Fouques' property, and
Adelaide, and her amours with a smuggler. He said just enough to give
a fresh start to the gossip. The tattlers drew closer together and such
words as "rogues," "thieves," and "shameless intriguers," ascended to
the shutter behind which Pierre and Felicite were perspiring with fear
and indignation. The people on the square even went so far as to pity
Macquart. This was the final blow. On the previous day Rougon had been a
Brutus, a stoic soul sacrificing his own affections to his country; now
he was nothing but an ambitious villain, who felled his brother to the
ground and made use of him as a stepping-stone to fortune.

"You hear, you hear them?" Pierre murmured in a stifled voice. "Ah! the
scoundrels, they are killing us; we shall never retrieve ourselves."

Felicite, enraged, was beating a tattoo on the shutter with her
impatient fingers.

"Let them talk," she answered. "If we get the upper hand again they
shall see what stuff I'm made of. I know where the blow comes from. The
new town hates us."

She guessed rightly. The sudden unpopularity of the Rougons was the
work of a group of lawyers who were very much annoyed at the importance
acquired by an old illiterate oil-dealer, whose house had been on the
verge of bankruptcy. The Saint-Marc quarter had shown no sign of life
for the last two days. The inhabitants of the old quarter and the new
town alone remained in presence, and the latter had taken advantage
of the panic to injure the yellow drawing-room in the minds of the
tradespeople and working-classes. Roudier and Granoux were said to
be excellent men, honourable citizens, who had been led away by the
Rougons' intrigues. Their eyes ought to be opened to it. Ought not
Monsieur Isidore Granoux to be seated in the mayor's arm-chair, in the
place of that big portly beggar who had not a copper to bless himself
with? Thus launched, the envious folks began to reproach Rougon for
all the acts of his administration, which only dated from the previous
evening. He had no right to retain the services of the former Municipal
Council; he had been guilty of grave folly in ordering the gates to be
closed; it was through his stupidity that five members of the Commission
had contracted inflammation of the lungs on the terrace of the
Valqueyras mansion. There was no end to his faults. The Republicans
likewise raised their heads. They talked of the possibility of a sudden
attack upon the town-hall by the