But the prodigious Granoux was a perpetual cause of astonishment to him.
He spent a whole evening measuring this imbecile's facial angle. When he
heard him mutter indistinct imprecations against those blood-suckers
the Republicans, he always expected to hear him moan like a calf; and
he could never see him rise from his chair without imagining that he was
about to leave the room on all fours.
"Talk to them," his mother used to say in an undertone; "try and make a
practice out of these gentlemen."
"I am not a veterinary surgeon," he at last replied, exasperated.
One evening Felicite took him into a corner and tired to catechise
him. She was glad to see him come to her house rather assiduously.
She thought him reconciled to Society, not suspecting for a moment the
singular amusement that he derived from ridiculing these rich people.
She cherished the secret project of making him the fashionable doctor
of Plassans. It would be sufficient if men like Granoux and Roudier
consented to give him a start. She wished, above all, to impart to
him the political views of the family, considering that a doctor had
everything to gain by constituting himself a warm partisan of the regime
which was to succeed the Republic.
"My dear boy," she said to him, "as you have now become reasonable,
you must give some thought to the future. You are accused of being a
Republican, because you are foolish enough to attend all the beggars
of the town without making any charge.
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