When she wished to obtain something from her
husband, or drive him the way she thought best, she would buzz round him
in her grasshopper fashion, stinging him on all sides, and returning
to the charge a hundred times until he yielded almost unconsciously. He
felt, moreover, that she was shrewder than he, and tolerated her advice
fairly patiently. Felicite, more useful than the coach fly, would
sometimes do all the work while she was thus buzzing round Pierre's
ears. Strange to say, the husband and wife never accused each other
of their ill-success. The only bone of contention between them was the
education lavished on their children.
The Revolution of 1848 found all the Rougons on the lookout, exasperated
by their bad luck, and disposed to lay violent hands on fortune if ever
they should meet her in a byway. They were a family of bandits lying in
wait, ready to rifle and plunder. Eugene kept an eye on Paris; Aristide
dreamed of strangling Plassans; the mother and father, perhaps the most
eager of the lot, intended to work on their own account, and reap
some additional advantage from their sons' doings. Pascal alone, that
discreet wooer of science, led the happy, indifferent life of a lover in
his bright little house in the new town.
CHAPTER III
In that closed, sequestered town of Plassans, where class distinction
was so clearly marked in 1848, the commotion caused by political events
was very slight. Even at the present day the popular voice sounds very
faintly there; the middle classes bring their prudence to bear in the
matter, the nobility their mute despair, and the clergy their shrewd
cunning.
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