The parasite life he had led had rendered him supple. He
was the life and soul of the group, commanding in the name of unknown
personages whom he never revealed. "They want this, they don't want
that," he would say. The concealed divinities who thus watched over
the destinies of Plassans from behind some cloud, without appearing to
interfere directly in public matters, must have been certain priests,
the great political agents of the country. When the marquis pronounced
that mysterious word "they," which inspired the assembly with such
marvellous respect, Vuillet confessed, with a gesture of pious devotion,
that he knew them very well.
The happiest person in all this was Felicite. At last she had people
coming to her drawing-room. It was true she felt a little ashamed of her
old yellow velvet furniture. She consoled herself, however, thinking
of the rich things she would purchase when the good cause should have
triumphed. The Rougons had, in the end, regarded their royalism as very
serious. Felicite went as far as to say, when Roudier was not present,
that if they had not made a fortune in the oil business the fault lay in
the monarchy of July. This was her mode of giving a political tinge to
their poverty. She had a friendly word for everybody, even for Granoux,
inventing each evening some new polite method of waking him up when it
was time for departure.
The drawing-room, that little band of Conservatives belonging to
all parties, and daily increasing in numbers, soon wielded powerful
influence.
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