However, Monsieur de Carnavant merely smiled and
glanced at Felicite with a knowing look. This rapid by-play was not
observed by the other people. Vuillet alone remarked in a sharp tone:
"I would rather see your Bonaparte at London than at Paris. Our affairs
would get along better then."
At this the old oil-dealer turned slightly pale, fearing that he had
gone too far. "I'm not anxious to retain 'my' Bonaparte," he said, with
some firmness; "you know where I would send him to if I were the master.
I simply assert that the expedition to Rome was a good stroke."
Felicite had followed this scene with inquisitive astonishment. However,
she did not speak of it to her husband, which proved that she adopted it
as the basis of secret study. The marquis's smile, the significance of
which escaped her, set her thinking.
From that day forward, Rougon, at distant intervals, whenever the
occasion offered, slipped in a good word for the President of the
Republic. On such evenings, Commander Sicardot acted the part of a
willing accomplice. At the same time, Clerical opinions still reigned
supreme in the yellow drawing-room. It was more particularly in
the following year that this group of reactionaries gained decisive
influence in the town, thanks to the retrograde movement which was going
on at Paris. All those anti-Liberal laws which the country called "the
Roman expedition at home" definitively secured the triumph of the Rougon
faction.
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