then."

At this the old oil-dealer turned slightly pale, fearing that he had
gone too far. "I'm not anxious to retain 'my' Bonaparte," he said, with
some firmness; "you know where I would send him to if I were the master.
I simply assert that the expedition to Rome was a good stroke."

Felicite had followed this scene with inquisitive astonishment. However,
she did not speak of it to her husband, which proved that she adopted it
as the basis of secret study. The marquis's smile, the significance of
which escaped her, set her thinking.

From that day forward, Rougon, at distant intervals, whenever the
occasion offered, slipped in a good word for the President of the
Republic. On such evenings, Commander Sicardot acted the part of a
willing accomplice. At the same time, Clerical opinions still reigned
supreme in the yellow drawing-room. It was more particularly in
the following year that this group of reactionaries gained decisive
influence in the town, thanks to the retrograde movement which was going
on at Paris. All those anti-Liberal laws which the country called "the
Roman expedition at home" definitively secured the triumph of the Rougon
faction. The last enthusiastic bourgeois saw the Republic tottering, and
hastened to rally round the Conservatives. Thus the Rougons' hour had
arrived; the new town almost gave them an ovation on the day when the
tree of Liberty, planted on the square before the Sub-Prefecture, was
sawed down. This tree, a young poplar brought from the banks of the
Viorne, had gradually withered, much to the despair of the republican
working-men, who would come every Sunday to observe the progress of
the decay without being able to comprehend the cause of it. A hatter's
apprentice at last asserted that he had seen a woman leave Rougon's
house and pour a pail of poisoned water at the foot of the tree. It
thenceforward became a matter of history that Felicite herself got up
every night to sprinkle the poplar with vitriol. When the tree was dead
the Municipal Council declare