Doctor Pascal | Page 5

noise of the pestle, which had not ceased in the adjoining chamber.
"Ah! he is still at his devil's cookery! Don't disturb him, I have nothing
to say to him."
Martine, who had resumed her work on the chair, shook her head, as if
to say that she had no mind to disturb her master, and there was silence
again, while Clotilde wiped her fingers, stained with crayon, on a cloth,
and Felicite began to walk about the room with short steps, looking
around inquisitively.
Old Mme. Rougon would soon be two years a widow. Her husband
who had grown so corpulent that he could no longer move, had
succumbed to an attack of indigestion on the 3d of September, 1870, on
the night of the day on which he had learned of the catastrophe of
Sedan. The ruin of the government of which he flattered himself with
being one of the founders, seemed to have crushed him. Thus, Felicite
affected to occupy herself no longer with politics, living, thenceforward,
like a dethroned queen, the only surviving power of a vanished world.

No one was unaware that the Rougons, in 1851, had saved Plassans
from anarchy, by causing the _coup d'etat_ of the 2d of December to
triumph there, and that, a few years later, they had won it again from
the legitimist and republican candidates, to give it to a Bonapartist
deputy. Up to the time of the war, the Empire had continued
all-powerful in the town, so popular that it had obtained there at the
plebiscite an overwhelming majority. But since the disasters the town
had become republican, the quarter St. Marc had returned to its secret
royalist intrigues, while the old quarter and the new town had sent to
the chamber a liberal representative, slightly tinged with Orleanism,
and ready to take sides with the republic, if it should triumph. And,
therefore, it was that Felicite, like the intelligent woman she was, had
withdrawn her attention from politics, and consented to be nothing
more than the dethroned queen of a fallen government.
But this was still an exalted position, surrounded by a melancholy
poetry. For sixteen years she had reigned. The tradition of her two
_salons_, the yellow _salon_, in which the _coup d'etat_ had matured,
and the green _salon_, later the neutral ground on which the conquest
of Plassans was completed, embellished itself with the reflection of the
vanished past, and was for her a glorious history. And besides, she was
very rich. Then, too, she had shown herself dignified in her fall, never
uttering a regret or a complaint, parading, with her eighty years, so long
a succession of fierce appetites, of abominable maneuvers, of
inordinate gratifications, that she became august through them. Her
only happiness, now, was to enjoy in peace her large fortune and her
past royalty, and she had but one passion left--to defend her past, to
extend its fame, suppressing everything that might tarnish it later. Her
pride, which lived on the double exploit of which the inhabitants still
spoke, watched with jealous care, resolved to leave in existence only
creditable documents, those traditions which caused her to be saluted
like a fallen queen when she walked through the town.
She went to the door of the chamber and listened to the persistent noise
of the pestle, which did not cease. Then, with an anxious brow, she
returned to Clotilde.
"Good Heavens! What is he making? You know that he is doing
himself the greatest harm with his new drug. I was told, the other day,
that he came near killing one of his patients."

"Oh, grandmother!" cried the young girl.
But she was now launched.
"Yes, exactly. The good wives say many other things, besides! Why, go
question them, in the faubourg! They will tell you that he grinds dead
men's bones in infants' blood."
This time, while even Martine protested, Clotilde, wounded in her
affection, grew angry.
"Oh, grandmother, do not repeat such abominations! Master has so
great a heart that he thinks only of making every one happy!"
Then, when she saw that they were both angry, Felicite, comprehending
that she had gone too far, resumed her coaxing manner.
"But, my kitten, it is not I who say those frightful things. I repeat to you
the stupid reports they spread, so that you may comprehend that Pascal
is wrong to pay no heed to public opinion. He thinks he has found a
new remedy--nothing could be better! and I will even admit that he will
be able to cure everybody, as he hopes. Only, why affect these
mysterious ways; why not speak of the matter openly; why, above all,
try it only on the rabble of the old quarter and of the country, instead of,
attempting among the well-to-do people