He had noticed
that Eugene occasionally conversed at times in a corner with Commander
Sicardot. So he determined to watch them, but never succeeded in
overhearing a word. Eugene silenced the commander by a wink whenever
Vuillet approached them. From that time, Sicardot never spoke of the
Napoleons without a mysterious smile.
Two days before his return to Paris, Eugene met his brother Aristide, on
the Cours Sauvaire, and the latter accompanied him for a short distance
with the importunity of a man in search of advice. As a matter of fact,
Aristide was in great perplexity. Ever since the proclamation of the
Republic, he had manifested the most lively enthusiasm for the new
government. His intelligence, sharpened by two years' stay at Paris,
enabled him to see farther than the thick heads of Plassans. He divined
the powerlessness of the Legitimists and Orleanists, without clearly
distinguishing, however, what third thief would come and juggle the
Republic away. At all hazard he had ranged himself on the side of the
victors, and he had severed his connection with his father, whom he
publicly denounced as an old fool, an old dolt whom the nobility had
bamboozled.
"Yet my mother is an intelligent woman," he would add. "I should never
have thought her capable of inducing her husband to join a party whose
hopes are simply chimerical. They are taking the right course to end
their lives in poverty. But then women know nothing about politics.
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